That was a fast 13 weeks, wasn’t it?  Feels like just yesterday our hair was blown back when Fun Home took home the Tony Award.  But alas, alack, time marches on, and the summer is just about over, as is the first quarter of our brand new season.

As I’ve been doing for the past few years, I analyze our grosses and attendance on a quarterly basis to see how things are shaping up, and to do some forecasting for our future.  Why quarterly?  Because big business looks at their numbers on a quarterly basis (earnings reports, anyone?) and if we want people to treat us like a big business, we need to act like one.

So how are we doing in the first quarter of what I’m already calling Le Saison de Hamilton . . .

GROSSES

• The first 13 weeks have grossed $351,345,038.
• Last season at the end of Q1 we had grossed $351,620,893.
• That’s a teenie weenie itsy bitsy slide of .1%.

ATTENDANCE

• 3,277,906 people have seen Broadway shows so far this season.
• 3,331,216 people had seen Broadway shows at this point last year.
• That’s a slightly bigger downturn of 1.6%  over last year.

PLAYING WEEKS

• There were 372 playing weeks during the first quarter this year.
• There were 391 playing weeks during the first quarter last year.
• That’s a decrease of 4.9%.

What’s all this mean?

Well, it would have been hard for us to keep our attendance and grosses up over last year’s massive growth, so I’m not surprised to see a little pullback here.  And we’re not talking China stock market-like drops by any means . . . we’re just showing the first sign of a little weakness in growth (which is not surprising with 4.9% less shows than last year).

But will the ebb of grosses and attendance continue?

Actually I’m predicting a Broadway market correction in the next year.  Tune in to tomorrow’s blog to find out why.

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