Last night’s Tony Awards were a curtain call for a record-smashing season on Broadway
- snitzoid
- Jun 8
- 2 min read
I'm with Norm on this.
Last night’s Tony Awards were a curtain call for a record-smashing season on Broadway
Some of the biggest winners at the 79th Tony Awards on Sunday were revivals of beloved American shows, including “Death of a Salesman” and “Ragtime,” with John Lithgow and Lesley Manville snagging trophies for their roles in “Giant” and “Oedipus,” respectively.
But The Great White Way itself might also have been celebrating something of a revival, with the awards show capping off a record-breaking run. Industry data from trade association The Broadway League reveals that the 2025-26 Broadway season was the highest-grossing ever, besting the prior year’s record after generating nearly $1.91 billion in ticket sales.
The season, which officially began on May 26, 2025, and wrapped on May 24 this year, saw total attendance reach 14.6 million, filling roughly 90.8% of seats across 74 productions, per The Broadway League.
The weekly average attendance for 2025-26 works out as ~280K — much greater than prepandemic levels, which were at ~257K per week from 2013-2020. Adjusting for the additional week that was included in the prior season, grosses were up 3.5%, attendance was up 1.8%, and average ticket prices were 1.7% higher at ~$131 a pop, per CNBC.
The show does go on
On that last point, the cost of Broadway tickets continued to surge as a spate of star-studded productions featuring the likes of George Clooney and Denzel Washington drove a 14% attendance bump for plays. Indeed, CNBC reported that the 21 plays released this season grossed a combined ~$463 million — more than 2x what the category notched only two seasons ago.
Meanwhile, attendance for musicals fell 4.7%. Even so, Apple’s musical-based-on-musicals still broke a leg, as the Broadway adaptation of TV show “Schmigadoon!” won four awards last night... officially making the tech giant an EGOT.
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