Broadway Show Ticket Sales Analysis Chart w/e 03/01/2020

Monday March 2nd, 2020: This Week on Broadway

With the rising fears of the deadly Coronavirus (COVID-19) Broadway ticket sales this week are in flux. Another consideration to ticket sales was ‘Kids Night’, that is the annual event that gives away free Broadway tickets to kids under the age of 18. This event took place on Tuesday February 25th, and gross Broadway ticket sales slipped for that as well.

Broadway Sees Lowest Ticket Prices All Year

NYC residents have begun to feel a little skittish about leaving their apartments and going out for extraneous gatherings like seeing Broadway shows since the beginning of last week, when the first severe case of the Coronavirus was found in the United States. Broadway ticket sales this week were a sickly $26,109,419, which is down nearly 12% from the previous week. The fear on the Great White Way can be seen with the average Broadway ticket price being absurdly low at $106.78 per ticket this week. This is the lowest price it has been all year and it was down nearly 9% from the previous week’s average prices.

Thanks To Low Ticket Prices, Attendance Not Down By Much

Even though the tickets were so cheap this week, it may have been the saving grace for Broadway attendance during this troubled week, which was slightly below the standard at 244,515 butts-in-seats. It should also be noted that overall attendance was still down more than 2.6% from the previous week, despite the extremely low priced tickets and the free tickets given away on ‘Kids Night’.

When compared to the same week last year, attendance is down a meaningless 0.46%, the average ticket price is down a substantial 3.4% and total gross sales are down a a noteworthy 3.8% at a time when sales figures should be up from the last year.

Five Broadway Shows Standout Despite Circumstances

Almost every Broadway show was down this week when compared to their previous week's ticket sales except for five standout Broadway shows. Surprisingly, these shows were all well spread out over the grossing sales chart and had little to no correlation with each other. A Soldier's play, Grand Horizons, My Name is Lucy Barton, The Inheritance and West Side Story were all of the Broadway shows that actually saw sales increases this week.

Grand Horizons, which has been performing at the Helen Hayes theatre, closed this week. The show has consistently been the worst performing Broadway show since it opened in late December and in its final week it was up the most with a massive increase of 25%, when it is compared its sales from the previous week. My Name is Lucy Barton was the Broadway show that was up the least this week, at a nominal 0.78% when compared to its sales from the previous week. Nonetheless, this show is lucky that it was able to see an increase this week when so many other Broadway shows went down.

Even Broadway's Longest Running Shows See Drop in Sales

Some of Broadway’s longest running and most consistently profitable shows were also down the most this week, Phantom of the Opera and Wicked were down a whopping 24% and 25% respectively.

Despite the overall drop in ticket sales this week, two new Broadway shows opened in-previews. Martin McDonagh’s Hangman opened at the John Golden theatre on Friday, February 28th and Tracy Letts’ The Minutes opened at the Cort Theatre on Tuesday, February 25th. With these two shows opening, they increased the number of shows performing on Broadway to a stout 28 shows.

Hangman

Hangman only grossed $139,321 for the week, because it only performed twice. The production sold 1,542 tickets to the show out of the 1,604 seats that the Golden theatre offers, this was 96% of the theatre’s capacity, which is not half-bad this week. The average ticket for the show sold for a meagre $90.35 per ticket. The show’s numbers are expected to pick up in the coming weeks as the show performs more regularly on Broadway and its ticket prices are no longer in the preview phase.

The Minutes

The Minutes only grossed $437,237 this week even though it performed the maximum performances, with eight showings. The production sold 6,270 tickets out of the 8,552 seats that are offered at the Cort theatre, for a below-average 73% theatre’s capacity. The average ticket for the show was the real kicker at only $69.73 per ticket, the second lowest selling ticket for the week.

Ticket Sales Expected to Decline Further Due to COVID-19

Even though Broadway gross ticket sales this week were able to hold out over this season’s lowest week so far, the numbers are expected to decline even further in the near future due to viral worries. Broadway ticket sales will likely crash for the next few weeks or even months, because the majority of theatre-goers purchase their Broadway tickets between two and four weeks before their selected performances.

With the Coronavirus scaring many NYC residents from going out, the city’s tourism on the decline and the stock market crashing, the people who are usually buying Broadway show tickets may decide to take a prolonged break from The Great White Way. Half the schools in the area are closing, so Broadway theatre may be next to suffer. The uneasy feeling in the Broadway ticket market is escalating due to the rising and very serious concerns of Coronavirus spreading throughout NYC.

The Broadway show ticket analysis raw data has been provided courtesy of The Broadway League and has been collated and analyzed by the New York Show Tickets data team. All data, text, opinion, charts and commentary are copyright © 2020 nytix.com