It was five years ago today — March 12, 2020 — that the widening coronavirus pandemic forced Broadway to go dark, museums to shut their doors, concert halls and opera houses to go silent and stadiums and arenas to remain empty.
At the time, they hoped to reopen in a month. It took many a year and a half.
Since live performances resumed, the recovery has been uneven, but there are signs that audiences are finally coming back. Here’s a snapshot of where things stand:
Broadway is 95 percent back.
It’s been a slow road back for Broadway, but the industry is finally nearing its prepandemic levels. Attendance so far this season is at about 95 percent of what it was at the same point in the 2018-2019 season, its last full season before the pandemic, when it was setting records.
“Oh, Mary!” has been a surprise hit this season, reminding the industry that shows can work without known I.P. or famous stars. “Wicked” is defying gravity thanks to the renewed interest brought by the film adaptation. For the first time since 2018, all 41 Broadway theaters have had shows in them this season. And there are more shows than usual regularly grossing more than $1 million a week.
But — and this is a big but — profitability is down. That’s because the costs of producing on Broadway keep rising, so even reasonably strong ticket sales are not enough.
Beyond Times Square, the picture is decidedly mixed. Touring Broadway shows have been selling quite strongly. But nonprofit theaters, both Off Broadway and in cities across the country, are struggling. Having burned through the government assistance that came at the height of the pandemic, many regional theaters are now reporting budget deficits and are programming fewer shows and attracting smaller audiences than they did previously.
— Michael Paulson
The pop touring industry is setting records thanks to big names and rising ticket prices.
The multibillion-dollar business of pop music tours reached a new high in 2024, with fans spending $9.5 billion for tickets to the top 100 tours, according to the trade publication Pollstar. That is up an astonishing 71 percent from 2019, the last full year before the pandemic.
Those numbers are driven by superstar outings by the likes of Taylor Swift, Beyoncé and Coldplay, and by the industry’s willingness to consistently raise ticket prices. (According to Pollstar, a seat to one of the top global tours now goes for an average of almost $136, up from $79 a decade ago.) Swift’s Eras Tour alone, which spanned 149 shows in 2023 and 2024, sold a record $2.1 billion in tickets, to say nothing of the small fortunes dropped by fans on merchandise and friendship bracelet beads.
But there are still signs of potential trouble ahead. The pace of growth slowed last year. Consumers continue to gripe over high ticket prices and rampant markups by scalpers (though that has not kept fans from scooping up every available seat for Oasis and Kendrick Lamar). And for artists who are not celebrities, rapidly rising costs and stagnant performance fees have been eating away at already-thin margins, putting touring out of reach for many unsigned artists.
— Ben Sisario
Hollywood has fewer big screens, fewer wide releases and fewer moviegoers.
When Sean Baker accepted his Oscar for best director at this years’s Academy Awards for his film “Anora,” he issued what he called a “battle cry” to the movie industry: “Filmmakers, keep making films for the big screen.”
There are fewer of those big screens in the United States now than there were before the pandemic: 35,481, down from 41,172, according to the London-based research firm Omdia. The total box office last year, topped by Disney’s “Inside Out 2” and “Deadpool and Wolverine” was $8.7 billion, down from $11.3 billion in 2019. Total admissions were about 800 million last year, down from 1.3 billion before the pandemic.
Last year was the first since the pandemic that the domestic box office did not improve upon the prior year — a development the industry attributes largely to the strikes that shut down filmmaking for half of 2023, which depleted the number of films ready for release. Wide releases, or films that play on more than 2,000 screens, dropped to 94 last year from 101 in 2023 — and from 112 in 2019.
With fewer films in the can, some studios upended their distribution plans and released movies that had been initially slated to debut on streaming platforms in theaters, including Disney’s “Moana 2,” Paramount’s “Mean Girls” and “Red One” from Amazon Studios.
— Nicole Sperling
The Met Opera has pivoted to new works, and Opera Philadelphia is offering $11 seats.
Even before the pandemic, many American opera companies were struggling to survive — with audiences aging and dwindling, and expenses rising for an art form that requires large orchestras, casts and choruses and often elaborate stagings.
So some have tried to reinvent themselves since reopening.
The Metropolitan Opera decided to focus on contemporary opera, hoping to reach new audiences. It reopened from the shutdown in 2021 with Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” its first work by a Black composer, which sold out. But the strategy has had mixed results since then: Jeanine Tesori’s “Grounded,” which opened the current season, had attendance of 50 percent. The Met, which has drawn tens of millions of dollars from its endowment fund since reopening, is on track to hit 75 percent attendance this season, returning to prepandemic levels.
Other opera companies have also pivoted. Opera Philadelphia is now offering all seats for $11 (or a higher voluntary price), in a bid to attract audiences. Los Angeles Opera, citing rising expenses, canceled plans for two world premieres: Mason Bates’s “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay” and Missy Mazzoli’s “Lincoln in the Bardo.” Many opera companies have cut back on productions and performances to save money.
— Javier C. Hernández
The major sports leagues are booming.
Empty arenas and stadiums during made-for-television sporting events — some filled with cardboard cutouts of fans — were among the most memorable images of the pandemic. Now fans are making up for lost time, and leagues are looking to capitalize.
The four major North American professional sports leagues — the National Football League, the National Basketball Association, Major League Baseball and the National Hockey League — all reported attendance upticks from their most recent seasons compared to their last full seasons before the pandemic.
The N.F.L. saw the sharpest percentage increase — about 18.7 million fans attended games in 2024, a 10-percent spike from just over 17 million in 2019 — in part because an extra game was added to its regular season schedule in 2021 as part of a new media-rights package. Baseball came in second with a 4.1 percent increase — 71.3 million people attended games last season, up from 68.5 million in 2019.
New state-of-the-art venues are being built, and many stadiums are being renovated to add more seats, including premium luxury suites and club areas. Leagues have also prioritized hospitality packages for high-paying customers, including better food options and expanded perks at events, such as access to the field for pictures after the Super Bowl.
— Emmanuel Morgan
Orchestras are recovering, but San Francisco found it could no longer afford its star maestro.
Orchestras feared that it would be difficult to recover from the shutdown and from their uneven first years back, when many older patrons remained wary of in-person performances. But the number of tickets sold last year was roughly back to prepandemic levels, according to a study of 47 medium and large orchestras by TRG Arts, an analytics firm, in partnership with the League of American Orchestras.
While the number of single tickets orchestras sold decreased slightly, the number of tickets sold through packages to multiple concerts actually increased, bucking a yearslong decline. The League said that the gains were driven largely by existing subscribers spending more than before on larger and more expensive subscriptions.
But many orchestras are facing serious financial struggles, since box office revenue covers only a small portion of their expenses and fund-raising has been a challenge. That came into stark relief at the San Francisco Symphony. Its music director, the renowned conductor and composer Esa-Pekka Salonen, announced last year that he would step down as the orchestra’s music director amid a dispute with management over budget cuts.
— Javier C. Hernández
Museum attendance has yet to fully rebound, and some institutions are laying off workers.
When the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Brooklyn Museum announced dozens of layoffs in recent weeks, executives pointed to the lasting impact of the pandemic on lower attendance and higher costs. They weren’t the only cultural institutions struggling with the aftershocks of the lockdown: the American Alliance of Museums estimated that only half of the country’s museums have seen their attendance recover fully since the pandemic.
Institutions have experimented with a number of initiatives to lure visitors back, including free and discounted admissions and longer hours. Some regional institutions, and museums that once relied on international tourism, have faced particular struggles. The Guggenheim said visitors were down by 31 percent compared to 2019, when it still had the popular Hilma af Klint exhibition on view. Similarly, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston was down 26 percent and the Metropolitan Museum of Art was down around 13 percent from 2019, when it still operated the Met Breuer on Madison Avenue.
— Zachary Small and Robin Pogrebin