If you’ve been in my office at any point over the last two weeks, you may have noticed my desk. Charts, spreadsheets and printouts of thirteen weeks of box office data.

And that’s because today I’m starting something new.

Every week over on my Instagram, I report on the Broadway grosses by comparing one week to the week before. That’s useful, and it seems to be very popular with you all. But it’s not a full picture. A holiday, a snowstorm or one blockbuster closing can swing a single week wildly, and you end up reacting to weather instead of spotting trends.

So starting today, I’m also looking at Broadway the way big business does . . . quarterly.

Publicly traded companies don’t judge themselves week to week. They report quarterly earnings because a wider window shows you the real theme. That’s what big business does, so that’s what we’re going to do.

Every 13 weeks, I’ll compare this season’s grosses to the same 13 weeks of last season. Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4. You can either read the breakdown below or you can click here to watch the Youtube video. 

Here we go.

The Q1 Report: Broadway 2026-27

Through the first 13 weeks of the season, Broadway has grossed:

$437.3 million.

Over the same stretch last season, we grossed:

$460.7 million.

That’s down 5.1% year over year.

That’s not a great start, especially since last season was flat overall. I won’t sugarcoat it.

The Twist: Attendance

Here’s where it gets interesting.

You’d expect attendance to fall along with grosses, and it did. But only by 1.1%.

Grosses are down 5.1%. Attendance is down 1.1%.

About the same number of people are still walking through our doors. They’re paying less to do it.

I ran the numbers. (You know I love running the numbers.) Put those two figures together and the average ticket price for the quarter comes out roughly 4% lower than last year. Q1 isn’t really a demand story. It’s a pricing story.

The Bright Spot

Four of our thirteen weeks beat the same weeks last year.

That’s almost a third of the quarter running ahead of last season, even with everything that was working against us.

And plenty was working against us:

• The World Cup. It landed right in the middle of this quarter and had a big impact.
• Suburban audiences stayed home.
• New York transit was a mess.
• Locals left town.

Every one of those pulled Q1 down. That’s why I’m still bullish, and why I expect us to wipe out this 5% deficit over the course of the season.

The Number One Thing to Watch: How Many Shows Are Running

I’ve said this before and I’ll keep saying it . . . the single biggest driver of Broadway’s grosses is how many shows are actually running.

When a big, high-grossing show like Death of a Salesman closes, about $3 million comes off our weekly grosses. That can be 10% of the week, gone overnight.

Now look at the openings and closings for the quarter:

Last season’s Q1: 14 shows closed. 2 opened.
This season’s Q1: 15 shows closed. 1 opened.

That’s a net loss of two more shows than last year.

So it’s no surprise we’re down 5%.

And the shows that closed during last year’s Q1 weren’t small ones. Othello, Good Night, and Good Luck and Sunset Boulevard were all very high-grossing productions. Once you account for what was on the boards then and what’s on the boards now, the gap makes sense.

Why the Headline Isn’t the Story

I have to take my own advice here, because I’m the one reading these numbers out loud.

When you hear “Broadway’s down 5%,” it’s tempting to jump to “Broadway’s in trouble.”

It isn’t.

What you have to ask is why we’re down 5%. Was it the World Cup? NJ Transit? The number of shows?

If fewer shows are running, of course Broadway grosses less. That doesn’t mean Broadway has a problem. It means we haven’t produced as many shows – yet.

The Q1 Takeaway

• Attendance is nearly flat, and that’s the big one.
• Grosses are down because of lower average ticket prices and fewer shows on the boards.
• Closings always matter. Was it a high grosser? A long runner? Which show took the bite out of the box office?

We’re down 5%. I’m still bullish.

I’ll be back at the end of Q2 in 13 weeks with more charts and more data. Q2 may look a lot like this one, but once the new shows start opening, it’s going to be gangbusters.

When you see a scary Broadway headline, do you stop at the number, or do you go looking for the why?

Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube for the Q2 report, weekly Grosses updates, and more on what’s actually driving the Broadway box office.