“I Hope I Get It”: impact of Tony Award nominations and wins on Broadway production longevity

Abstract

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to ascertain the relative impact of different Tony Award nominations and wins on the financial success of a Broadway theater production, as defined by the length of the production’s run.Design/methodology/approachCox hazard regression was used to identify the impact of Tony Award nominations and wins (time-varying covariates), while controlling for several time-invariant covariates: type of production (play or musical, revival or original Broadway production), production costs (operationalized via the cast size), the month and year of opening, and initial marketing success (defined as the percentage of first full week’s tickets sold).FindingsThe award with the strongest relationship with production longevity was the Tony Award for Best Musical (nomination OR=0.566, p=0.110; win OR=0.323, p=0.020). Several other awards had a relationship with production longevity, but most were not statistically significant.Research limitations/implicationsThe limitations include the low statistical power for many time-varying covariates and the cumulative impact of multiple awards was not investigated. Future researchers interested in the Broadway industry should not combine Tony Awards because of the varying impact on economic outcomes for a production.Originality/valueThis study is the first to investigate all 22 Tony Award nominations and wins and their individual impact on an economic outcome. This paper includes the study’s raw data and SPSS syntax to comply with open science practices. The author encourages readers to replicate the analysis.