Broadway grosses took a $2.5 million hit last week, even with one more production added to the weekly totals.
The 27 shows running last week reported a collective gross of $19.7 million, compared to $22.2 million across 26 shows the week before. Still, the week around Halloween is traditionally a weak sales period on Broadway and collective grosses do not show a complete picture of the industry’s financial health.
For comparison, in 2019, overall grosses for the week encompassing Oct. 31 fell $2.9 million from the week before. There were 34 productions playing both weeks.
Additionally, “Trouble in Mind” held its first preview Friday, and therefore did not contribute a full week of grosses to the overall total. There were 183 performances last week on Broadway compared to 174 in the previous week.
Attendance fell 4.5% to 168,169 from 176,083 in the previous week. Total capacity fell to 77.5% from 85%.
The Broadway League began releasing grosses last week, after initially announcing it would not publicly release box office numbers during the industry’s restart. Now, the League is releasing aggregate totals of all shows, rather than individual grosses.
This provides somewhat of a measuring stick for the industry, however the total number can be skewed by high grosses at popular shows, such as “Hamilton” and “Six.” Additionally, it is difficult to track how many tickets have been discounted or distributed for free.
