I love a Broadway Q3 Report.  Cuz it tells me that spring is right around the corner.

And spring brings warm weather, warmer hellos from formerly frigid NYers, and higher grosses thanks to the spring crop of new plays and musicals (including my Macbeth and Kinky Boots).

But I’m getting ahead of myself.  Let’s jump back and find out how the past 13 weeks stacked up in terms of gross and attendance.

GROSSES

• So far this season, we’ve grossed $834,963,738
• Last season at the end of Q3 we were at $820,688,397.
• That’s an increase of 1.7% for the season so far.

ATTENDANCE

• 8,488,237 people have seen Broadway shows so far this year.
• 8,829,459 people had seen Broadway through doors of a theater at this time last year.
• That’s a . . . wait for it . . . 3.9% decrease from last year.

• There were 1,061 playing weeks after three quarters this year.
• There were 1,070 playing weeks after three quarters last year.
• That’s a decrease of .8% from last season.

So, the steady decline continues.  If you remember, Q1 results had us up 12.7% in gross and 4.6% in attendance.  We slid back to 3.8% and -1.5% respectively for Q2.

And then we dropped over two percentage points in this quarter.

What the @&#$ is happening?

The decrease in playing weeks is a miniscule part of it.  Also, as we know, Broadway’s health is driven by big, bouncy, new musicals . . . and this past fall didn’t have one.

We’ll make up some ground as the big spring shows start raising their curtains (Cinderella and Hands on a Hardbody last week, Kinky Boots this week, Motown in a week and a half, etc.)

But making up 3.9% to bust even for the year in terms of attendance is a lot of butts, so we’ve got some work to do.  I’m not sure we’re going to make it.  I won’t start my attendance rant just yet, though.  I’m going to ‘secret’ like a madman that I won’t need to and when I post the year-end results in 13 weeks, the sun will be shining and we’ll be in positive territory again.

See you then.

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