After the excitement of the monolith musicals Wicked and We Will Rock You announcing record breaking sales and attendance figures at the beginning of the year, it seems that the Society of London Theatre wants the world to know that the entire West End is defying the credit crunch. According to the Society, 2008 was a record breaking year, with 13,807,286 people taking in London shows, spending a total of £480,563,674, marking a 1% increase on 2007’s attendances and 3% up on box office revenue.
Although figures made public by SOLT this week are impressive and encouraging, they fall short of naming names and identifying specific shows. They did acknowledge that the revenue of plays was down on 2007, not surprising, given the spate of early closures in 2008 that, for a while, threatened to turn into a Broadway style bloodbath.
However, SOLT, and London theatres in general for that matter, are notorious for keeping financial affairs close to their chests, while in New York, attendance numbers and ticket sales are broken down and made public weekly. It has often been suggested that the West End would benefit from such a facility. Thankfully, some producers are more than happy to divulge their own figures, as Cameron MacIntosh did recently when revenues from advance sales of tickets for Oliver exceeded all previous shows.
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