Don’t Believe The Broadway League Spin: 2023 Was Not A Great Year For Broadway
Greg Ehrhardt, OnStage Blog Editorial Staff
The Broadway League published their latest annual Demographics Report covering the 2022-2023 seasons, which we always look forward to for a few reasons, but the main one being that we like to compare what their data actually says as far as Broadway attendance and audience demographics vs. how they spin it, and this year’s report did not disappoint!
For those who don’t know, The Broadway League is a national trade association representing Broadway theatres across America, but it especially represents New York (and for good reason). They are, to put it bluntly, a PR machine for Broadway theaters’ financial interests, as we have covered here and here.
The Broadway League is one of the better institutions in this country at masking the real issues threatening the Broadway experience and spinning news and data that puts Broadway theatres in the best positive light. That’s what PR operations do, but they should be honest about that and not leave it up to outlets like us to have to call them out on it.
Anyway, before I get to the report, let me reiterate one good thing I always say about them before I say a bunch of negative things: The Broadway League and their president, Charlotte St. Martin, fiercely defend the interests of Broadway and its actors, directors, crew, etc. when it comes to state and national issues (like the pandemic) potentially affecting their well-being.
Now, onto the report. Unfortunately, I don’t have the right to screenshot the graphs from the backup data of the research since you have to pay for the report. So I will describe the historical trends The Broadway League reports as simply as possible.
The Broadway League published an executive summary of the 2022-2023 report, which most theatre outlets draw from for their news stories. You can read their summary here, but let’s break down some of their talking points:
1) Broadway Admissions totaled 12.3 million admissions, -“16.8% shy of the record-breaking 2018–2019 season pre-COVID (the last complete season before the shutdown)”
This talking point was right in the cover letter of the research. I hate to break it to The Broadway League, but according to the backup detail in the research, 12.3 million admissions is the lowest admissions total since 2013-2014 and the 2nd lowest total since 2009-2010.
In other words, Broadway is not close to being back.
What is also not included in the executive summary is that domestic visitors to New York City are comparable to 2018 and significantly higher than any year before that. So, to put it in marketing terms, the number of prospective customers has almost returned to pre-pandemic levels, but the ticket sales have not.
That’s not good news.
International visitors to New York City are still below even 2013 levels. That’s a big factor driving the trend. Of course, they could compensate for this by attracting more ticket sales from domestic audiences, but we’ll return to that later.
2) 13.6% of the current audience comes from surrounding suburbs.
This is their talking point in the executive summary, without noting any context or historical trends. Generally speaking, for any research summary you read, beware of any reports of percentages if they are presented context-free.
In this case, the context is pretty damning, which is why it was likely withheld.
Ticket sales from the New York City suburbs (1.67 million) are at their lowest point since 2006 (where their line graph starts), 7% lower than the next lowest total in 2013.
It is not clear why this would be, with sales from residents of New York City and the rest of the country not quite showing this trend, but perhaps with new congestion pricing coming in, it would surprise me if this trend gets any better!
3) The average age of Broadway attendees was 40.4 years, the youngest in the past 20 seasons.
This is one of the most impressive spins we can remember. The implication is that young people are coming back to Broadway! But the driving factor behind this “trend” is that Broadway admissions from people over the age of 50 years have dropped by 30% and are near all-time lows.
Yes, ticket sales for attendees between 25 and 49 are comparable to 2019 levels (and better than any previous year), but sales to under-25-year-olds are at around 2016 levels (aka not growing!).
Most likely different reasons to explain the over-50 trend and the under-25 trend, but the data is clear they still have massive hurdles to overcome to bring these demographics back, especially considering, even by The Broadway League’s research, that the “Under 18-Year-Old” audience is under indexed by the national population by 50% and the the “Over 65-Year-Old” audience by 30%!
4) 29% of Broadway audience self-identify as BIPOC, the highest number on record.
This got hyped by many theatre websites, and the underlying data behind this, I will say, is pretty encouraging, as attendance by BIPOC groups (Blacks, Asians, Hispanics, Middle Eastern, Other) has been growing for a few years.
However, once again, as the Broadway League itself has published in the research (but is not touted in the PR releases), the percentage of Black Broadway attendees is still under-indexed compared to the national population by 55%, and Hispanics are underrepresented by 63%!
It’s fair to pat yourself on the back for small achievements, but Broadway still has many hills to climb to attract more BIPOC audiences.
5) Broadway Shows still overwhelmingly cater to rich audiences
Yes, that’s definitely my take and not what was in the executive summary. The executive summary summarized their household income charts by simply stating, “ The average annual household income of the Broadway theatergoer was $271,277”, without any context whatsoever.
Looking at the data behind this, you can see that Broadway’s ongoing problem of making its product accessible to people of ordinary income is only getting worse. Ticket sales to every household income group below $100k annually are at all-time lows (since tracking started in 2007). Ticket sales to households with incomes above $100k are at all-time highs.
This is Broadway’s problem in a nutshell, and there is zero admission in the report or the summary that this is a problem, only an attempted handwave in the chart that if accounting for inflation, the average household income of $271k is $38k below 2019.
First, I would love to check their math, but they didn’t share the calculations or assumptions, especially considering that inflation by real wages differs from inflation by the cost of products and services/goods.
Secondly, the ticket sales trend by income bracket I cited above tells the real story, and it’s bad. Broadway is catering increasingly to people with above $100k in household income and away from the under $100k households, which is 63% of the US population but only 35% of the Broadway audience.
Why is this happening? Well, let’s get to the final key metric, which in this year’s report is buried towards the end of the report: the average ticket price for a Broadway show in 2022-2023 is $128, with survey respondents self-reporting $161 as their average ticket price, which could be due to broker and online fees.
The Broadway League does not include historical tracking in this report, but according to Statista, prices are, for both musicals and plays, also at all-time highs.
Bottom line, The Broadway League’s picture of attendance is not pretty. Ticket prices are at an all-time high, attendance for medium to low-income households is declining significantly, and Broadway is only really succeeding in 2023 at attracting rich people between the ages of 25-50.
Broadway has a lot of work to do, but if The Broadway League is spinning their research this way to their target audience of Broadway Theatre owners and managers, what optimism can we have that this will be fixed?
If you think we’re overreacting, consider this. The Broadway League questionnaire that fed this research asked the respondents what motivates them to buy a ticket to a specific show. Here’s the list of choices, taken directly from their questionnaire:
Ask yourself: where is the price on this list (other than “discounts”, of which I suspect many rich attendees don’t care about and many other attendees aren’t even aware where to get them)
Then ask yourself, even if you want to consider discounts a proxy for price, why is it listed with 25 other choices? (That’s a survey no-no for experienced researchers)
Then ask yourself: why isn’t price on the list?
Why didn’t they ask the question: “Do you think the price of admission was worth the experience you got?”
You don’t have to think long to realize there are certain questions to which they don’t really want to know the answer.
In researching this piece, we were disheartened, but not surprised, to see that every other theatre outlet essentially regurgitated The Broadway League’s spin on this report.
Here are the headlines and sub-headlines we found:
“Broadway Demographics Report Reveals Increased Audience Diversity, Overall Attendance Trending Up”
“New Broadway Demographic Report Shows Record BIPOC Audience Share”
“Broadway audiences are getting a little bit younger and more diverse”
It is either lazy or dishonest reporting. Either way, it is not a good look to give free PR to an organization that needs accountability.
Onstage Blog is fine going it alone if we have to, but we shouldn’t have to.