Tourism Makes Broadway Enjoy Record-Breaking Season

Broadway sold a record 12 million tickets in the 2005-2006 season, a rise of 4.1 percent from the previous season, with more than half taken by tourists, according to statistics released last week.

Reporting on New York´s theater results in the 12 months to May 28, the League of American Theaters and Producers said it was the first time the Broadway attendance figure had crossed the 12 million mark.

Box office grosses rose 12 percent to $861.6 million, also a record, the League said. The number of seats sold was 12,003,148 while the percentage of seats filled hit an all-time high of 81.6 percent.

“A main contributor to these increases was strong attendance by tourists,” the League said in a statement, adding that domestic tourists accounted for more than 5 million tickets and international visitors, more than 1.3 million.

Tourism fell sharply after the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001 but has been recovering recently.

Long-running hits such as “Mamma Mia,” “The Lion King” and “The Phantom of the Opera” continue to draw near-capacity audiences while a string of high-profile new shows closed early after being savaged by critics and spurned by audiences.