Broadway shows in New York had a record-breaking 2018-2019 season, the theatre district said on Wednesday, both in attendance and revenues, which have doubled in the last 10 years.
Some 14.7 million people spent $1.82 billion on tickets to see 38 different shows, with revenue up 7.8% from the year before shows break.
Earnings have nearly doubled in the past decade and more than tripled in the last 20 years.
A statement from The Broadway League notes that the comparison between 2018-2019 and 2017-2018 gets even better when correcting for the fact the 2017-2018 season was 53 weeks instead of 52, attendance would have been up 9.5% and revenues up 10.3%.
Despite lacking hits as big as 2015-2016’s “Hamilton,” 2016-2017’s “Dear Evan Hansen” or “2017-2018’s “The Band’s Visit,” several shows, such as “Tootsie” and “The Prom” have still done well.
The much-anticipated adaptation of Harper Lee’s iconic anti-racism novel “To Kill a Mockingbird” was the breakout of the season.
After a jump last year, overall ticket prices remained fairly stable, with an average cost of $123.87, a 0.6 % increase.
However, this stability masks a strong disparity between the price of tickets for musicals, which were down by 2.3%, and the price of tickets for plays, which saw a sharp rise of 30%.
That was partly due to the effect of tickets for “To Kill a Mockingbird,” which in some cases sold for as much as $499.
