Broadway’s 2012 Quarter 2 Report:

26 Weeks are in the bag for this Broadway season already.  Can you believe it?  We’re halfway through the race . . . so let’s see how we’re doing this year.

If you remember from the Q1 report, sales and attendance figures were up over 12% and 4% respectively.

Have we kept on that course?

Only one way to find out!  Drumroll please . . .

Doh.

Well, we could dream, right?

What comes up, must come down.  We gave up those monster gains in the second quarter.  Here are the numbers:

  • So far this season, we’ve grossed $554,143,913
  • Last season at the end of Q2 we were at $534,027,464.
  • That’s an increase of 3.8% (over a 9% drop from the end of Q1) for the season so far.

Attendance figures were so down, we dropped back into negative territory.

  • 5,748,062 people have seen Broadway shows so far this year.
  • 5,833,425 had walked through doors of a theater at this time last year.
  • That’s 1.5% less than last year at this point (and over a 5% drop from the end of Q1).
Now here’s the weird/unfortunate news . . .
  • There were 720 playing weeks after two quarters this year.
  • There were 688 playing weeks after two quarters last year.
  • That’s an increase of 4.7%, which is down over 4% from the first quarter, but still whopping positive for the year.
So why is that weird?
More weeks.  More dollars (makes sense).  Less people.
Error.  Error.  Does not compute.  Beep.  Not good economic model for sustainability.  Error.  Beep.  Please repeat after 13 weeks and re-evaluate.
And cross your fingers.

 

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