Broadway is still recovering from the pandemic, and not doing as well as it did last year, but things will look up, because the Broadway community will innovate and because there will be more musicals this season. So said Broadway producer Ken Davenport in his hour-long “State of the State of Broadway 2026″ public Zoom call, attended by theater-loving Zoomers from throughout the country. With a couple of dozen slides, some of them reproduced below, Davenport analyzed some of the numbers supplied by the Broadway League, enumerated the challenges this year,  and gave an optimistic prediction, while occasionally waxing sentimental and cracking a few Dad jokes (which I’ve largely omitted.)

Davenport began by addressing the “cats in the room” — meaning the comments that Andrew Lloyd Webber made about the sorry state of Broadway after the announcement that “Cats” would close after only four months.

“So looking at these numbers, you can very easily assess that overall it was a relatively flat season across all major indicators, flat,” Davenport concluded. ” Not what any industry or business wants to see. “

But the previous season was especially robust

And there was a lot of competition for attention this year.

“The current administration-I’m not going to say much more than that, except let’s just say they are constantly doing things that distract people, confuse them, and scare them. And it’s global events like this that signal insecurity.”

(The “before Stub Hub!” comment means that actually more than $1.9 billion in tickets were sold, through the secondary market, which isn’t included in the official grosses. “It’s probably a 2.5 billion dollar industry.”

“This season was the biggest grossing Broadway season in history. Right, that is something to celebrate. So, if that’s something to celebrate, then what’s the problem? Why are shows closing faster”

The problem is that the pandemic interrupted many people’s theatergoing habit.

If there had been no pandemic, Davenport extrapolated from the growth in grosses up to 2020, Broadway would be a billion dollars richer now.

“If that revenue is there, we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now. We would have kept on with the same recoupment rate that we’ve had for 40 years.”

“There’s no question that our financial model needs to be examined, but it’s too easy to just say everything’s too expensive. More importantly, I believe we also need to grow our revenue and our audiences. We need new audiences to make up for the years of missing growth but continued inflation. We missed eight years of growth, but we got the inflation. We got to catch up. The challenge is, as we’ve seen from last season’s flat growth, making up this difference isn’t something that can happen overnight.”

The grosses have returned, but are only 4.5 percent higher than they were before the pandemic. Meanwhile, in the city as a whole:

But how are things doing as of today?

‘So far, not so good. I’m not going to sugarcoat it. Not so good. But wait for it. We just have to wait for it. I believe that we’re going to make this up. I believe this season will grow at a rate greater than our average historical rate of 6% and could eclipse 10% but that depends on all of us. Depends on you going out and buying a ticket, getting excited, telling your friends to go see a Broadway show.:

Musicals will be the engine. “I love plays, but musicals are what fuel Broadway growth in the short and long term. Right. That’s what people think about. That’s the reason why a lot of tourists come, like it or not. That’s what the market bears. This is what they enjoy. This is what can run for 30 years. These are the types of things that can help get us back on track. Frankly, more musicals.

‘In the past 20 years, just to give you an idea, if I’m like looking at this like a consultant, this is what I’m looking at. You want to get back to a healthier place?’

“Here’s the good news: looking ahead, we already have nine musicals announced, including five new ones, and there will be more. This is why, as I look at the season, I’m saying we’re going to grow, because musicals provide that growth. Of those five new shows, we’ve got some real headliners because they’re already getting a lot of attention. Paddington is one of them. Warriors, is another one. Evita. These are very high-profile shows. They are going to get a lot of attention, and a lot of people are going to want to see them and see them early.”

The question-and-answer session after his slide presentation was wide-ranging, from the beauty of live-streaming to the need to catch tourists’ attention before they even arrive in the city. “We need to make stuff that thrills an audience, whether they know they want to see it or not. A lot of people think, like, oh, you’re just trying to make Broadway a theme park, right? You’re just trying to give them the latest movie to musical adaptation. Absolutely not. One of my favorite lines is from Henry Ford: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses” He gave them a car instead. ou know what some of the most successful shows have been over the last few years? Oh Mary, Buena Vista Social Club, Maybe Happy Ending, right? Other more surefire commercial hits faded away. Those original ones, the unique ones, the shows that people don’t think they need; they buy because they’re so well done and so unique and so special. So yes, this is a message to you, theater makers out there: Your weird, wild, wacky, and very, very unique idea? Do that.”