Broadway Ticket Prices More Affordable Post-Pandemic Despite Record Breaking 2024/2025 Season

For the 2024/2025 season, which ran from May 20, 2024, to May 25, 2025, Broadway shows collected $1.89 billion in grosses and welcomed nearly 14.7 million theatergoers across 1,712 playing weeks and 13,404 performances. That $1.89 billion figure just edges past the once unthinkable $1.83 billion grossed in 2018/2019, the last full pre-pandemic season, which at the time set both attendance and revenue records with 14.77 million tickets sold over 1,737 playing weeks. Yet because consumer prices have climbed more than 25 percent since 2019, that $1.83 billion five years ago is the equivalent of roughly $2.25 billion today. On a like-for-like, inflation-adjusted basis, Broadway’s box-office haul remains about 16 percent below its last pre-pandemic peak.

Attendance tells much the same tale. Despite a total just shy of 14.7 million seats sold, 2024/2025 ranks as only the second-best attended season in Broadway history. The 2018/2019 season still holds the crown at nearly 14.77 million admissions. What’s more, 2024/2025 benefited from an extra 53rd week of performances - an accounting quirk added every seven years to realign the season with the calendar. Remove that extra week, and adjusted grosses (about $1.845 billion) and attendance (around 14.3 million) both dip below 2018/2019’s figures in raw terms. In short, Broadway drew more people this season, but it had more chances to sell tickets. Attendance still trails slightly the peak 2018/2019 season.

If not attendance, what drove the new nominal record? Ticket prices crept upward, from an average of about $124 in 2018/2019 to $129 today - a 4 percent increase in face value over six years. But again, inflation has outpaced that modest gain. With the Consumer Price Index rising roughly 25 percent since January 2019, the real cost of an average Broadway ticket has actually declined by about 17 percent since the last full pre-COVID season. In other words, the typical ticket bought in 2018/2019 would need to cost around $155 today just to keep up with the cost of living. Instead, it remains just under $130 on average.

That easing of average ticket prices has been accompanied by an overall return of demand. Broadway theaters operated at 91.2 percent capacity in 2024/2025, the highest occupancy rate in years, suggesting houses are as full now as they were before the shutdown. Producers balanced revenue goals and audience rebuilding by holding prices relatively steady, offering discounts and rush tickets alongside shows with premium seats that for some blockbuster runs have exceeded $300 each.

Viewed against broader wage trends, Broadway has grown more affordable on average, not less, since the pandemic. The median full-time U.S. worker earned $917 per week in early 2019; by the first quarter of 2025, that median rose to $1,194 per week, a 30 percent increase. A $124 ticket then consumed about 13.5 percent of a week’s earnings; today’s $129 ticket represents roughly 10.8 percent of the median paycheck. Even in New York where wages are higher but so is the cost of living - a Broadway ticket now claims a smaller fraction of local earnings than it did pre-pandemic.

Broadway’s triumphant return has been powered not by a flood of new patrons or runaway price hikes, but by a careful calibration. The result is indeed a revenue record, but one that fades slightly under the lens of real dollars. By all accounts, given the often somber tone of financial reports in the industry across the country - the 2024/2025 season is certainly worth celebrating. Advocates for a more affordable Broadway will be pleased to note that while some shows with astronomical prices may remain out of reach for some, of the shows playing across Broadway’s 41 theaters at any given time, the majority have become slightly more affordable