Broadway Show Ticket Sales Analysis w/e 01/03/2016

This Week’s Notable Movements on Broadway are:

“Wicked” Performs Excellently Every New Year

This past week, from December 28th to January 3rd, encompassed the New Years holiday, and Wicked brought in its third highest gross ever in its 12 year run: $2,940,096. The second highest gross of all time occurred the week before New Years in 2013, and the highest gross ever – $3,201,333 – was earned the week before New Years in 2014. Meanwhile, the fourth highest gross ever was last year this same week before New Years. One reason for these extraordinarily high grosses is that Wicked is among the hit shows that opts to add a ninth performance in this highly trafficked holiday week.

Still, New Years is not the only week of the year that Wicked does that. In any case, beyond the ninth performance, this week was extraordinary for Wicked on average per performance as well, as the show brought in 146.83% of its gross potential. In terms of gross potential, this past week was the fifth highest ever in the 12 year run. All of the top four weeks in terms of gross potential were also either the week right before or after New Years. In terms of gross potential, the top week of all time was this equivalent week one year ago, the week ending January 4, 2015, when Wicked brought in a lower overall gross but a higher percentage of gross potential: 163.02%. The reason is that last year that week had only eight performances.

An Increasingly Excellent Performance Across All of Broadway

This past week, of the 38 shows presently running, only three saw an almost negligible decrease in ticket sales, while 35 shows saw an increase in sales. Overall, the industry saw an increase of $6,793,672 with respect to the week before, bringing in a total industry weekly gross of $43,065,472. That amounts to an average of $1,133,302 per show. These numbers are skewed by the high performers such as Wicked ($2,940,096), The Lion King ($2,878,505), Aladdin ($2,398,110), The Book of Mormon ($2,024,551), and Hamilton ($1,959,785). The average was meanwhile brought down by newly arrived Manhattan Theatre Club show Our Mother’s Brief Affair, which earned only $113,194 across six performances, as well as low performers Dames at Sea, which wrapped up its run with only $211,207 across nine performances, The Gin Game which brought in $349,779, and Thérèse Raquin, which brought in $370,028.

In addition to Dames at Sea, several other shows concluded their run at the end of this past week as well, including Hand to God ($425,669), Sylvia ($391,703), Lord of the Dance: Dangerous Games ($870,337), and The Illusionists, which hit it out of the park in the final week of its run with a gross of $1,801,327 across 13 performances. As The Illusionists is a magic show, it is able to perform many more shows a week than the average Broadway show, for which eight is just about the maximum before reaching exhaustion, either of performer energy or of audience interest, or both.

The Following are the Broadway Ticket Sales Numbers for the Week Ending January 3, 2016:

Broadway ticket sales raw data are provided courtesy of The Broadway League All other data, text, opinion, charts and commentary are copyright © 2016 nytix.com