How Much Roughly Does Each Broadway Cost To Run?

[Timon3]

Posted: 10/17/24 at 3:55pm

Just very curious?

[ErmengardeStopSniveling]

Posted: 10/17/24 at 4:03pm

Every show is different.

A big musical could cost $1 million a week or more to run.

A small play could cost as little as about $400K a week.

Most shows fall somewhere in between those two extremes.

This, of course, being a separate expense from the capitalization to actually produce the show in the first place (which can range from about 5-8 million for plays and 10-30 million for musicals).

[chrishuyen]

Posted: 10/17/24 at 4:36pm

If you pay attention to the weekly grosses threads the costs are sometimes mentioned in there.  If you have specific shows you're wondering about you can ask and see if anyone knows.

[Timon3]

Posted: 10/18/24 at 8:43pm

I was just wondering, I think I read that Cabaret costs €1.2m a week to run.

So wondering if the big tourist attraction shows that have recouped be that expensive to run, as was thinking they could reduce their costs, for example the show producers might not have to go so heavy on advertising?

 

 

[greensgreens]

Posted: 10/18/24 at 9:40pm

Timon3 said: "I was just wondering, I think I read that Cabaret costs €1.2m a week to run.

So wondering if the big tourist attraction shows that have recouped bethat expensive to run, as was thinking they could reduce their costs, for example the show producers might not have to go so heavy on advertising?



"

As shows age, I’d think advertising/marketing costs would go up. Even Phantom only ran a few years without much advertising, as it entered the 90s, they were constantly doing new ad campaigns. And these began to focus more and more on tourists. It’s also interesting to look at campaigns and how they evolve when they have to focus more on the show (Sunset Blvd.) or more on the players (Jerry Lewis in Damn Yankees) based on replacement casting.

A potential savings could come with this though. I’m sure Idina’s paycheck was far higher than replacement Elphabas. I’m certain this is true of most star casting as well. I’m a huge fan of Bernadette but I highly doubt she was raking it in like Bette Midler or Catherine Zeta Jones. Does this cancel itself out in marketing costs though? Interesting question!

[chrishuyen]

Posted: 10/19/24 at 12:24am

The grosses episode of the Broadway Breakdown podcast does a pretty good job in explaining how costs evolve over time: https://broadwaypodcastnetwork.com/podcasts/broadway-breakdown/let-s-try-to-understand-broadway-grosses/229

One thing that was mentioned that I didn't know about was that for shows like Phantom the creatives actually got a bigger cut of the grosses as the show ran longer (which helped contribute to its rising costs along with just upkeep for the set/costumes etc).