The landlord never loses. Except ten weeks a year.
Investing Unpacked · No. 04 · Market structure
Twenty-nine of the 41 Broadway houses had shows in the Columbus Day week ending October 11, one more than the week before, and the Pulse found the street short of seats, not price: $135 for every seat on sale against $134 a year earlier, with the gross still 10% below last year's because about 11% fewer seats were on sale. Twelve houses had no performances, and a dark house puts no seats on sale at all. For a show's investors an empty house is somebody else's problem. For the landlord it is the one kind of week that pays little or nothing, because every other week the license pays the house first, whatever the show earns. That is where the saying comes from, and it is also where the opening is.
Forty-one houses, by law
A Broadway theater is scarce by statute, not by accident. The city's zoning lists the theaters of the Theater Subdistrict by name and, with narrow exceptions, bars the Department of Buildings from issuing a demolition permit for any of them without a special permit from the City Planning Commission, which must find that the loss "will not unduly diminish the character of the Theater Subdistrict as a cultural, entertainment and theatrical showcase." Twenty-eight of the houses were also designated landmarks in 1987, after the Helen Hayes and Morosco came down in 1982; the owners sued over 22 of the designations and lost when the Supreme Court declined the case in 1992. A theater can sell the unused development rights above it, but only on terms that bind it to stay a theater: a recorded declaration promising "continuance of its use as a legitimate theater" for the life of the building that buys the rights, a lease or commitment to at least five years of legitimate theater use, and an inspection by a licensed engineer or architect every five years.
The result is a fixed stock of 41 licensed stages run by nine operators. Three of them run 33: the Shubert Organization with 17, the Nederlander Organization with 9 and ATG Entertainment with 7, five of which were Jujamcyn's until 2023. The other eight are six houses run by four nonprofits (Roundabout's three, Manhattan Theatre Club's Friedman, Lincoln Center's Beaumont and Second Stage's Hayes), the New Amsterdam, which Disney leases rather than owns, and Circle in the Square. Nothing a producer does changes that count, which is why the terms of the license matter more than the rent.
What a house earns
Only once, as far as we can find, has a commercial Broadway landlord's profit been made public. When ATG bought Jujamcyn's five theaters in 2023, its UK parent's accounts reported the houses' results for the year to March 30, 2024: revenue of $116 million and profit of $34 million, a 29% margin, as Broadway Journal reported in September 2024 after converting the figures from pounds. The report does not say which profit line that is. It is about $6.8 million of profit per house. If a house is lit about 42 weeks a year, the average for Broadway's houses in each of the last two seasons, each lit week earns its owner about $162,000 of profit; at 47 lit weeks, about $145,000.
The money arrives three ways. A Broadway theater license is not a four-wall rental; the city's own audit guide for these contracts describes payments made up of a percentage of box office receipts, a flat rental and the reimbursement of the costs of running the building. The percentage is "usually 6% or 7%" (Loeb & Loeb, 2023), "typically seven percent" (Broadway Journal), and it is struck on net receipts, the gross after the union pension contribution, credit card and group sales commissions and the theater's own ticketing fee come off. The flat minimum, the only rent that kept being billed when the theaters were closed in 2020, "can range from about $15,000 to $20,000, depending on the size of the theater," Broadway News reported that May. And the city's list of what a show pays its house runs to the house manager, box office staff, ushers, porters, house stagehands, administrative and accounting charges, utilities, cleaning, equipment rentals, a share of the theater's League dues and "real estate taxes." Todd Haimes, who ran Roundabout, put it this way in 2020: "The landlord-tenant relationship in a theater lease is unbelievably favorable to the landlord." And: "Basically the tenant pays for everything."
Where a landlord's money comes from · our estimate for the 2025–26 season
| Source | How it's charged | Estimate |
|---|---|---|
| Percentage | 6% or 7% of each show's weekly net receipts | $100–115M |
| Flat rent | A contractual minimum of about $15,000–$20,000 a week per lit house | $25–30M |
| Facility fees | About $2 a ticket, printed on the receipt and kept by the house | $20–30M |
| The bar | Jujamcyn's concessionaire paid it 47.5% of sales after taxes and card fees; ATG moved to take the bars in-house at the end of 2023 | About $30M |
| Ticketing | Shubert owns Telecharge and Nederlander owns Broadway Direct; service charges ran $14.50–$16.50 a ticket in 2023 | Not public |
| Total before ticketing | $175–205M |
Every line in that table is ours, built from the League's season totals ($1.91 billion gross, 14.6 million tickets, 1,703 playing weeks) and the public rates above; the Notes give the arithmetic and the assumptions, including $2 a patron of bar margin, which is a guess. Spread over 41 houses it is $4 million to $5 million a house before ticketing, below Jujamcyn's $6.8 million of reported profit per house, which suggests ticketing and the reimbursed costs are worth a good deal more than the rent lines alone. In our model the reimbursed house charges, about 15% of what a full house would gross, come to more than the percentage and the flat rent together.
The largest landlord is a special case. The Shubert Organization, with 17 houses and Telecharge, is owned by the tax-exempt Shubert Foundation, which shares its board; the Organization paid the Foundation a $25 million dividend in 2018–19 and $10 million in 2022–23 after a pandemic pause, Broadway Journal reported from the Foundation's filings, and the Foundation's charitable spending ran $44.5 million in the year to May 2025.
What a house costs to own
$1.75M
The St. James, sold in 1957
$308.4M
The five Jujamcyn houses, 2023 transfer filing
$1.6M
Their property tax, year to June 2026
In tax and debt, very little once you have one. Jujamcyn assembled its houses cheaply, and the first one was bought under duress: a 1956 antitrust settlement forced the Shuberts to sell theaters, and in 1957 the St. James went to William L. McKnight's company for a reported $1.75 million. McKnight paid $1.5 million for the Martin Beck (now the Hirschfeld) in 1966, $1.35 million to its owner and $150,000 to buy out the lease, and Jujamcyn paid $1.7 million for the Ritz (now the Walter Kerr) after a 1981 foreclosure auction. In 2005 Rocco Landesman bought all five from the estate of James Binger for what he said was less than $30 million. The transfer-tax filing for the 2023 deal, recorded in the city's property records, declared $308.4 million for the same five, and ATG's accounts put its total consideration at $604 million, $470 million of it in cash: about 18 times the year's profit, and about $121 million a house.
The five were billed $1.6 million in property tax for the year to June 2026, which we added up bill by bill from the Department of Finance's records: $409,000 for the St. James, $427,000 for the Hirschfeld, $221,000 for the Walter Kerr, $244,000 for the Eugene O'Neill and $301,000 for the August Wilson. That is about $320,000 a house, under 5% of their profit, and the show reimburses it anyway. The city's market value for tax purposes on the five is $36.5 million, about 12% of what the deal declared. Recorded debt is light: Jujamcyn borrowed $203 million from Capital One against the theaters in 2019, and our reading of the city's records shows the loan satisfied when the 2023 sale closed. The new owner carries more. Moody's cited $1.5 billion of net debt at ATG's parent as of March 2024, on operating profit that rose 18% to $180 million that year, Broadway Journal reported.
The buildings pay a second way. Because a theater cannot be made taller, the floor area it is entitled to but does not use can be sold to a developer nearby. Shubert sold 45,000 square feet above the Booth and the Schoenfeld to a group led by the Witkoff Group for $18.3 million in 2014 ($409 a foot, by the public records the trade press cited) and the rights above the Broadhurst and the Majestic to Algin for $17.5 million the same year; it sold the rights over the Cort to the Rockefeller Group for $41.1 million in 2017 and 119,268 square feet more over the same theater to a hotel developer for $53.7 million in 2021 (about $450 a foot), and 330,793 square feet over several parcels, the Imperial among them, to Extell for $51 million in 2021 (about $154 a foot). On each transfer the city collects a contribution for the Theater Subdistrict Fund, meant to recycle that value into theater: $24.65 a square foot since July 2022, which, set against the per-foot prices above, is between 5% and 16% of what the rights fetched. The fund's council made no grants in its 2023–24 year, citing "the lack of funds received" since 2020, and a 2016 proposal to set the contribution at 20% of the sale price, approved by the Planning Commission that November, was withdrawn in February 2017 before the City Council voted on it.
Who carries the risk
It was not always this way round. In the 1960s the house took a quarter or more of the gross: a 1964 Shubert contract analysed by the theater historian Derek Miller took 30% of the first $20,000 a week and 25% above it, and 18% on the first $20,000 in the deal that followed that show's success, and the city's tax audit guide records that in 1964 it treated 23% of the owner's share as rent and 77% as payment for services. In the 1970s, by Michael Riedel's account in Razzle Dazzle as Miller reads it, the Shuberts cut their share from about 30% to about 10% in exchange for moving the theater's operating costs onto the shows. Today's 6% or 7% of net receipts is the end of that road: a small percentage, a flat minimum and every cost passed through, with no test of whether the show is making money.
In the 1980s the writers and creative team went the other way. They traded royalties on the gross for a share of weekly profit, the royalty pool, so a show could survive its weak weeks. Landlords mostly stayed out of it. The offering circular for one Broadway-bound musical, filed with the SEC in 2016, says that "most often, weekly royalties to the theater are not included in a royalty pool arrangement" and that "it is unusual for the theater owner to participate."
The house also keeps an exit. A stop clause lets it end the license if the gross stays below an agreed figure for two weeks in a row; the two-week test is at least as old as the 1930s. Miller's examples put the line at 40% of a full house's gross for The Star-Spangled Girl in 1966 and 50% for All's Well That Ends Well in 1983. Whether today's clauses sit near those levels is not public. If they do, a show that trips one is usually losing money anyway: our model breaks even at 61% full, and the budgets of productions OFFSCRIPT has invested in or reviewed as an investor break even at roughly 55% to 70% full. The clause's real value is as an option, and it is rarely used. "You prove yourself in two weeks or you're out," Columbia's Steven Chaikelson told Broadway News in 2019, in a piece prompted by one of the rare enforcements: Beetlejuice fell below its stop figure in June 2019, was given notice on October 1 to leave the Winter Garden by June 2020 for The Music Man, and by December was grossing more than $1 million a week. The same piece records the other side of the relationship: the landlord of Side Show let it run extra weeks when the clause could have ended it.
What the landlord does carry is the building. Jujamcyn settled a Justice Department suit in 2021 by agreeing to add 44 wheelchair seating locations and 54 aisle-transfer seats across its five houses, remove about 200 barriers and pay a $40,000 penalty. The Nederlanders' Palace was lifted 30 feet for a hotel-and-retail tower, closed from 2018 until May 2024 and given what its developer announced as a $50 million renovation. When the 2020 shutdown came, the theaters kept billing their minimum rent and expected to be paid from the producers' insurance; the owners insure the buildings, the producers insure the shows. And the federal relief program that followed approved the Nederlander Organization and Jujamcyn Theaters for $10 million each, the program's maximum. The risk the landlord does not carry is the show's. Historically only 20% to 30% of Broadway shows have recouped (Loeb & Loeb, citing The Economist); of the 46 new musicals that opened after the pandemic through September 2025, the Times counted three that had turned a profit, and Semafor's March 2026 count was four of 48.
The one week a landlord loses
A house earns little while it's dark. In the last two seasons Broadway's houses were lit about 80% of the possible weeks, which leaves each one dark or between shows 10 or 11 weeks a year. Two seasons earlier it was 16. On Jujamcyn's numbers each of those weeks costs a landlord on the order of $150,000 of profit. Our model, which leaves out ticketing, puts it at $80,000 to $130,000, depending on how full the house would have been.
| Season | Share of house-weeks lit | Weeks dark or between shows, per house |
|---|---|---|
| 2018–19 | 81% | 10 |
| 2022–23 | 69% | 16 |
| 2023–24 | 69% | 16 |
| 2024–25 | 79% | 11 |
| 2025–26 | 80% | 10 |
Playing weeks reported by the Broadway League ÷ (41 houses × weeks in the season; 2024–25 had 53). A week without performances counts as unlit here whether the house was empty or loading in its next show.
The dark weeks are not idle houses. Playbill's booking map on October 8 listed a tenant, current or announced, for all 41 theaters; the 12 that were dark that day were waiting for a named show, most of them within weeks. The expensive gaps are the long ones. The Majestic, Shubert's 1,645-seat house, has no show listed before Purple Rain begins on March 12, 2027. For the one-house owner the gap is everything. Martin Markinson, who owned the Helen Hayes from 1979 to 2015, charged about $10,000 a week of rent plus a percentage, pitched producers on running $25,000 to $35,000 a week cheaper than a large house, and said of the empty weeks: "I lived and died with my one theatre." A seventeen-house owner averages them away.
A little less: what it buys a show, what it costs a house
Take the illustrative musical from No. 03, a hypothetical show in a 1,200-seat house grossing $1.25 million a week when full at budgeted prices, and lower only the house's percentage. Breaking even here means the week pays for itself: the gross covers the deductions, the house, the running costs and the royalty minimums. The $15 million the investors put in is still out, and a show that only ever breaks even never repays it.
| House percentage | Show breaks even at | Weeks to recoup at 70% full | Show's profit, a week at 60% full | House's take, a week at 70% full |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 6.5% (today) | 61% full | 217 | −$13K | $93K |
| 5.5% | 61% full | 203 | −$6K | $85K |
| 4.5% | 60% full | 190 | $1K | $78K |
| 3.5% | 59% full | 180 | $8K | $70K |
At 70% full, three points off the percentage moves about $24,000 a week from the house to the show. After the royalty pool's share, investors keep about $14,000 of it, which brings recoupment more than eight months closer; at 60% full it turns a losing week into a profitable one. For the house, a dark week costs $93,000 in the same model. So the cut pays for itself if it keeps the house lit one extra week for every three weeks it's given.
Two other ways to split it have the same shape. A step charges 3.5% until the investors are repaid and 9.5% after, the royalty pool's logic applied to rent: at 90% full the house gives up about $30,000 a week for 70 weeks and takes it back afterwards, so it comes out ahead on a show that recoups and runs more than about 2.7 years. A profit share replaces the percentage with the flat rent plus about a sixth of each week's operating profit, set so the house gets today's amount at 90% full: it pays the house more when a show sells out and less in a soft week, and moves the show's break-even from 61% to 58% full, about 350 tickets a week of room.
Four cooperative models, tested
The question we set out to answer is whether a landlord and a show could do better together than they do apart. Here are four structures, each with its nearest real precedent, run on the same hypothetical show. The verdicts are ours.
1. Lower rent up front for a higher percentage of the gross
The intuitive trade is the smallest. Drop the $15,000 flat rent and raise the percentage to 8.0% so that the house is whole at 90% full, and a show at 70% full keeps about $2,000 a week more; at 60% full, about $5,000; break-even moves from 61.2% to 60.8%. The minimum rent is a rounding error next to a musical's running costs, which run "$650,000 to $800,000 a week" before rent for a major Broadway musical (Loeb & Loeb). The lever that matters is the cost the house passes through. If the house carried half of its own charges until recoupment, about $94,000 a week in our model, and charged 9.5% afterwards, the show's break-even would fall from 61% to 52% full and recoupment at 70% full from 217 weeks to 120. The price is steep: in a 70%-full week the house takes nothing at all, and at 90% full it is not made whole for about 4.7 years. A quarter share is the more plausible deal: break-even 57%, recoupment at 70% full 154 weeks instead of 217, the house's take in that week halved from $93,000 to $47,000, made whole after about five years at 90% full with an 8% step. This is the 1960s contract in reverse: the house then took 25% to 30% and carried its costs; a cost-sharing deal today would carry part of the costs for a few more points later. Precedent: the licences the Shuberts wrote before the 1970s; the "favorable union contracts" Markinson used to undercut the large houses; and Las Vegas, where the deal, as the Review-Journal reported it in 2011, "was said to be that MGM paid for the theater" and split Cirque du Soleil's costs and profits 50-50.
2. The landlord as an investor in the show, for faster recoupment
Landlords already invest in the shows they house, in kind. The step deal above is a $2.1 million investment: at 90% full the house forgoes $30,500 a week for the 70 weeks it takes the show to recoup, 14% of a $15 million capitalization. The question is what it should get back. Converted into investor units, that stake would pay the landlord about $11,000 a week after recoupment, its 14% of the investors' $78,000; the step pays it $30,500. The surprise is who pays for the step. The extra three points come off the week's surplus before the royalty pool and the producers' split, so after recoupment the investors give up only $7,300 a week under the step against $11,100 under units. The step is the better deal for the landlord and for the investors both; the royalty participants and the producers absorb the difference, and the pool's participants must all agree to a change in it. A cash stake from the landlord is a different animal. It does not shorten recoupment, because the capitalization is the same whoever puts it up; its value is alignment, and its hazard is the same thing seen from the other side. A landlord with units has a reason to hold a show through a soft patch and a reason to book its own shows first. The precedents are real and uneven: Disney leases and programs the New Amsterdam; the four nonprofits produce in the houses they run; when Second Stage bought the Hayes in 2015, Jujamcyn agreed to provide extra collateral for the $16.5 million bank loan, Broadway Journal found in property records, and paid $5 million for an alley that let it extend the St. James's stage next door; and when Jujamcyn sold to ATG, the sellers kept 7% of the five houses and took a 7% stake in ATG's Lyric and Hudson, by the trade reports of the filings. The structural warning is older: the St. James changed hands in the first place because the federal government made the Shuberts sell. A landlord that is also the producer's partner is a question for counsel before it is a question for the model.
3. Advancing the tax credit against the theater
New York's Musical and Theatrical Production Tax Credit pays a qualifying Broadway show 25% of its qualified costs up to $3 million, in a Level 1 facility of 500 seats or more between 41st and 54th Streets. The credit needs the theater; it is the house that makes the show eligible. The state's commitment has grown from $100 million in 2021 to $550 million after this May's budget, but it ran dry in between: the League learned in the summer of 2025 that the funds had been "unexpectedly depleted," and shows whose first performances fell on or after December 1, 2025 became eligible again only when $150 million was added in May 2026. The credit is also paid late and conditionally. Final paperwork goes in after the credit period ends, and a show whose revenues exceed twice its production costs after the credit period owes up to half of it back to a state arts fund.
Timing is the whole point. In our model the credit is worth 15 weeks: a show at 90% full recoups in 76 weeks without it and 61 with it, but only if the money arrives before week 76. Received at month 12 it does; received at month 18 or 24 it arrives after recoupment and simply becomes a later distribution. A landlord that advanced the $3 million at the first preview, in the certain knowledge that its house qualifies, would bring recoupment forward by 15 weeks at 90% full and by 44 weeks at 70% (217 to 173). A 5% to 8% fee is $150,000 to $240,000, cheap against the weeks. The landlord would be taking three risks the show now takes: that the state's money runs out again, that the credit is clawed back from a hit, and that the credit can be assigned at all, which no public source settles. Precedent: producers already "usually reference the subsidy in documents they circulate to prospective investors" (Broadway Journal, January 2026), so the credit is already being financed, just not by the party whose building earns it.
4. The structures that already exist
The model that is actually spreading is not cooperative but vertical. Mari, Ari Emanuel's company, bought the ticketing platform TodayTix in October 2025 and agreed in August 2026 to buy ATG from Providence Equity, a deal the Financial Times had reported was expected to be worth about $6 billion; terms were not disclosed, the acquisition needs regulatory approval, and until it closes the two run as separate companies. If it closes, one owner will hold seven Broadway houses, ten in the West End and a ticket seller, and the producer's negotiation will be with a landlord that also sees the demand data. The other working models all share the landlord's upside: touring presenters pay a guarantee and then split the overage "as low as a 60-40 ratio to a high of 90-10" in the show's favor (Kansas City's Starlight); Seattle's arena lease gives the city 25% of revenue above a baseline for ten years and 50% after; hotel operators earn their incentive fee only after the owner has cleared its priority, typically 8% to 12% of what the owner put in (HVS). Broadway's version would be the profit share above, and the public version is the Theater Subdistrict Fund, which was designed to turn air-rights money into theater and collects 5% to 16% of the sale price instead of the 20% of the sale price the city proposed in 2016.
None of this makes money by itself. Every dollar of rent the house forgoes is a dollar the show keeps, until the change keeps a show running that would otherwise have closed. That is where both sides win: the house keeps a paying tenant instead of a dark stage, and the show gets the weeks it needs to recoup. In a tight season, with producers lined up for every house, a landlord does better by replacing a weak show, and that is what the stop clause is for. In a fall with 12 to 15 dark houses, that is harder to count on.
What to ask for when you don't own the building
01
A step, not a flat percentage.
Lower until recoupment, higher after. On a long enough run the house comes out ahead, and the step costs investors less than giving the house equity would.
02
A stop clause below your break-even, with a cure period.
Two soft weeks shouldn't cost you the house. Ask for a longer test, or the right to stay by guaranteeing the house a set weekly minimum.
03
Audit rights on the house charges.
In our model they come to more than the percentage and the flat rent together. Know what's in them, including the real estate tax.
04
The credit, early.
If the house makes the show eligible for the state credit, ask the house to advance it, or to accept a lower minimum until it arrives.
05
The right-sized house.
One former owner put a small house's running costs $25,000–$35,000 a week below a large one's. A show that fits its house breaks even sooner.
Watch for it
01
The dark count.
15 of 41 houses had no performances in the last week of September, 13 in the week ending October 4 and 12 in the week ending October 11. Each week's table shows how many are lit; the fall openings should bring the count down, and the Majestic stays dark until March.
02
The long-runners' share.
Shows running three years or more took 55% of the gross in the last week of September and 49% in the week ending October 4, when two new shows joined the table; in the holiday week ending October 11 the gross rose 27% and their share held at 49%. If the new shows sell, that share falls.
03
ATG's new owner.
Mari's purchase of ATG, agreed August 11, needs regulatory approval and had not been reported closed as of October 17. Watch for the closing, and for any change to its Broadway terms or to TodayTix's place in its houses' ticketing.
Notes
Illustrative model, not any specific show: the hypothetical musical from No. 03, in a 1,200-seat house playing eight shows a week, grossing $1.25 million when full at budgeted prices; 9.5% deducted to reach net receipts; running costs of half a full house's gross, including house charges of about 15% of that full-house gross and a $15,000 flat rent; a royalty pool of 40% of weekly operating profit (45% after recoupment) with a weekly minimum; $15 million capitalization; after recoupment, 13% participations and a 50/50 split of what is left. The house also earns about $4 a ticket from facility fees and the bar. House charges are treated as costs passed through at cost; ticketing income is left out because owners' margins aren't public. The profit share is set to pay the house what today's deal pays at 90% full. The cost-sharing cases assume the house carries half, or a quarter, of the model's house charges until recoupment and charges 9.5%, or 8%, afterwards. The rent-for-units case credits the step deal's forgone rent at 90% full as capital contributed. The tax-credit case assumes the show qualifies for the full $3 million and that the money would otherwise arrive 12 to 24 months after opening; the state publishes no payment timetable, so that range is our assumption. Educational only; not an offer to sell, or a solicitation of an offer to buy, any security.
Assumptions and estimates, by name. The season estimate of landlord income is ours: 6% to 7% of 95% of the League's $1,910,903,835 gross after 9.5% deductions (the 5% left out is our estimate of the gross earned by nonprofit companies in their own houses); $15,000 to $20,000 a week times 1,703 playing weeks; $1.50 to $2.00 a ticket times 14,577,322 tickets; $2.00 a patron of bar margin, a guess. The per-lit-week figure for Jujamcyn divides $6.8 million by 42 and 47 weeks. The dark-week counts divide the League's playing weeks by 41 houses times 52 weeks (53 in 2024–25). The long-runners' share counts the 11 shows that had been open three years or more on each week's table. "Three years or more" and "the last two seasons" are our cut-offs. The $150,000 cost of a dark week on Jujamcyn's numbers assumes a dark week loses a lit week's profit and nothing else. The 5% to 16% figure divides $24.65 by the per-square-foot prices of the three recorded sales above that have one (2014, and the two 2021 sales). That the step costs the pool and producers rather than the investors is a property of the model's waterfall, in which the theater's percentage comes off before the pool. Inferences are marked as such in the text; everything else is a public record, a cited report or the model.
The comparison with real budgets uses the weekly operating budgets and royalty terms of six Broadway musicals OFFSCRIPT has invested in or reviewed as an investor, aggregated and rounded so that no single production's figures are shown or can be worked out. The typical figure is the median of the six, and each range is rounded outward to the nearest five points. Budgets are estimates made before opening, not results, and nothing here describes any production's actual performance or returns. Landlord estimates are ours and are labelled as estimates.
Sources, each checked at the source on October 12, 2026 (the ATG sale and the latest grosses table rechecked October 17): Jujamcyn's results, ATG's consideration, the "typically seven percent" rent and Todd Haimes's quotes, Broadway Journal, "Jujamcyn Profit Revealed in Rare Disclosure" (September 2024), reporting the UK accounts of International Entertainment Holdings Ltd; ATG's debt and operating profit, Broadway Journal, "Is Blackstone Broadway's Next Big Landlord?" (2024), citing Moody's; the 2023 transfer, NYC property records (ACRIS document 2023060701099001, $308,400,000, June 6, 2023) and PincusCo (July 20, 2023); the sellers' 7% stakes, BroadwayWorld (July 24, 2023) and West End Theatre (July 25, 2023), reporting the filings; the 2019 loan, ACRIS documents 2019092701063001 to 005 ($200 million consolidated plus $3 million, September 24, 2019), PincusCo (October 2, 2019) and the satisfactions recorded June 6, 2023 (2023060700703001 to 004); property tax and market values, NYC Department of Finance records for fiscal 2026 via NYC Open Data, by parcel; the St. James, the Landmarks Preservation Commission's designation report LP-1374 (December 15, 1987), the 1956 settlement and the New York Times (July 30, 1957) as cited by Wikipedia; the Martin Beck and the Ritz, New York Times reports as cited by Wikipedia; Landesman's price, his own statement as quoted February 17, 2005; the Hayes loan and the alley, Broadway Journal, "Second Stage Borrowed $16.5 Million for Helen Hayes"; the license structure, NYC Department of Finance audit procedure CRT-2008-02 (April 8, 2008), Loeb & Loeb, "The Basics of Investing on Broadway" (December 2023), the Commercial Theater Institute (May 15, 2019) and the Regulation A offering circular of Empire The Musical Worldwide LLC (October 1, 2016); the minimum rent and insurance, Broadway News (May 14, 2020); facility fees, Jared Harbour, "The Residual" (August 4, 2026); concessions, Broadway Journal on Sweet Hospitality Group's suit against Jujamcyn (December 2023); ticket fees, BroadwayWorld (September 25, 2023); Shubert's ownership and dividends, Broadway Journal (January 24, 2025); the Foundation's spending, its Form 990-PF for the year to May 2025 via ProPublica; the zoning, NYC Zoning Resolution sections 81-742 to 81-744, including 81-744's note on the July 15, 2022 adjustment to $24.65; the fund's year, the Theater Subdistrict Council's annual report for 2023–24; the 2016 proposal, CityLand (March 1, 2017); the 1987 designations and the 1992 ruling, the Boston Globe's obituary of Jack Goldstein (July 7, 2023); air rights, Deadline (July 2014) and Commercial Observer (April 30, 2014) for 2014, Broadway News (March 1, 2021), PincusCo and ACRIS documents 2017072501402003 ($41,126,938) and 2021081001241004 ($53,684,068.50) for the Cort, and Commercial Observer (August 18, 2021) for Extell; the 1960s contracts and stop clauses, Derek Miller, "Broadway Real Estate and Economic Complexity in the Theater" (ASTR, November 4, 2016), and Broadway News (December 9 and 16, 2019); royalty pools, TDF Stages (July 6, 2016) and Gordon Firemark (March 14, 2013); the ADA settlement, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York (July 13, 2021); the Palace, Civil Engineering (ASCE, March 2, 2022) and NY1 (May 25, 2024); the relief grants, Broadway News (June 23, 2021); recoupment rates, Loeb & Loeb, the New York Times (September 22, 2025) and Semafor (March 10, 2026); seasons and grosses, the Broadway League's season statistics, BroadwayWorld (May 28, 2026) and the League's weekly grosses for the weeks ending September 27, October 4 and October 11, 2026, as published by BroadwayWorld and Playbill (the lede's figures as Pulse No. 03 prints them); the booking map, Playbill, "Broadway Real Estate" (October 8, 2026); the Majestic's seats, the Broadway League's count; Markinson, Playbill (August 30, 2019); the New Amsterdam's lease, Wikipedia and the Department of Finance's owner of record; the tax credit, Empire State Development's program page, Broadway News (August 22, 2025), Broadway Journal (January 2026), Mondaq (June 9, 2026) and the state budget signed May 28, 2026; Mari and ATG, Mari's announcements (October 20, 2025 and August 11, 2026), Arts Professional (August 11, 2026) and the Boston Globe (August 11, 2026); Las Vegas, the Las Vegas Review-Journal (December 4, 2011); presenters, Starlight Theatre (August 6, 2015); Seattle, Seattle City Council (December 4, 2017); hotels, HVS (April 25, 2024). The full ledger, with each figure's status and link, is in the research file behind this post.
OFFSCRIPT produces and invests in shows that license theaters from each of the owners named here.
Next week in Unpacked: inside the paperwork. Royalty pools, office charges and who gets paid first.
Investing Unpacked takes one mechanism of the Broadway business apart each week, alongside The Pulse, OFFSCRIPT's weekly read on the grosses. How we read them: our methodology.