Every Broadway Show Ranked by What a Ticket Actually Cost Last Week: Other Desert Cities, $301.23

The weekly gross chart answers the producer's question: who took the most money? This list answers yours: if you walked up last week, what did a seat actually cost, show by show?

The math is one division per show — the week's gross divided by the week's attendance, both from the Broadway League's table for the week ending November 1, 2026: 33 shows, $29,572,284 taken, 251,700 people seated, which makes the all-Broadway average ticket $117.49. Every average below is that division, done by us; the League publishes the two inputs, we did the long division.

The ranking

1. Other Desert Cities — $301.23 ($2,347,158 ÷ 7,792; sold out at 100%) 2. Much Ado About Nothing — $238.36 ($358,262 ÷ 1,503) — one preview performance only; treat as a curiosity, not a price 3. Hamilton — $218.03 ($2,317,475 ÷ 10,629; 100%) 4. Oh, Mary! — $184.78 ($1,309,171 ÷ 7,085) 5. 860 — $152.59 ($1,353,611 ÷ 8,871) 6. MJ — $149.32 ($1,616,111 ÷ 10,823) 7. A Few Good Men — $144.81 ($1,277,792 ÷ 8,824) 8. The Lion King — $129.53 ($1,571,842 ÷ 12,135) 9. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child — $127.34 ($1,629,103 ÷ 12,793) 10. The Rocky Horror Show — $126.87 ($970,053 ÷ 7,646) 11. Paranormal Activity — $117.46 ($1,094,504 ÷ 9,318) 12. Chicago — $113.83 ($787,225 ÷ 6,916) 13. Hadestown — $108.76 ($758,925 ÷ 6,978) 14. Operation Mincemeat — $108.74 ($550,216 ÷ 5,060) 15. Just in Time — $106.35 ($480,804 ÷ 4,521) 16. The Lost Boys — $99.25 ($1,110,151 ÷ 11,185) 17. The Book of Mormon — $98.68 ($726,212 ÷ 7,359) 18. Maybe Happy Ending — $98.43 ($616,480 ÷ 6,263) 19. The Outsiders — $98.35 ($605,946 ÷ 6,161) 20. The Great Gatsby — $91.63 ($860,019 ÷ 9,386) 21. Schmigadoon! — $91.02 ($760,089 ÷ 8,351) 22. & Juliet — $90.96 ($610,232 ÷ 6,709) 23. Buena Vista Social Club — $90.41 ($678,878 ÷ 7,509) 24. Six — $89.62 ($443,545 ÷ 4,949) 25. Wicked — $83.80 ($1,064,328 ÷ 12,701) 26. Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York) — $83.53 ($396,769 ÷ 4,750) 27. The Fantasticks — $80.96 ($305,307 ÷ 3,771; in previews) 28. School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play — $77.56 ($373,275 ÷ 4,813) 29. Aladdin — $76.52 ($883,171 ÷ 11,542) 30. Wanted — $74.31 ($508,919 ÷ 6,849; in previews) 31. Stranger Things: The First Shadow — $71.29 ($568,595 ÷ 7,976) 32. The Imaginary Invalid — $68.86 ($363,031 ÷ 5,272) 33. Downstate — $52.30 ($275,085 ÷ 5,260; in previews)

(Gross and attendance are the League's as published, to the dollar and the person. Much Ado's $238.36 is independently printed on Playbill's production page, and trade coverage of the same table prints $301.23 for Other Desert Cities and $117.49 for the all-show average — three outside checks that land exactly on our divisions.)

What the ranking actually says

Scarcity beats scale. The top of this list is small rooms at full capacity: Other Desert Cities sold every seat and charged like it. The giants work the other end of the trade — Harry Potter seated the week's biggest house (12,793 people) at a mid-table $127.34, and the Lion King drew 12,135 at $129.53.

Wicked at $83.80 is the people's champion. Twelve thousand seven hundred people saw the biggest phenomenon on Broadway for an average of eighty-four dollars — proof that a long run and a very big house can keep a phenomenon within reach.

Previews sit where previews sit. Two of the bottom six are still in previews (Wanted, Downstate), and The Fantasticks sits just above them at #27, also in previews — the part of the run when houses are papered, prices are soft and friends-and-family energy does the marketing. Judge them after opening.

The season's weather report. Season-to-date, Broadway has taken $726,010,709 from 5,929,169 attendees, against $789,456,689 and 6,124,466 at the same point last season — down 8.0% in money, down 3.2% in people, per the League's own difference line. Prices per seat are holding; the seats themselves are the scarcer commodity. That's the story we will keep pulling at: Broadway isn't charging too much. It's filling too little.