“Broadway is the longest street in America.”

If you’ve never heard that quote before, attributed to our living legend Paul Libin, who recently retired as an EVP and resident “guru” at Jujamcyn Theaters (and who also runs Circle in the Square), you’re about to see why he uttered it in the first place.

Simply put . . . it’s because Broadway brings a lot of bucks to the entire nation.

Like, billions.

The Broadway League just released its annual economic impact report for touring Broadway, and the results are staggering.  And this is for the 2016-17 season, just as Hamilton was starting to pump up subscriptions at every theater in the land.

As you’ll see, Producers spend a lot of dollars launching these moving (literally and figuratively) musicals and plays . . . and audiences spend a lot of money on them and around them as well (from dinner to parking to hotels, oh my!).

That means . . . jobs.  Lots and lots of jobs.

And that means: take heed local and federal governments.  This is an industry that deserves support and respect.  Because a dent in it would mean a dent in economies all over this long, long street.  (Translation: more tax incentives, please, especially for our steadfast Broadway investors who make all this possible.)

Take a look at this “Executive Summary” of the report below . . . and if you want to get the complete report, as well as the others that the League produces, you can get them here.

Touring Broadway Contributes $3.8 Billion Across the U.S.

• In the 2016-2017 season, 41 Touring Broadway shows traveled to 191 cities across the country.
• Producers and presenters spent $1 billion to launch and run these programs.
• Of this amount, $728.8 million was spent in the theatres’ communities and $279.8 million in the New York City area. The remaining $29.6 million was spent in other areas (i.e. vendors who were situated elsewhere or foreign royalty holders) that is beyond the scope of the impact analysis.
• Moreover, theatregoers who came to an area specifically to attend shows spent another $746.1 million on ancillary activities such as dining and transportation.
• Thus the total direct spending due to Touring Broadway amounted to $1.78 billion.
• This money then generated another $2.0 billion in secondary rounds of spending, so that the full economic contribution of Touring Broadway totaled $3.8 billion to these 191 cities.
• Eighty-three percent of this money ($3.2 billion) supported the communities that presented Broadway tours. Another $610.2 million impacted the New York City area.
• On average, Broadway tours contributed an economic impact of 3.28 times the gross ticket sales to the economy of the metropolitan areas in which they played.

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