The Business of the Road: Guarantees, Splits and a $5.7 Billion Touring Economy
The Broadway League counted 38 Equity tours in 145 cities in 2023-24. The presenter pays a guarantee before a ticket is sold. Everything else in the model follows from that.
Two Broadway productions change cities this week, and both moves run on the same contract structure.
The Phantom of the Opera ends a 12-day run at The Smith Center in Las Vegas on November 1 and opens at the Civic Center Music Hall in Oklahoma City on November 4. The Book of Mormon ends at the Cadillac Palace in Chicago on November 1 and opens at the Venetian Theatre in Las Vegas on November 4. Neither production sells its own tickets city by city. Local presenters do, under deals built on a guarantee.
The size of the business
The Broadway League's Economic Impact of Touring Broadway report, released March 26, 2026, is the most recent full count. It covers the 2023-24 season and counts only tours under Actors' Equity contracts in the United States.
The headline figures: 38 tours played 145 cities. Producers spent $1.3 billion putting those tours on. Of that spending, $1.06 billion landed in the host communities and $215 million returned to the New York economy. Average weekly spending per tour, counting production and venue expenses, was $1,089,646.
With audience spending added, the League put touring Broadway's total economic impact at $5.7 billion. More than $1.34 billion of that was money audiences spent on dining, transport, shopping and lodging around performances, according to the League's release.
For scale at city level, the League's reporting put the Houston figure at about $61.6 million for the 2023-24 season, through Broadway at the Hobby Center and Broadway Across America.
How a week gets paid
The road reverses the Broadway arrangement. On Broadway, a production rents its theatre, pays the house's costs and keeps the box office risk. On tour, the risk starts with the presenter.
Under the standard model described in trade reporting on tour economics, the presenter pays the production a guarantee for the engagement: a fixed amount the production receives regardless of ticket sales. BroadwayWorld's March 2026 analysis of national tours put a typical guarantee "in the neighborhood of $300k" per week, plus a royalty up to a set amount.
The presenter then sells the tickets and pays its own house costs out of the gross: front-of-house staff, local marketing, venue operations. Once the engagement passes its recoup point, the remaining profit is split between presenter and production. That split is where the tour's upside lives, including overage payments to the company. The same analysis put cast and crew overages at 0.25% or 0.4% shares depending on whether the tour as a whole has recouped.
Producer newsletter Offscript Theatricals, in its 2026 touring explainer, sized the two ends of the market: a first-class touring week needs a market of about $1 million, while a non-Equity week works from about $370,000.
Why the math favors the road
Two structural facts do the work. Touring houses are bigger: the average touring venue holds more than 2,000 seats, against Broadway houses that mostly sit between 1,000 and 1,900. And a tour's weekly running costs run lower than a Broadway company's, because the presenter absorbs marketing and front-of-house costs that a Broadway production carries itself.
BroadwayWorld's analysis gave the working comparison: a large musical costing more than $500,000 a week to run on Broadway might run on tour at close to $300,000, around the level of the venue guarantee. The same analysis cited Phantom of the Opera's recent St. Louis stand, more than 65,000 patrons across two weeks, as the kind of volume a large road house produces.
That combination explains the pattern producers plan around: a show can miss on Broadway and still pay back on the road. Beetlejuice and A Beautiful Noise both recouped on tour after financially unsuccessful Broadway runs, per the same trade analysis.
Routing is the discipline
The guarantee model only works if dark travel time stays short. A touring company that is moving is spending on trucking and housing while grossing nothing.
This week's two moves are the model at its tightest. Both productions close on a Sunday and open in the next city on a Wednesday: a Monday load-out and travel pattern, a Tuesday load-in, a Wednesday opening. Phantom then repeats the pattern out of Las Vegas: Oklahoma City November 4-15, Tulsa November 18-29, Kansas City December 2-13, Dallas December 16 to January 3, 2027. The Book of Mormon goes from Las Vegas to Honolulu, November 25 to December 6, the longest jump on either itinerary.
Presenters build subscription seasons around that flow. A subscriber base sold a year ahead is what lets a presenter commit to a guarantee before single tickets move, which is why the anchor titles on a presenter's season are the ones with long Broadway records behind them.
The next League touring grosses story is not published weekly, the way Broadway grosses are. The road's numbers surface in reports like the League's March study: 38 tours, 145 cities, $5.7 billion in impact for one season.