The Lion Roars Tonight Or Does It?

[Phantom of London]

It is great The Lion King last year went into a recession defying year to record its best ever year in the West End pulling in a cool £38.6m in 2012, so good to see the show record such a solid figure which enables the show to employ so many people and I know The Lion King has such a big cast and employs many people backstage also.

Also great to see that Disney are open with us and are willing to share there grosses with us, which always makes a interesting read and comparison, this is where New York leads the West End and that is with their openness?

However here is the elephant in the room, The Lion King in New York in a smaller theatre (The Minskoff) can pull in a mind boggling £58.5m a cool £20m more than London, surely this puts London Theatre in its place, second place, but not second rate?

[Jonwo]

Tickets for The Lion King are cheaper in London than they are on Broadway so naturally it won't make as much money and also a 2000 seater theatre is more difficult to sell out than a 1600 seat theatre. It's incredible that it's still doing great business and it'll around for another 5 years.

[AnythingGoes23]

Also the Lyceum has a bigger Upper Circle and more RVs and side cheaper seats, Broadway's theatre tend to have only 3 price points as their theatres aren't so old so don't have pillars and bad side views etc.

Lion King is still a firm leader of the pack in the West End.

[Jonwo]

I remember when The Lion King on Broadway moved from the New Amsterdam to the Minskoff, while it has 200 less seats, it had a higher gross potential because they could sell more higher priced tickets in the stalls.

[philitalia]

Bigger grosses do not necessarily mean more profits.
Maybe the WestEnd production is more profitable at lower grosses ??

Ticket prices in the WestEnd are more than high enough, no need to give them any ideas

[ContinentalNettle]

There is a higher weekly running cost for the broadway production for numerous reasons, mostly due to the higher rent price of the theatre. This all adds up to make both productions profiting similar amounts.