The Best Man Broadway Show Poster
Total Broadway ticket sales revenue continued to fall sharply again this week, as anticipated, during this first week of September, bringing in less than $17 million total. The period between "summer break" and the opening of the new Fall shows can be a little bleak, but producers are hoping that once the new season gets into full swing over the next couple months, business will pick up, which the ticket sales history from previous years confirms. This week, the Broadway big guns like Evita and Wicked were far from filling to capacity, hovering around the 85% capacity mark. The Book of Mormon continues to blow the rest of the shows out of the water, filling to 102.63% capacity week after week - with a huge average paid admission of $187.37. The newly opened musical Chaplin surprised everyone by leaping to 94.06% capacity (up from last week's 75.35%), though average paid admission remains relatively low at $62.16. Unfortunately, the show received poor reviews from the Broadway critics, but as everyone knows, only the out-of-towners read the reviews - New Yorkers like to make up their own mind about shows and instead operate on word-of-mouth from their own social networks, which has been favorable for this show, prior to the critics' reviews delivered this week. This bio-musical about Charlie Chaplin has an open-ended closing date. Gore Vidal's The Best Man didn't go out with a bang, but it did have a solid closing week, with the average paid admission nearly hitting the $100 mark. Far less impressive was the first week for the Manhattan Theatre Club production of An Enemy of the People, which had an average paid admission of a mere $46.04 this past week. Lower numbers are to be expected given that the play is only in previews, so reviews and word-of-mouth could give it a boost in the next few weeks - this could also speak to the producers papering the theatre, dragging the numbers into the gutter.
Broadway Show Ticket Sales Analysis Graph
The following are the Broadway ticket sales numbers from the week ending September 9, 2012:
Show Name GrossGross TotalAttn %Cap AvgPaidAdmin
AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE $158,664 3446 76.44% $46.04
BRING IT ON THE MUSICAL $416,594 6922 64.86% $60.18
CHAPLIN $488,740 7863 94.06% $62.16
CHICAGO $609,315 7582 87.75% $80.36
EVITA $1,127,304 10893 84.47% $103.49
GORE VIDAL’S THE BEST MAN $685,991 6899 81.13% $99.43
JERSEY BOYS $891,077 9064 92.26% $98.31
MAMMA MIA! $741,090 9333 77.88% $79.41
MARY POPPINS $637,053 9692 67.42% $65.73
NEWSIES $808,755 9138 95.59% $88.50
NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT $878,834 9307 80.85% $94.43
ONCE $979,937 8145 96.23% $120.31
PETER AND THE STARCATCHER $347,198 5919 71.28% $58.66
PORGY AND BESS $610,897 6986 65.41% $87.45
ROCK OF AGES $463,916 4470 95.84% $103.78
SPIDER-MAN TURN OFF THE DARK $1,204,959 13283 86.03% $90.71
THE BOOK OF MORMON $1,639,848 8752 102.63% $187.37
THE LION KING $1,566,963 13351 99.52% $117.37
THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA $829,896 11134 86.71% $74.54
WAR HORSE $525,232 7069 82.66% $74.30
WICKED $1,313,195 12350 85.34% $106.33
Total: $16,925,456 181598 84.49% $90.42
*Broadway Grosses provided courtesy of The Broadway League