Poof.  And just like that.  The year is half over.  Or, since it is football season, let’s just call it halftime.  (Get the photo now?)

Time to check in and see how this season is going by analyzing the grosses and attendance data so far.  Sure, this is the season of Hamilton, one of the biggest commercial and artistic hits Broadway has seen since Rent . . . but how is the rest of Broadway doing?  Will we see another record breaking year or are few faced with the market correction I predicted in the next 12-18 months?

Here’s how things are shapin’ up:

GROSSES

• The first 26 weeks of our season have grossed a total of $663,550,185.
• Last season at the end of Q2 we had grossed $667,471,431.
• That’s just a .6% DECREASE from last season at this time.

ATTENDANCE

• 6,354,205 people have seen Broadway shows so far this season.
• 6,463,796 people had seen Broadway shows at this point last year.
• That results in almost the same DOWNWARD facing figure that we saw at the end of Q1 of -1.7%

PLAYING WEEKS

• There were 759 playing weeks so far this season.
• There were 793 playing weeks so far last season.
• That’s a DECREASE of 4.3%.

Overall, the season’s trends didn’t change much during this quarter.  We’re holding steady as we head into the holiday weeks, which isn’t so bad considering how far up we were last year.  I’m actually proud of what we’ve done so far (although I gotta tell you, the grosses posted yesterday for the pre-Thanksgiving week worried me – they were lower than anticipated (could it have been the ISIS threat?) and I worry we’re going to see some more closings by the end of the year than we now know about).

My prediction is that these numbers will be further down at the end of Q3 . . . but you’ll have to check back in 13 weeks from today to find out if I’m right.

What do you think?

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