Broadway brought in more than $31 million last week, playing to nearly 90% full houses at an average paid admission of $140.
Leading that high average ticket price continues to be the starry revival of Merrily We Roll Along. Its average of $250 (thanks to a top ticket price of $650), is far and away the highest on Broadway, beating runner-up The Lion King’s average ticket price by around $50. Celebrities and Sondheim are proving to be a powerful combo, with both the Daniel Radcliffe-, Jonathan Groff-, and Lindsay Mendez-led revival of Merrily We Roll Along and Josh Groban- and Annaleigh Ashford-led Sweeney Todd now reliable mainstays in the weekly top five highest grossers.
Leading the pack as usual is The Lion King with $2.5 million, followed by Wicked and Hamilton with $2.3 and $2 million, respectively. Wicked, at the high capacity Gershwin Theatre, also continues to reliably top the list of most attended—15,304 people saw the Wizard of Oz prequel musical last week, beating runner-up Aladdin by more than 2,000. In fact, all of Broadway is pretty well attended, with 17 shows playing to 90%-or-higher capacities.
It should be noted that last week’s grosses were 15% lower than the same December week in 2022, though that can be attributed to there being eight fewer shows playing this December compared to last December.
This applies everywhere. I was looking at tickets as a Christmas gift and ticket prices for touring shows in Toronto are crazy. All the big name shows coming through this year (Lion King, Wicked, etc) are about $140-$190 CAD for average seats. The lowest tier tickets are still $90 and that’s for the seats wayy in the back of the balconies.
Add in the fact that many people travel to come see these shows (I’m personally 2.5 hours from Toronto), so 2 tickets, dinner, and maybe a hotel is now getting upwards of $700 for a night out.
As encouraging as a healthy box office is for producers and investors, Broadway prices are absolutely ridiculous, with London and other cities also getting increasingly prohibitively expensive. It’s a trend that surely can’t be good for the long-term health of the industry because it makes it more and more difficult for people who don’t have high disposable income to see a lot of shows and so develop a love of the artform.
Yes, there are initiatives like ticket lotteries, cheap day seats and discounts which offer more affordable seats, but often these are very limited in number and/or with poor views. And while a $100 ticket may represent a decent discount, it’s still a $100 ticket.
Pro-shots are becoming more popular and while these have their place, I personally think that nothing beats the experience of seeing a show live.
The economics of theatre, especially musical theatre, depresses me, because I don’t know if there’s a solution for the problem. Theatre is inherently expensive for a bunch of reasons I won’t bother getting into, and the vast majority of shows don’t make back their money. This means that investors look for higher returns for those small number of shows where they do make a profit to make up for the flops. This in turn drives ticket prices even higher, so it’s a vicious circle.
