Denzel Washington is starring on Broadway in the Shakespeare classic “Othello,” but audiences are potentially being priced out of the chance to see the actor on stage.
Tickets for the show have run as high as $921 for orchestra seats, breaking box office records and grossing $2.8 million, the most for any nonmusical in a single week on Broadway, according to The New York Times.
“This is a process that’s been happening for a long time,” Raymond Arroyo, Fox News contributor and host of the “Arroyo Grande” podcast, told Fox News Digital. “In the 2000s, Broadway adopted the dynamic pricing that we’ve seen from the airlines, that you saw in the arena shows, where if there’s demand, they jacked the prices up. So, this has been an escalation.”
Arroyo compared pricing to the ‘80s and ’90s, when Broadway had major “zeitgeisty” shows like “Cats,” “Les Misérables” and “Phantom of the Opera” dominating the box office but also premiering for $45 a seat in some cases (approximately $123 with inflation, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics calculator).
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“It’s a product of scarcity. Broadway producers have increasingly relied on scaled-down, cheap productions, and you need big stars to drive audiences into those seats, because they certainly aren’t coming for the fancy sets or the fun musical score,” Arroyo said.
He cited “Othello,” which also co-stars Jake Gyllenhaal, and the George Clooney-starring “Good Night and Good Luck” as current “star-driven entities” with limited appeal outside New York City.
“I’d love to see what business that would do on the road. You know, if you took that show to Idaho or Indiana or Texas, I’m not sure you could command that level of ticket prices. But look, it’s short runs with big stars and small sets. This is the economic model that Broadway is running on now.”
Doug Eldridge of Achilles PR told Fox News Digital that the “surge pricing” Broadway is utilizing is a result of supply and demand.
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“This is a good ‘problem’ for Broadway to have, especially as it looks to recover in the aftermath of Covid shutdowns,” Eldridge said.
“This is a prime example of ‘wants versus needs,’” he added. “When eggs quadruple in price, America struggles because eggs are considered a basic necessity (needs) for most families across the country. By contrast, when a center seat in the first 14 rows for a Broadway production featuring iconic actor Denzel Washington goes for a grand, it’s not an economic hardship that is being thrust upon middle-class families: it is a want, not a need and a luxury, not a necessity.”
Steve Honig of The Honig Company LLC said, “With prices for high-demand tickets approaching $1,000, it’s safe to say Broadway has become a pursuit for the wealthy and out-of-touch with everyday people. While high ticket prices may drive up overall revenue in the short-term, theater producers need to ask themselves if they want to sacrifice sustainability for a cash grab.”
Arroyo called the current plan “foolhardy” because of its limitations.
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“Now theater is relegated to some sideshow, and I think it’s the private preserve of people who live on the Isle of Manhattan and in only luxurious districts of Manhattan.”
Honig added, “Tourism will likely be affected as well. Seeing a Broadway show, which used to be a staple of any visit to New York, could now potentially be more expensive than airfare or a hotel. This will result in many tourists taking ‘seeing a Broadway show’ off their itineraries. It’s become cost-prohibitive for one person to go to a show, let alone a family of four.”
Arroyo pointed out that Broadway is facing a similar issue to Hollywood in terms of “a procession of either reboots, revivals or these star vehicles” taking up space onstage.
“This is a great American art form, this is one of the things America uniquely gave to the world. It wasn’t opera. It wasn’t ballet. It was the Broadway musical, Broadway shows and this style of performance. And sadly, you see it dying away.”
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He continued, “Broadway has to find a way to create new productions [and] do it in an economic way that all Americans can take part in, whether they’re visiting or they’re locals. And I don’t see that now. It’s pricing everybody out of the Broadway experience, which is sad. We’re losing something of our American culture when we do that.”
Arroyo said with costs in the $10 to $20 million range for musicals and $5 to $10 million for plays, there is a potential solution with starting smaller outside New York.
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“There’s an opening here, and maybe a place like the Kennedy Center can do it if they’re creative enough and nimble enough to do so, where if you negotiate with the unions and drive costs down and make it very cheap for a producer to mount a show, try out a show in a place like Washington for an extended run so you get all the kinks out. Say, a three-month run or two-month run, the Kennedy Center, and then you bring it to Broadway and give the Kennedy Center a piece of those profits. Maybe there’s a[n] economic model that makes sense and something that is publicly supported a bit to help these producers take risks, mount things that will actually resonate with audiences. Find different genres that perhaps they haven’t explored before.”
Across the board, entertainment costs for Americans have gone up, but that hasn’t entirely stopped people from purchasing tickets.
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“Broadway isn’t the only group that is enjoying a marked rise in ticket prices: NFL games are at an all-time high and even movie tickets are right around $20 for a child and a matinee,” Eldridge said. “The pricing—while seemingly egregious in some cases—is a direct product of supply and demand.
“If the steep prices were unattainable, NFL stadiums would be empty and concert tours would close down. Remember, Taylor Swift just became the first artist in history to gross $1 billion dollars on tour and even the ‘cheap tickets’ weren’t that cheap.”
Honig said the pricing is limiting though for most theater-goers and likely hurting Broadway’s long-term prospects.
“High ticket prices will also have a spillover effect on less expensive shows as people dismiss Broadway overall as an entertainment option. Then there is the accessibility and diversity issue as audiences will be comprised solely of people who are above a certain income level. Broadway has an image problem right now and, in order to change that, producers will need to figure out ways to bring quality theater to audiences at a less expensive price point.”
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Arroyo also added that, in his opinion, modern productions aren’t at the same level they used to be.
“The productions are just not up to par,” Arroyo said. “And as wonderful and nice as some of these performances are, they don’t have that kind of radiant energy that we saw in the past, and hopefully we can get back to.”
He continued, “Any time you get any industry that’s insular and is looking into itself and is no longer in contact with the audience or the broader audience, yeah, your content is going to get very cottage. You know, this has become a very small cottage industry, restricted to a few streets in New York.”
Arroyo gave an example of the Tony-winning musical “Strange Loop” from 2019, about a young, Black, and queer writer who wrestles with their identity and sexuality.
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As he put it, “They could not give tickets away. It won the Tony, won all the awards, and it closed very quickly. That is just an example of a show that should be restricted to a certain district, because there’s only a very small group of audiences that are interested in that show and its worldview and its content. If you want something more universal, and you want a bigger audience, you’ve got to go more universal.”
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“Hamilton” was a “creative juggernaut” because of its status as a rap musical. That “wasn’t everybody’s cup of tea, but it did strike a nerve, and it drew new, young audiences,” Arroyo said. “Somehow Broadway has to find their way forward to produce content that is broader, I would argue broader than ‘Hamilton’s’ audience base and that reaches, you know, the universal values and experiences and emotions that everybody contends with.”
A professionally shot version of the musical was released on Disney+ in 2020, giving audiences who might have missed out a chance to see the production, but Arroyo isn’t convinced that’s a long-term selling point to get people interested in Broadway.
“It’s another vein of monetization of the show. But there’s something to be said about the live communal experience. And Broadway has a problem because their calling card was always this art brings us all together. We’re all together in the dark, in the same room, having the same experience, breathing the same air. And when something happens on that stage, everybody’s reacting. It’s live, it’s electric. It’s different from watching in a movie theater or watching from home. That like what we’re having now. It’s once removed, the experience is once removed.
“So if Broadway wants to get back to its founding mission, which is really bringing people together in a community. They have to make it accessible to the public so that everybody has a way in.”
