LAWRENCE -- Two professors from New York University and Rider have proved beyond speculation that winning a Tony Award increases the life of a Broadway show, and they have the numbers to show just how much such recognition can help.
Jeff Simonoff, a statistics professor at NYU, teamed up with his former student and now associate professor at Rider, Lan Ma Nygren, to re-evaluate and elaborate on research that the two published in the Journal of Business in 2003.
Their research incorporates the effect that winning a Tony Award has on the longevity of a Broadway show, Simonoff said. This type of research can give the business end of Broadway an idea how well their shows will perform in a week or six months, he said.
Simonoff and Nygren are looking at data such as the shows opening date, weekly attendance rates, the genre of the show, and the Tony Award bump in attendance rates a direct effect of a shows publicity at the awards ceremony.
According to our study, each Tony win in one of the major categories is associated with a 50 percent longer expected run, while a nomination without the win is associated with a 30 percent longer expected lifespan, Nygren said via e-mail. The major categories refer to musical, tuner revival, play, play revival, director and lead actor and actress.
To some, winning a Tony award may be an obvious indication that a shows popularity could increase. Nygren does not disagree.
Its quite obvious that a big Tony winner should expect to run longer than it would have otherwise, but how much longer? she said.
One genre of play the musical trumps the rest, Simonoff said.
People in the business know that musicals last longer. These arent things that are really shocking, he said. But the statistics modeling can confirm that common wisdom. It also allows you to attach a number to a (shows success).
The research shows that winning a Tony Award increases the lifespan of a show by 50 percent while nominations get 30 percent longevity. Musicals have a 50 percent longer run than nonmusicals while revivals are less successful, with 20 percent shorter runs that nonrevivals.
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Rider University, NYU professors link Tony Awards and shows' longevity on Broadway
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