[Guest Post] Four Observations of the Financial Impact of Social Media on the Broadway Grosses

I receive hundreds of emails every month from newsletter subscribers and social media followers. I do my best to respond to as many as I can as I remember what it was like to be the person on the other end of that computer screen.

Which is why, when I received an email from Ben Waterhouse asking for some advice on his weekly analysis of Broadway grosses on the Broadway subreddit , I checked it out . . . and was WOWed.

As a college student, he's doing much more in the industry than I was at that age!

So I asked him if he'd want to write a Guest Post here on my newsletter to share the business of Broadway from the Gen-Z POV.

And he said YES so here you go . . . Ben's four observations of the financial impact of social media on the Broadway Grosses.

In this day and age all of us are glued to our phones and social media. According to media analyst group GWI, the average American spends around 2.5 hours per day on social media. For teenagers that number increases to 4.8 hours per day according to Gallup . However, in this increasingly online age, Broadway has struggled to adapt to the demands of social media; both Tony Award Best Musical winners in 2022 and 2023 failed to reach more than 50 thousand followers on any individual social media account, and neither one of them managed to become financially successful on Broadway[1] [2] [3] [4] .

Of the new musicals in the 2023-2024 Broadway Season, these are the top five highest grossing shows in 2024 (by weekly average gross through September 1).

These are the shows with the highest follower counts across Instagram and Tiktok, with their increase in follower count since January 1, 2024, as of September 8, 2024. None of the new musicals from the 23-24 season have a significant following on Facebook or YouTube.

?There are a few takeaways from these numbers.

#1: Social Media Following Doesn't Guarantee Box Office Success

Though there is a correlation between social media following and the grosses, it is not infallible. The Notebook has the third largest social media following of any new musical this past season, and has spawned the song with the most streams this year. Yet they have announced a closing date, and are frequently near the bottom of the weekly grosses. On the flip side, Hell’s Kitchen is the most commercially successful new show of the season. But they are a wide margin away from being in the top five by social media following, coming in behind Suffs for seventh amongst new musicals.

#2: Pre-Opening Buzz Drives Social Media Growth

The largest bump in follower count is going to come in the three months before or after a show opens. This is illustrated by Back to the Future, which opened in Summer 2023, and over half of their social media followers followed their social media accounts before the beginning of this year. It is difficult- but not impossible to increase a social media following long after opening. Ideally, a show should induce a snowball effect, where people seeing the show talk about it on social media (and follow the show’s social media accounts), and use that to influence their friends or followers to see it in kind, and that is easiest when the buzz around a show is at its highest.

#3: Strategic Social Media Can Turn Flops into Hits

Social media, when used effectively, can turn a show with all the ingredients of a commercial flop, to a commercial success. The Great Gatsby was panned by critics, and was effectively shut out of major awards ceremonies. In spite of this, they have the second highest grosses of any new musical from this past season, and they have used moments from the show to launch social media trends. The choreography from one of their numbers went viral, with other broadway actors getting in on the action to great success. Sound bites from the show have been viewed or heard tens of millions of times , far exceeding the reach of even a televised Tony Awards performance. This has led to The Great Gatsby being one of the most talked about shows of the season, and it has translated into very strong grosses.

#4: Consistency Trumps Viral Moments in Social Media Marketing

It does seem that it is more effective to use social media to create a consistent brand, rather than chasing viral moments. Some Like It Hot last summer had multiple TikToks with several million views , but they were unable to translate that social media success into consistent grosses. Notebook and Water for Elephants have each had viral moments, but similarly have been unable to turn it into a high level of commercial success, in spite of each having some combination of good reviews and recognizable IP.

Social media’s total impact on Broadway is still subject to study, and likely remains an untapped market. An April study suggests that nearly three-quarters of Millennial and Gen Z people who had not attended a Broadway show in the past year could be persuaded by social media advertising. Even more revealing, over 700 of the 1000 respondents of that survey live in the NYC metro area, and as such they are the prime market for a Broadway show. It’s clear that there is a massive untapped demographic, and social media is the way to reach them.

This article was written by Ben Waterhouse. Ben Waterhouse is a Performing Arts Scholar at Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York. He does a weekly analysis of the Broadway Grosses on the r/broadway subreddit, linked here .