Fans of Miley Cyrus show their enthusiasm in Los Angeles last month.

AP / Danny Moloshok

PROVIDENCE — The patrons of the Dunkin’ Donuts Center are shrinking. Not in numbers, but in height.

Tonight, as crowds pour into the arena for a Hannah Montana concert, ticket takers will have to bend down to scan most entry passes, gripped by the tiny hands of fans as young as 5 years old.

It will be worth the back strain. Marketers for the state-owned performance venue see big money in small concertgoers. So far, their efforts to appeal to the so-called “tween,” or between childhood and adolescence, market appear to be paying off.

Tonight’s Hannah Montana show sold its 9,000 tickets in three minutes and set off a panic among parents who failed to secure one.

That meant big profits for secondary ticket sellers, who advertised tickets on StubHub.com for as much as $500 for a show originally priced at $21 to $63. But the Dunkin’ Donuts Center is also sharing the bounty. A legion of chaperons is expected to spend lavishly on food, drinks and merchandise — key sources of revenue for an arena struggling for profitability.

“This show goes out with some big-ticket items,” Lawrence J. Lepore, executive director of the Dunkin’ Donuts Center, said. Alongside CDs and posters, fans may have a chance to pick up items ranging from expensive jackets to blonde wigs.

In the past, the Dunkin’ Donuts Center had few attractions for tweens, who would graduate from family shows only to plunge into an entertainment purgatory until they became old enough to see a rock concert.

Now, the Walt Disney Co. has stepped into that void, promoting a new set of acts through its radio station — available in Providence at WDDZ (550-AM) — cable TV and stage shows. Arenas throughout the country are rolling out the red carpet for a new, intensely loyal, high-spending demographic.

“You’re reaching a niche market,” Cheryl Schadone, director of marketing for the Dunkin’ Donuts Center, said of the Hannah Montana show. “For a lot of kids, this is their first real concert. It’s something no one tapped into before.”

Hannah Montana, the stage name of 14-year-old Miley Cyrus, is undoubtedly a phenomenon. Her Disney Channel show draws more than 5 million viewers, and a 3-D film of her 54-concert “Best of Both Worlds” tour, arriving in Rhode Island in February, is expected to pack theaters with fans shut out of tonight’s performance.

But Hannah Montana is not alone on Disney’s lucrative tween circuit.

In 2005, The Cheetah Girls drew breathless, adolecent screeching at the Providence Performing Arts Center. Less than a year later, they sold out the Dunkin’ Donuts Center, evidence of what The Providence Journal’s music critic Rick Massimo described as “the ohmigod factor of the Girls’ movies, videos and general ubiquity on The Disney Channel.”

Last month, the stage version of the Disney Channel movie High School Musical drew a total of 23,000 people to eight performances at PPAC.

“We were thrilled to be able to able to book that show,” P.J. Prokop, director of marketing for PPAC, said. “The audience has become more sophisticated at a younger age. They’re very savvy about what’s out there.”

In August, tickets for High School Musical: The Ice Tour went on sale at the Dunkin’ Donuts Center. Only weeks later, the arena added a second performance.

The show has sold 8,900 of 14,000 tickets, with more than a month left before the performance. Lepore said he expected it to sell out.

“You must be living under a rock if you don’t know what a phenomenon this is,” said Nicole Feld, executive vice president of Feld Entertainment, the Virgina company that is producing and promoting the ice show. “It’s something that has resonated with parents. It has an upbeat message.”

It is also energizing arena owners, and not just because of ticket sales and rent.

Last year, food and merchandise made up more than 60 percent of Dunkin’ Donuts Center revenue, and tween audiences are particularly prodigal. The typical arena patron spends $10 on merchandise; Hannah Montana’s admirers (or their parents) shell out twice that.

Last month, fans of the Trans-Siberian Orchestra spent $11,000 on merchandise at the Dunkin’ Donuts Center. At The Cheetah Girls show, leopard-print apparel and assorted souvenirs drew $56,000. (The Rhode Island Convention Center Authority, the agency that operates the arena, typically keeps 40 percent of all food and drink sales and 30 percent of merchandise sold by an event promoter.)

Shows for tweens by no means dominate the marketplace. On Tuesday, for example, Kenny Rogers played a Christmas concert at PPAC. Next month, Liza Minnelli will take the stage there.

But tour promoters and arena owners say they hope that tween shows will begin to fill more dates on the event calendar.

“We’ve got a hot product,” said Schadone, who already has plans to bid on any musical production of High School Musical II, the movie sequel that debuted on the Disney Channel in August. “We’re a very strong tween market.”

bgedan@projo.com