Broadway box office receipts rebounded by a significant margin last week, climbing to $26 million from Christmas Week’s grim, Covid-decimated $14 million estimate. That’s an overall, week-to-week increase of 87%, and reflects a tally largely in keeping with recent pre-Christmas Week figures.
Still, compared to the $43 million b.o. from the same week in a pre-Covid 2020, last week’s gross of $26,306,652 for 30 shows in production indicates an industry still struggling through a once-again-surging pandemic.
Even more indicative of Omicron’s impact were last week’s attendance figures: For the week ending Jan. 2, 2022, the 30 shows had a total paid attendance of 179,036, about 74% of overall capacity and noticeably lower than the 200,000+ figures reported earlier in the pre-holiday season. Last week’s $147 average ticket price was significantly higher than recent weekly averages that fell in the the upper $120s, suggesting that premium prices – and not SRO crowds – were on the upswing in the lead-up to New Year’s Eve.
The Broadway League is not releasing box office numbers for individual shows this season, in a break with tradition, so the exact financial impact of the cancellations on each particular production is unverifiable. The League did not release figures for the week ending Dec. 26; Deadline tallied the Christmas Week figure by comparing before-and-after season-to-date totals.
As of Jan. 2, the season-to-date box office (since Aug. 4) for all Broadway shows is $350,800,986, with attendance of 2,756,209 at 83% of capacity. Average ticket price for the season is $127.
Productions reporting performances on Broadway last week were: Ain’t Too Proud; Aladdin; The Book of Mormon; Caroline, or Change; Chicago; Clyde’s; Come From Away; Company; David Byrne’s American Utopia; Dear Evan Hansen; Flying Over Sunset; Freestyle Love Supreme; Girl From the North Country; Hadestown; Hamilton; Harry Potter and the Cursed Child; The Lehman Trilogy; The Lion King; MJ; Moulin Rouge! The Musical!; Mrs. Doubtfire; The Phantom of the Opera; Six; Slave Play; Thoughts of a Colored Man; Tina; To Kill a Mockingbird; Trouble In Mind; Waitress; and Wicked.