off-stage right

In addition to all of the hoopla about the end of the Broadway season (See posts on Producers Perspective, Critical Difference,  and my post from yesterday), a little tidbit was buried in Variety yesterday.  The League will be changing the way it reports weekly stats as of this week.

From Variety:  Sales figures will represent “gross gross” sales as opposed to net gross, which subtracts credit card transaction fees from the total. Attendance will be reported as total attendance rather than paid attendance, which does not count comped ducats.

The numbers will also now be filtered through the League rather than going from theater owners straight to publications (no word on what that means for Nederlander Theaters which are not part of the League).

Reporting the true gross basically means that credit cards fees, etc will not be subtracted before reporting, I don’t see this as that big of a deal as it can be estimated that 4-5% is fees.  However there is a huge difference in reporting paid attendance vs. total attendance (including complimentary tickets).   If we are really going to judge how a show is doing you actually need both numbers.  But is you can only have one, paid attendance is a much better indicator on a show’s health.

Making the switch to gross gross and total attendance would put the Broadway numbers more in line with tallies from the film industry, according to Charlotte St. Martin, exec director of the Broadway League, the trade association of producers and presenters. (Touring legit productions already report gross gross.)

I imagine for gross sales of film this is true, but it is well known that during previews and rough times, theater producers “paper “ the house with hundreds of tickets.   I don’t know of a similar system for film (I pretty sure that promotional previews, sneak peaks, and starry openings aren’t counted in weekly attendance).

It isn’t addressed in the brief article but does this mean that average ticket prices will now be calculated including comps?

Sorry, but this feels like massaging the numbers to me.  It sets a bad example for everyone.

Here is last week’s info as reported by theater owners (and printed in many places but this detailed chart comes from Broadway World.  It will be interesting to see what the house counts look like next week as well as the average ticket sales.   Although with none of the shows in previews it won’t really skew that much – except there are all those Tony voter tickets that should make some difference – and any papering that producers are doing to make sure they have full houses for Tony voters.  I should also note that Broadway World offers a great history of statistics for anyone to go through.  You can even look at the top sellers by cumulative sales and attendance for an entire run of a show or by theater.  Really a great tool for number-junkies.

Broadway Grosses – Week Ending 5/24/2009

Related posts:

1. Are there too many good shows and not enough audience members?
2. Is Broadway booming or just making lemons into lemonade?