Broadway 2022–23 in review: the money came back before the audience did
The Pulse · Season in review · 2022–23
The first full season after the shutdown grossed $1.58B, then the third-highest total on record, on 12.3M admissions. That is 86% of the 2018–19 record on 83% of its audience: the average paid ticket, $128.43, was +3.7% on 2018–19. Broadway came back on price before it came back on people.
A retrospective, published October 4, 2026, from the Broadway League's season statistics and the reporting cited below.
The season in numbers
Total gross
$1.58B
vs 2018–19 −14%
Attendance
12.3M
vs 2018–19 −17%
Avg. paid ticket
$128.43
vs 2018–19 +3.7%
Capacity
88.3%
89.8% in 2018–19
Playing weeks
1,474
52-week season
New productions
40
38 in 2018–19
Compared with 2018–19, the last full season before the shutdown (2021–22 ran 42 weeks).
Broadway gross by season · $ billions
The first full season back got to 86% of the 2018–19 record.
2015–16
1.37
2016–17
1.45
2017–18
1.70
2018–19
1.83
2019–20
1.36
2021–22
0.85
2022–23
1.58
Red: the season reviewed here. Muted: the two seasons cut short by the pandemic (2019–20 stopped in March 2020; 2021–22 began in late summer 2021; there was no 2020–21 season). Source: the Broadway League.
What sold
01
Ten new shows joined the $1M club.
Ten productions that opened during the season grossed $1M or more in at least one week: A Beautiful Noise, Almost Famous, & Juliet, Into the Woods, Leopoldstadt, New York, New York, Parade, Some Like It Hot, Sweeney Todd and The Piano Lesson (Broadway News).
02
Revivals with stars led the new arrivals.
In the season's last week, the Josh Groban revival of Sweeney Todd grossed more than every show but The Lion King and Hamilton, and Parade made the top ten beside the long-runners: MJ, Wicked, Moulin Rouge!, Aladdin and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (Ken Davenport, grosses for the week ending May 21, 2023).
03
& Juliet became the season's slow-burn hit.
The Max Martin jukebox musical opened in November 2022 and became the first new musical of the season to announce recoupment, paying back its $17M capitalization in June 2024 after grossing more than $93M (Broadway News). It took about 19 months from opening.
The Tonys: the small show won
01
Kimberly Akimbo over Some Like It Hot.
The small, offbeat Off-Broadway transfer won Best Musical and five awards in all, including book, score and Victoria Clark for leading actress. Some Like It Hot, the season's lavish new musical, won for J. Harrison Ghee and Casey Nicholaw's choreography but not the top prize.
02
Leopoldstadt and the plays.
Tom Stoppard's Leopoldstadt won Best Play, with Patrick Marber's direction and Brandon Uranowitz's featured performance. Jodie Comer won for Prima Facie, a one-woman play, and Sean Hayes for Good Night, Oscar.
03
Parade, and a director to watch.
Parade won Best Revival of a Musical and Michael Arden won for directing it. Topdog/Underdog won Best Revival of a Play. Arden's next Tony would come two seasons later, for Maybe Happy Ending †.
The end of an era
The Phantom of the Opera closed on April 16, 2023, after 35 years and nearly 14,000 performances, the longest run in Broadway history. It sold more than $1.3B of tickets in New York alone and was seen by more than 145M people in 183 cities worldwide (Voice of America). The houses that long-runners leave are where the next seasons' new shows go, and a new show starts from zero: no advance, no word of mouth, and a capitalization to earn back.
What it set up
The recovery in 2022–23 was a recovery in revenue more than in reach: the average ticket sat above its pre-pandemic level while attendance was still 17% short. That made the next season the test. Could a market that had re-priced itself bring the audience back to its old size, with a class of new musicals that had to earn their weeks from scratch? The answer, in 2023–24, was no.
Notes
† OFFSCRIPT is a producer, co-producer or investor in Maybe Happy Ending (marked †), which opened in a later season. Observations on other productions come from published grosses and reporting, not from their books.
Sources: the Broadway League (season statistics 2015–16 to 2025–26); Broadway News (2022–23 season statistics, May 2023; & Juliet recoupment, June 2024); Ken Davenport, grosses for the week ending May 21, 2023; New York Theater, 2023 Tony Award winners; Voice of America on The Phantom of the Opera (April 2023).
Season figures are the Broadway League's, for the League's season (late May to late May); percentage changes are computed from the League's unrounded figures. Educational only; not an offer to sell, or a solicitation of an offer to buy, any security.
The Pulse is OFFSCRIPT's weekly read on the Broadway grosses, every Tuesday, alongside Investing Unpacked. How we read the numbers: our methodology.