Broadway Sees Highest-Grossing and Best Attended Season in History

Well with popular names like Spongebob, Harry Potter, Frozen and Mean Girls can't say I'm too surprised.

I did not realize that the Broadway season has 364 days, instead of 365.



BWW article states 364 days, though Playbill article states 264 days. I think 364 is the appropriate figure.

Updated On: 5/29/18 at 06:48 PM

It’s also not surprising when you consider how ticket prices are skyrocketing.

This is thrilling but not surprising given how expensive ticket prices are becoming, I’m sure we will see a similar article like this next year. But I’m happy for all the shows that are thriving right now.

I'm still trying to figure out who all these rich people are who can afford to pay the seriously insane prices that are being charged today and thus making it the "best attended" season. New reality is that almost every good seat is marked "premium", average seats are marked "mid-premium" and "regular" ticket prices are now commonly $150 or more.

You have a discount code? Good luck finding a good seat to use it on. And remember when discount codes were often 50% off? I do. I have old flyers to prove it. Then 40% off became the new 50% off and now you're lucky to get 20% or 30% off. And remember when if you waited until the last minute, great seats would open up and you could use the discount code on it? No more. Even Escape to Margaritaville would apparently rather have half an empty theatre than to allow the discount code to apply to anything other than crap seats.

TKTS and Stub Hub are becoming the last bastions of semi-affordable good Broadway seats. Last minute on Stub Hub can score you an incredible deal like $40.00 for front row at Frozen......but those instances are just because scalpels f*cked up and bought too many tickets. TKTS yields some of the best seats in the house close to curtain when premium tickets finally get priced to sell.

But anyway, it is no surprise with the outrageous ticket pricing that producers are laughing all the way to the bank. Prices will only continue to rise and rise and rise as long as people keep paying. At what point do we hit the wall? I thought $100 per ticket was going to be the wall, but every show that opens raises its prices just a touch so that now we're quickly eyeing $200 as a standard ticket price. Is that a wall? Probably not.

If you can afford this, more power to you. But my salary is certainly not rising enough to keep up. I guess I just never knew there were so many rich people in this world.

Matt Rogers said: "I'm still trying to figure out who all these rich people are who can afford to pay the seriously insane prices that are being charged today and thus making it the "best attended" season. New reality is that almost every good seat is marked "premium", average seats are marked "mid-premium" and "regular" ticket prices are now commonly $150 or more.

You have a discount code? Good luck finding a good seat to use it on. And remember when discount codes were often 50% off? I do. I have old flyers to prove it. Then 40% off became the new 50% off and now you're lucky to get 20% or 30% off. And remember when if you waited until the last minute, great seats would open up and you could use the discount code on it? No more. Even Escape to Margaritaville would apparently rather have half an empty theatre than to allow the discount code to apply to anything other than crap seats.

TKTS and Stub Hub are becoming the last bastions of semi-affordable good Broadway seats. Last minute on Stub Hub can score you an incredible deal like $40.00 for front row at Frozen......but those instances are just because scalpels f*cked up and bought too many tickets. TKTS yields some of the best seats in the house close to curtain when premium tickets finally get priced to sell.

But anyway, it is no surprise with the outrageous ticket pricing that producers are laughing all the way to the bank. Prices will only continue to rise and rise and rise as long as people keep paying. At what point do we hit the wall? I thought $100 per ticket was going to be the wall, but every show that opens raises its prices just a touch so that now we're quickly eyeing $200 as a standard ticket price. Is that a wall? Probably not.

If you can afford this, more power to you. But my salary is certainly not rising enough to keep up. I guess I just never knew there were so many rich people in this world."

I know it's fashionable to bemoan all this stuff, but the fact is, the average ticket price works out to $123. Yes, the prime shows command prime prices, but there is plenty of theatre, even on Broadway, that does not require one to be rich.

Call_me_jorge said: "Is this for the shows that just opened this season or just in general?"

Read the article:

"According to statistics released by the Broadway League, a total of 33 productions (ten musicals and 20 plays—plus three special engagements) yielded a combined $1,697,458,795, surpassing last year’s record-breaking $1.4 billion.

The season was also the best attended, reaching 13.79 million seats (compared to the 13.27 million last year and the 13.32 the season prior)."

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RippedMan said: "Happy theater is reaching more people, but sad that it's only the rich...but I suppose, how could it not be? I mean, these theaters are on Broadway are small compared to the road houses, so why set aside 40 tickets for "rush" or something when someone is willing to pay triple that.."

And yet, somehow, with the exception of a small number you can count on one hand, all of them do.

Must we do this every freaking week?