Why some Broadway shows spend up to $1 million to campaign for a Tony Award

It’s all to celebrate the set-in-the-heartland, “Hee Haw”-inspired show, which has a plot revolving around a farming community and its signature corn crop. But there’s also a more serious purpose behind the promotional campaign: It’s to drum up support among voters for this year’s Tony Awards, set for Sunday evening (starting at 8 p.m. ET on CBS and Paramount+). After all, “Shucked” is up for nine awards, including the biggest one of the night — best musical.

“A Tony Award is a massive thing. We’re going to keep going and keep doing things until they tell us to stop,” “Shucked” lead producer Mike Bosner told MarketWatch.

“Shucked” is hardly alone among the nominated shows, especially musicals, to launch various promotional efforts around Tony time and hopefully get the attention of the 700-plus voters for the awards.

“Some Like It Hot,” also a contender for best musical, recently held a special event at Marie’s Crisis Café, a popular New York City piano bar, that featured Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, the respective composer and lyricist behind the show. The musical is based on the classic 1959 film of the same name.

And “& Juliet,” another contender, has gone the celebrity route, bringing in comedic actor Eugene Levy of “Schitt’s Creek” fame to narrate a promotional video about the show. Levy has a connection to the musical because David West Read, who wrote the book for the Shakespeare-themed “& Juliet,” was an Emmy-winning writer and executive producer of “Schitt’s Creek.”

Why the big Tony push? The vast majority of Broadway shows lose money — and musicals can typically cost more than $10 million (and in some cases more than $20 million) to produce. Winning a best musical Tony can give a show a significant box-office boost and, in turn, can mean the difference between being in the black or red, industry professionals say. And that’s not even factoring in how it can boost ticket sales if and when a show decides to tour the country.

Of course, campaigning for awards is hardly a new phenomenon in the entertainment world. The practice is commonly associated with the Oscars, especially after now-disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein made it something of his calling. In particular, Weinstein launched an ambitious campaign for “Shakespeare in Love,” the 1998 film he produced that ended up nabbing Oscar best-picture honors over Steven Spielberg’s much more prominent “Saving Private Ryan.”

In several ways, Tony campaigns are a more understated affair, befitting the fact that Broadway is a much smaller business than Hollywood. Broadway shows took in $1.58 billion at the box office during the 2022-23 season; by contrast, Hollywood saw North American ticket sales of $7.5 billion. (Both industries are still recovering from the pandemic and have yet to reach to their pre-COVID sales levels.)

Neil Meron, a veteran Broadway and film producer who’s behind the Tony-nominated “Some Like It Hot,” says the difference between Tony and Oscar campaigning is particularly reflected in ad spending. The Oscars are frequently associated with the “For your consideration” ads, often placed in trade publications, that make a direct appeal to nominators and voters. With the Tonys, there can be some targeted advertising, but campaigns are more about getting creative and playing into the show’s theme and messaging.

“Anything we do should be entertaining and informative,” Meron says.

It could be argued that a Tony campaign is more critical than an Oscar campaign in one particular way: Oscar voters almost always have the opportunity to see a film well after it premieres and screening opportunities are often made available to them for such a purpose.

By contrast, with Tony voters, it’s all about seeing the production live in a Broadway theater — there’s no video substitute or other way for them to acquaint or reacquaint themselves with a show. That makes it especially challenging for productions that opened in the fall and may now be a distant memory in the minds of voters.

“You can’t just send them a screener,” says Ken Davenport, a veteran Broadway producer and Tony voter. And Davenport says that’s where the creativity in Tony campaigning comes into play: A fun promotion can trigger memories — hopefully positive — of the show.

“You just want to be top of mind,” adds “Shucked” producer Bosner.

None of this campaigning comes cheap, however. Beyond the cost of hosting events, placing advertising and sending promotional mailers to voters (another big part of the run-up to the Tonys), there’s also the expense in some cases of staging a number from the show at the awards ceremony itself. Even if that comes after the voters have cast their ballots, it still can serve as a way to woo theatergoers to buy a ticket.

Add it up and industry professionals says shows spend anywhere from $100,000 to $1 million on a Tony campaign. A source close to “Shucked” said the Tony tally for the musical is around $500,000, for example.

And that’s not including the cost of providing each Tony voter with tickets to the show (and in some cases, inviting them back for a second visit). Given that voters are usually given prime seats, that can equate to easily more than $200,000 in lost ticket revenue, says Davenport.

While Broadway producers may not be wild about what the Tonys cost them, the tally is generally seen as the cost of doing business. After all, they have already spent millions to mount the show, so why be cheap when it comes to positioning the production for the industry’s biggest honor?

“It’s in for a penny, in for a pound,” says Mike Rafael, a veteran Broadway ticketing consultant.

The American Theatre Wing and the Broadway League, the two organizations behind the Tonys, don’t have a lot of restrictions when it comes to campaigning, with one notable exception – a “no disparagement” rule. That is, shows can promote themselves, but they can’t cast “any negative or derogatory light on a competing production.”

And what if all this Tony campaigning fails to result in a win? Producers say it may not be a waste, since the campaigns can create buzz for the shows that may spark interest from the broader theater-loving public.

At least that’s how Eva Price, the Tony Award-winning producer behind “& Juliet,” sees the situation when it comes to mounting an ambitious campaign.

“If at the end of the day your show doesn’t win a Tony or Tonys, you have at least given to the world 50 reasons why you are special, worthy and an exciting offering in this year’s Broadway season and that hopefully cements a new fan and sells a ticket,” she says. “And that’s the name of the game after all, isn’t it?”