A gross statistical seasonal wrap up. Part II

We now return to our regularly schedule program.

Two days ago I promised to break down the last 11 weeks of the season as compared the same 11 weeks in ’08 to see how much of a bite the icky economy was taking out of our biz.

 

As you may remember, we examined the grosses for the first 10 weeks of this year in this post, and came to the conclusion that we were 7.85% down from last year, and attendance was off a whopping 14.63%.

 

How have we done since then?

 

In the next 11 weeks, our grosses are down only 3.89% over the prior year and our attendance is down 5.3%.  So, we’re catching up and closing the gap, slowly but surely.

 

That brings the ’09 totals so far to 5.87% down from last year in gross sales and 9.97% down from last year in attendance.

 

But what will the summer bring?

 

And more importantly, the spread between the gross and the attendance figures is what I find most alarming, as I discussed in Wednesday’s post.

 

Looking at the grosses over a 10-12 week period has been fun (insert chants of “Geek!  Geek!” here), so we’re going to continue to do it.  And since the rest of the biz world does quarterly reports, why shouldn’t we?

 

Every 13 weeks, starting with week #1 of the new Broadway season (this week), I’ll look at the numbers and compare them to the prior year(s).

 

Who knows, maybe we’ll get really fancy and start making estimated earnings predictions just like publicly traded companies (insert wedgie along with chant of “Geek!” here)!

See you in 13.

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