NEW YORK (Reuters) – "There's No Business like Show Business" to figure out how the U.S. consumer is doing.
Broadway, the "Street of Dreams," is a good place to look for signs of renewed consumer confidence, says Nicholas Colas, chief market strategist at BNY ConvergEx Group in New York.
His analysis of the theater-going habits of the New York City natives and visitors over an eleven-week period in early 2010 has left him cautiously optimistic about the health of the consumer, with an emphasis on "cautious," said Colas.
It's a bad news/good news story.
For the first full eleven weeks of 2010, starting on January 4, the combined total attendance for eight of the larger shows on Broadway was down, compared to the eleven weeks starting January 5 last year, partly due to New York City's "Winter Wonderland" weather persisting through February, Colas said, citing data provided by The Broadway League and published on Playbill.com
But post-snowstorm demand bounced back nicely, Colas said.
The Broadway League, the official trade association for the Broadway theater industry, offered a more upbeat view, based on 13 weeks of gross revenues and attendance in the first quarter of 2010 versus 2009.
Including all shows currently running on Broadway, not just eight, the Broadway League, representing theater owners and operators, producers, presenters, general managers, and suppliers of theatrical goods and services, said Broadway's gross revenues and attendance in the first 13 weeks in 2010 topped a similar period in 2009 payday advance lenders.
The Broadway League said gross revenues for the entire Broadway theater community rose 4.4 percent in the first quarter of 2010 while attendance rose 1.7 percent.
"Mother Nature's numerous snowstorms caused the Great White Way to literally turn white quite a bit this winter, but Broadway still managed to be resilient during the toughest quarter of the year," said Charlotte St. Martin, executive director of The Broadway League.
"To truly gauge the health of our industry, one can't just examine a few shows or a few separate weeks -- it is more accurate to look at the collective data industry-wide," she said.
Forty-five different shows played on Broadway during the first quarter of 2010, versus 49 shows during the first quarter of 2009, the League said.
(Editing by Andrea Ricci)
