Broadway Boasts Best Season on Record

‘Mean Girls’ (Photo: Joan Marcus)

The Broadway League has released end-of-season statistics for the 2017-2018 season, which began May 22, 2017, and ended May 27, 2018.  For the 2017–2018 season, which was a 53-week season, total attendance reached 13,792,614 and Broadway shows yielded $1,697,458,795 in grosses, making it the best attended and highest grossing season in Broadway recorded history. All new and continuing productions ran a total of 1,624 playing weeks.

The season concluded with attendance up 3.9 percent, grosses up 17.1 percent, and playing weeks up 2.8 percent.

As a point of reference, attendance through week 52 was 13.48 million, which was up 1.6 percent over last year’s 52-week season, and still the best attended of any season on record.  Grosses as of last week totaled $1.658 billion, also a record, and up 14.4 percent over last season.

“It’s been a remarkably diverse season with a wide variety of outstanding musicals and plays on Broadway that have attracted a record number of theatergoers proving once again that there really is something for everyone on Broadway in a wide range of price points.  Over 80 percent of the shows on Broadway had an average paid admission of under $130 and more than half of the shows that played this season (60 percent) had an average paid admission of less than $101,” said Charlotte St. Martin, President of The Broadway League. “Since our last 53 week season, our attendance has grown 10% or 1.26 million theatergoers. It’s not surprising that so many have been coming to experience the best of live theatre.”

Broadway attendance in the 2017-2018 season topped those of the ten professional New York and New Jersey sports teams combined. Broadway surpassed the combined sports teams by over 3.5 million in attendance.

Article source here:The Broadway Blog