Industry Insights · Methodology
How we read the grosses
Every Monday the Broadway League publishes the previous week's box office for every show on Broadway. Most coverage reads that table as a scoreboard. The Pulse reads it the way a producer's general manager or an investor would: as the top line of a weekly P&L. This page sets out where the numbers come from, how we compute them and the rules we hold ourselves to. If you invest in shows, or are deciding whether to, start with the three questions below: they are what the rest of the page is for.
Evaluating a show Sources What we compute One row, read properly How an issue is built Worked examples Glossary What to ask Rules What this is
If you’re evaluating a show
The public table answers two of the three questions an investor brings to it. It helps to know which two.
01
Is the show covering its week?
The table does not show costs, but revenue per available seat is the number running costs are charged against. A show’s own break-even sits in its offering documents: divide the weekly break-even gross by the seats available, and the public per-seat figure then tells you, week by week, which side of that line the show is on. The arithmetic is in No. 01.
02
Which way is it moving, really?
Vs. the street strips the market’s week out of the show’s: a show down 4% in a street down 5% held share, though its raw week-over-week figure reads as softness. And read price (the average paid ticket) separately from people (attendance) — a gross can hold while one of them gives way.
03
What can’t the table tell you?
Costs, the deal and gross potential. Those live in a production’s own offering documents, and the questions to put to them are at the end of every Investing Unpacked issue (What to ask, below). Anything we print about another production’s costs or deal is an inference from public data, and labelled as one.
Sources
Every figure in The Pulse traces to the Broadway League's weekly grosses, taken from the published table on BroadwayWorld (or Playbill's, when BroadwayWorld's does not load) and cross-checked against the League's own release. The table covers, per show, the week's gross, the previous week's gross, the average paid ticket, the top ticket price, attendance, the seats available, the number of performances and the percentage of capacity, this week and last. The season-to-date figures come from the League's weekly release. The week runs Monday to Sunday; we publish on Tuesday.
We work from a saved copy of the table and reconcile our totals to the League's header figures before anything is written. Where a show's row is missing or revised after publication, we say so in the issue.
What we compute
A measure is added to this table when an issue first uses it; the last seven arrived with Pulse Nos. 03 to 05.
| Measure | How it is computed | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Total gross | The sum of every show's reported gross. | The market's top line for the week. |
| Attendance | The sum of every show's reported attendance. | Bodies in seats, before price. |
| Average paid ticket | Total gross ÷ total attendance, for the market and for each show. | What a show is actually paid per seat sold: the number profit follows, and the one a capacity figure hides. |
| Capacity | Attendance ÷ seats available. | How full the houses were. Full and profitable are not the same thing. |
| Revenue per available seat | Gross ÷ seats available, for the street and for each show. It is also the average paid ticket × capacity. | The number the running costs are charged against: every seat in the house, sold or not. It cannot be flattered by filling the house at the wrong price. |
| Week over week | Two figures: the headline change in the market total, and the same-show change across the shows that played both weeks. | The gap between the two is calendar (openings and closings), not demand. |
| Vs. the street | A show's week-over-week gross change minus the same-show change for the street, in percentage points. | Separates a show's own softness from the market's week. A show at the street's figure moved with the market, not against it. |
| Year over year | The change against the same week last year. When the number of shows differs, we also give the per-show figure and use it for any claim about attendance or price. | Twenty-six shows against twenty-eight is not a like-for-like market. |
| Season to date | The League's season gross, attendance and playing weeks against the same point last season. | One week against one week can mislead. The season-to-date figure is the trend. |
| Yield ratio | Average paid ticket ÷ top ticket price: cents on the top-price dollar. | A rough public read on how deep the discounting runs. Premium top prices pull it down too, so it is most useful as one show's trend over time. |
| Divergence | Gross falling faster than attendance, or the reverse. | The public tell for discounting and papering, or for pricing power. |
| Same show, same count | The same-show change, restricted to the shows that gave the same number of performances both weeks. | Strips added and cancelled performances out of the demand read. |
| Price tiers | The shows above and below last week’s street average, and each tier’s change in average and attendance. | Says where on the price ladder the week’s move happened: the top of the ladder, or the bottom. |
| Like-for-like price change | The change in average paid ticket across the shows running in both years’ same week. | Separates the street’s price move from a changed mix of shows. |
| Capacity on last week’s house | Attendance ÷ the previous week’s seats in theatre, when a house’s reported seat count changes. | A smaller house lifts reported capacity without selling one more seat. |
| Dark houses; long-runners’ share | Of the 41 Broadway houses, the number with no performances; and the share of the week’s gross held by shows open three years or more. | The supply side of the table: how much of the street is lit, and how much of the gross the catalogue carries. |
| Calendar contribution | The gross and seats brought by first weeks and added performances, set against the change across the shows at the same performance count. | Says whether the week was earned by the running shows or brought by the calendar. |
| Last year’s per-seat figure | Revenue per available seat for the same week last year, computed from that week’s saved table. | The like-for-like test when the two years put different numbers of seats on sale. |
On gross potential
Gross potential is what a week would gross if every seat sold at full price. A show's general manager tracks it privately; it is not in the public table, and we never print a figure for it. The yield ratio and revenue per available seat are the public proxies we use instead.
One row, read properly
The measures above, applied to one row of a real table: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child — not an OFFSCRIPT show — in the week ending October 25, 2026, as Pulse No. 05 read it. Every figure is from the public table.
| Measure | The week | The read |
|---|---|---|
| Week over week | $1,990,388 from $1,226,475: +62%, in a street whose same-show change was −1.5%. | Vs. the street, +64 points. The move was the show’s own, not the market’s. |
| Price vs. people | Average paid ticket $154.27 from $97.45, on attendance up 2.5%. | The gross move was price, not people. |
| Capacity | 99.4% from 97.0%. | Full both weeks. Capacity alone would have shown nothing happening. |
| Per available seat | $153 from $95, against the street’s $120. | The week’s earning power per seat in the house, the number costs are charged against. |
| Yield ratio | $154.27 on a $336 top: 46 cents. | Where the average sits under the top of the ladder; most useful as this show’s own trend. |
And what the row still does not say: what the week cost, or what the show kept. Its running costs and its deal are not public, and any observation about them would be an inference. That is the line these measures do not cross, and what a production’s own offering documents are for.
How an issue is built
Every issue has the same shape, so that week to week the numbers are comparable and nothing is chosen to flatter a story.
01
The headline.
The single biggest signal in the week's data, stated as a claim we can back with a number.
02
A signed note.
Two or three sentences from Ankit Agrawal on how he reads the week, as someone with money in the table.
03
The week.
Total gross, attendance, average paid ticket, capacity, revenue per available seat and the season to date, each with its week-over-week or year-over-year change.
04
The number.
One chart that carries the headline, usually eight to ten shows around the street average.
05
The board.
Every show on the week's table: gross, week over week, the move against the street and revenue per available seat. Our own shows are marked.
06
The read for investors.
Four observations, each a claim with its evidence, the strongest first. At least one is about the calendar or the season.
07
Hidden mechanic of the week.
One piece of how the business works, tied to that week's data.
08
Last week we said.
What we put on watch the week before, and what the new table says about it, misses included.
09
On watch.
Three things to look for in next week's table, each specific enough to be wrong.
10
Investing Unpacked.
A separate weekly post that takes one mechanism of the business apart in depth: recoupment math, the paperwork, touring, pricing, market structure and new models, in rotation. It opens with the same signed note and closes with its own watch list.
Worked examples
When Investing Unpacked runs the numbers on a mechanism, it uses a hypothetical show with round-number assumptions, and it says so. The assumptions are printed with every model, and a model is not a forecast for any show.
When a post checks a model against real cost structures, the check uses the budgets of productions OFFSCRIPT has invested in or reviewed as an investor. We publish only medians and ranges across several productions, rounded so that no single production's figures are shown or can be worked out, and we never say which productions are in the set. Budgets are estimates made before opening, not results. We never publish a production's confidential figures, its actual results or the returns on any investment.
Weeks to recoup = unrecouped capital ÷ weekly operating profit
Break-even per seat = weekly break-even gross ÷ seats available
Formulas like these are the ordinary arithmetic of the business, stated so that a reader can apply them to a show's own offering documents and the public grosses. Each later formula joined this page with the issue that first used it:
Investors’ share of an extra dollar of gross = (1 − deductions) × (1 − theatre share) × (1 − royalty pool)
Chance a slate of N shows recoups nothing = (1 − recoupment rate)N
Average per $1 = Σ (odds × payoff)
The share of an extra dollar is from No. 03 and holds above break-even while the royalty pool binds as a percentage; the slate arithmetic is from No. 06, where each model’s odds and payoffs are printed with it.
A short glossary
The terms the series leans on, each taken apart at length in the issue linked.
| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| Capitalization | The money raised to put the show on: everything spent to reach the first performance, plus reserves. It is what the investors are repaid. No. 01 |
| Weekly operating profit | A week’s gross after deductions, the theatre, running costs and royalties: the money available to repay investors. No. 01 |
| Break-even | The gross at which a week pays for itself. Not money back: a show that only ever breaks even never repays its capitalization. No. 03 |
| Recoupment | The point at which weekly operating profits have repaid the capitalization in full. No. 01 |
| Royalty pool | The creative royalties taken as a share of weekly operating profit rather than of the gross, so the participants are paid most when the show earns most, with weekly minimums in losing weeks. No. 05 |
| Amortization | A weekly amount taken ahead of the royalty pool to repay the capitalization faster; the royalties deferred for it are repaid after recoupment, usually with a bonus. No. 05 |
| Adjusted net profits | What a recouped show earns after the participations that come off the top; customarily split half to the investors, half to the lead producer. No. 05 |
| Premium pricing | The top of a show’s price ladder, repriced to demand. A high top pulls the yield ratio down without a discount in sight. No. 03 |
| Papering | Free or near-free tickets that fill the house without filling the till: one reason capacity and gross can diverge. |
| First-class tour | A touring production on Broadway-scale terms, playing weeks guaranteed by the presenting houses; the classes below it trade scale for reach. No. 02 |
What to ask
Every Investing Unpacked issue ends with four or five questions to put to a production’s offering documents before you sign anything. By subject: recoupment math, touring, pricing, the theatre deal, the paperwork and the fees, and spreading money across shows.
Rules we hold ourselves to
01
Every number traces to the table.
Or to a cited public source, a labelled model, or the aggregated budgets described under Worked examples. Nothing is estimated in prose, and every measure we print has its formula on this page. We publish no composite score or ranking whose formula we could not show.
02
Inferences are labelled.
We can see what other productions grossed; we cannot see their costs or their deals. Observations about them are inferences from published data, and are described that way.
03
Our own shows are data points, not examples.
OFFSCRIPT is a producer or investor in shows on Broadway. Each issue names the ones in that week's table. They appear in charts and tables like every other show, and we do not use them as the cautionary example in a read or a mechanic.
04
Consistent rounding.
Market totals to one decimal in millions ($24.1M), tickets to the dollar ($115), percentages to the point (87%). Changes are computed from the unrounded figures.
05
Corrections are made in the open.
If a figure or a claim is wrong, we correct the post and note what changed. A post revised after publication says so in its notes.
06
Our calls are scored.
What we put on watch one week is checked against the table the next, and we report the result either way.
A note on what this is
The Pulse and Investing Unpacked are educational commentary on public box-office data and on how the Broadway business works. Nothing here is an offer to sell, or a solicitation of an offer to buy, any security, and nothing here is investment advice. Any investment in a production is made only through that production's own offering documents, and only by investors who meet the applicable requirements. Theatre investing involves significant risk, including the loss of the entire investment.