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Broadway Sets Box-Office Record, Powered by ‘Hamilton’ and Springsteen

What should we see? Would-be theatergoers gathered last week at the Times Square TKTS booth to see which shows were being discounted.Credit...Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

A rapping Hamilton and a (quietly) rocking Boss propelled Broadway’s box office to new heights over the past year, as rising demand and even faster-rising ticket prices shattered industry records.

Over all, the 67 shows that ran over the last season brought in $1.7 billion from 13.8 million patrons, according to figures released Tuesday by the Broadway League.

“We’ve never had as many big hits,” said Charlotte St. Martin, the president of the League, which represents producers and presenters.

Broadway has been on an upswing for five years, powered by a surge in New York City tourism and a resurgence in enthusiasm for musical theater. Even so, the theater season that ended Sunday was remarkably lucrative, as producers have become more sophisticated — and more aggressive — about pricing.

The new pacesetter, “Hamilton,” benefiting from the first full season in which it regularly charged $849 for the best seats at the Richard Rodgers Theater, grossed $161 million in New York. The musical, about the life and death of the founding father Alexander Hamilton, grossed more than five other musicals that sold more tickets but charged lower prices, including “Wicked,” “Aladdin” and “The Lion King.”

At the same time, Bruce Springsteen, who can sell out arenas or stadiums, delivered a dramatic lesson on the economic value of scarcity, fetching a jaw-dropping $503 average ticket price for his “Springsteen on Broadway,” a blend of stripped-down songs and ruminative storytelling that he has been performing since October in the 948-seat Walter Kerr Theater.

By contrast the average Broadway ticket was $123, and even at “Hamilton” it was only $282.

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Because of a quirk in the way the trade association tracks data, this past season consisted of 53 weeks, making season-to-season comparisons imperfect, but for the first 52 weeks grosses were up an eye-popping 14.4 percent. Attendance crept up a far more modest 1.6 percent.

Here are four takeaways from the box-office figures for the full season, which ran from May 22, 2017, to May 27, 2018:

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Even the marquee at "Springsteen on Broadway" has become a tourist attraction.Credit...Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

Dynamic pricing — the practice of varying prices to reflect consumer demand — is not new to Broadway. But this past season, producers became increasingly deft at it, and that’s why revenue is growing so much faster than attendance.

Theatergoers generally pay a premium for a seat in the center orchestra. It often costs less to see shows on a Tuesday night than on a Saturday, and more during the last week of December (Christmas!) than the first week of January (cold!).

The three shows with the highest average prices this past season — “Hamilton,” “Springsteen” and “Dear Evan Hansen” — are all in midsize theaters, meaning they had a limited supply of tickets despite enormous demand. And the premiums they charged had an added benefit for producers — helping reduce profiteering by resellers, and reclaiming money for investors and artists.

“Dynamic pricing is a reality today, not just in our industry, but in many,” said Nick Scandalios, executive vice president of the Nederlander Organization, which operates nine Broadway theaters. “There are many, many, many inexpensive tickets on Broadway, but there is no reason a Springsteen ticket or a ‘Hamilton’ ticket should be less than it is, from a supply and demand standpoint, because the price is reasonably matching what the consumer considers to be the value.”

The most striking example this past season: The producers of “Hello, Dolly!,” recognizing the intense enthusiasm for Bette Midler’s performance in the lead role, charged $998 for front row seats late last year, counting on her biggest fans to pay for the pleasure of proximity.

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Nearly 10 percent of last season's grosses went to a single show: "Hamilton."Credit...Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

Just one of the 67 shows on Broadway last season — “Hamilton” — was responsible for nearly 10 percent of the grosses. And the top 10 shows gobbled up 52 percent of the overall take, leaving the other 57 shows to divvy up the rest.

The top-grossing musicals were “Hamilton” ($161 million), “The Lion King” ($113 million), “Wicked” ($96 million), “Hello, Dolly!” ($91 million) and “Dear Evan Hansen” ($88 million). None of the season’s new musicals opened early enough to outgross those longer-running hits, but some are off to a strong start, particularly “Frozen” and “Mean Girls.”

Plays generally gross much less than musicals because they tend to have shorter runs. Just 11 percent of the season’s grosses went to plays; top-grossing among them was “The Play That Goes Wrong,” a British farce that was the only play to run all 53 weeks of the season, bringing in $19 million.

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"Harry Potter and the Cursed Child" has grossed $18 million during its first 10 weeks on Broadway.Credit...Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

There has been much hand-wringing — with good reason — about the plight of plays on Broadway, where audiences tend to favor musicals.

But this past season saw some remarkable signs of financial strength for plays with familiar titles, big stars or strong buzz.

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” a two-part drama that is a sequel to the enormously popular novels, is shaping up to be one of the top-grossing plays in Broadway history, bringing in $18 million in its first 10 weeks.

And four play revivals have recently been selling strongly — more strongly than many musicals: “The Iceman Cometh,” starring Denzel Washington; “The Boys in the Band,” starring Jim Parsons and Zachary Quinto; “Angels in America,” starring Andrew Garfield and Nathan Lane; and “Three Tall Women,” starring Glenda Jackson and Laurie Metcalf.

“It feels like an unprecedented number of shows are consistently grossing above a million dollars a week, which is a sign of a healthy ecosystem,” said Jordan Roth, the president of Jujamcyn Theaters, which operates five Broadway theaters. “And it’s worth noting that there are five plays doing really extraordinary business, which is a very welcome statistic at a time when we’re often bemoaning the state of the play on Broadway.”

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"The Play That Goes Wrong" was the top-grossing play of the last season -- and the only play that ran for the entire year. It is closing in August.Credit...Richard Termine for The New York Times

Broadway’s boom is having an unintended side effect: As productions run longer, there are fewer new shows because there is no place to put them.

Although it is not clear whether this is a trend or an anomaly, the impact last season was significant: There are now just 30 new shows competing for Tony Awards, compared with 37 the previous season. (Over all, including long-running shows and special events, there were 67 productions in the 41 Broadway theaters during the season that just ended, down from 81 the previous season.)

“I don’t think one year makes a pattern, but if the houses don’t turn over, and it feels like there’s not a lot of capital available for projects perceived as risky, that could, long-term, have an impact on creativity,” said Victoria Bailey, executive director of the Theater Development Fund, which champions theater accessibility and runs the TKTS booths. “It’s all a little unsettling.”

Follow Michael Paulson on Twitter: @MichaelPaulson.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section C, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Broadway’s Emerging Top Star: Box Office. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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