NY’s Broadway grosses record $ 1.45b ticket sales

New York’s famed Broadway grossed its highest seasonal earnings on record, yielding $ 1.45 billion for the 2016- 17 season with its second- best attendance on record, a trade association announced on Tuesday.

Earnings were up 5.5 percent on the previous season, riding a wave of higher ticket prices in Manhattan’s theater district.

The 2016- 17 season saw 45 productions open, including 20 musicals and 20 plays, of which 13 and 10 respectively were original shows.

Total attendance was 13.27 million, fractionally lower than the highest attendance on record, 13.32 million the previous year when there were more productions.

The hottest ticket in town for the last two seasons has been smash- hit, hip- hop musical Hamilton that in 2016 won 11 Tony Awards – the equivalents of Academy Awards for the theater – after scooping a record number of 16 nominations.

This year’s earnings were announced three weeks before the 71st edition of the awards, which are set to be hosted by double Oscar- winning actor Kevin Spacey.

Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812, a musical inspired by the famous Russian novel War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, leads the way with 12 nominations, followed by 10 for a revival of Hello, Dolly! starring acting and singing legend Bette Midler.

There were nine nominations for Dear Evan Hansen about a high school student with anxiety, and eight for A Doll’s House, Part Two – an imagined sequel written by playwright Lucas Hnath to Henrik Ibsen’s classic play A Doll’s House.

Oslo, a stage play inspired by the Israeli- Palestinian peace process, and Come From Away, a musical about Canadians who welcomed travelers on September 11, 2001, when the US closed off its air space, each received seven award nominations.