The cast of “Schmigadoon!” performs at the 79th annual Tony Awards (Getty Images)

PLAY THE BILLS

Last night’s Tony Awards were a curtain call for a record-smashing season on Broadway

This year’s star-studded theater awards wrapped up the highest-grossing season Broadway’s ever seen.

6/8/26 10:27AM

Some of the biggest winners at the 79th Tony Awards on Sunday were revivals of beloved American shows, including “Death of a Salesman” and “Ragtime,” with John Lithgow and Lesley Manville snagging trophies for their roles in “Giant” and “Oedipus,” respectively.

But the Great White Way itself might also have been celebrating something of a revival, with the awards show capping off a record-breaking run. Industry data from trade association The Broadway League reveal that the 2025-26 Broadway season was the highest-grossing ever, besting the prior year’s record after generating nearly $1.91 billion in ticket sales.

Broadway Attendance Jun 2026 — Sherwood News

The season, which officially began on May 26, 2025, and wrapped on May 24 this year, saw total attendance reach 14.6 million, filling roughly 90.8% of seats across 74 productions, per The Broadway League.

The weekly average attendance for 2025-26 works out as ~280,000 — much greater than prepandemic levels, which were at ~257,000 per week from 2013 to 2020. Adjusting for the additional week that was included in the prior season, grosses were up 3.5%, attendance was up 1.8%, and average ticket prices were 1.7% higher at ~$131 a pop, per CNBC.

The show does go on

On that last point, the cost of Broadway tickets continued to surge as a spate of star-studded productions featuring the likes of George Clooney and Denzel Washington drove a 14% attendance bump for plays. Indeed, CNBC reported that the 21 plays released this season grossed a combined ~$463 million — more than 2x what the category notched only two seasons ago.

Meanwhile, attendance for musicals fell 4.7%. Even so, Apple’s musical-based-on-musicals still broke a leg, as the Broadway adaptation of TV show “Schmigadoon!” won four awards last night... officially making the tech giant an EGOT.

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The BBC has become the world’s top news website... by collapsing a little less than its competition

Press Gazette just published its annual look at the biggest news sites in the world across all languages; for the most part, it doesn’t make for particularly pretty reading.

The journalism industry publication’s latest update, which is based on estimates provided by Similarweb for May, found that 37 of the world’s 50 most visited news sites saw their reach shrink. Press Gazette highlighted that American outlets have been hit particularly hard by declining Google traffic compared to European counterparts, owing to the platform’s AI features rolling out earlier in the US.

Even the BBC, having climbed the rankings from last year to top the 2026 chart — reportedly in part thanks to Similarweb’s decision to combine the “.co.uk” and “.com” versions of the URL, given that the sites redirect to each other depending on the user’s location — showed a 1.9% decline from last year.

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Kids these days are listening to more songs from the good old days

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Drake whiffs on an expected No. 1 on Spotify

Drake started at the bottom and he’s here, but not quite at the top... of Spotify, at least.

It’s been nearly three weeks since Drake dropped his three surprise albums — “Iceman,” “Habibti,” and “Maid of Honour.” Heading into the month, prediction markets were rating it a near certainty, a 98% chance, that Drake’s sonic onslaught was enough to snag the No. 1 slot on Spotify at least once in June.

But, while he surpassed the late Michael Jackson and took up three slots on the Billboard album chart at once, his newly released songs haven’t quite cracked the popular music-streaming platform’s top charts, and market seem to think the moment has passed.

(Event contracts are offered through Robinhood Derivatives, LLC — probabilities referenced or sourced from KalshiEx LLC or ForecastEx LLC.)

Spotify’s “Top Songs - Global” chart currently show that Jackson’s “Billie Jean,” which is more than four decades old, Justin Bieber’s “Beauty and a Beat,” which climbed back to the top of Spotify charts following his Coachella set in the spring, Olivia Rodrigo’s new angsty love song “The Cure,” and BTS’s “Swim” are all ahead of Drake’s “STFU Janice” from his “Iceman” album.

While Spotify previously reported last month that Drake’s “Make Them Cry” was the most streamed album in a single day this year, that was later revealed to be a data error.

Prediction markets currently show traders are betting there’s only a 15% chance Drake will have a No. 1 song on Spotify in June.

Meanwhile, Taylor Swift is in the lead at 98% — a day before the release of her new original song “I Knew It, I Knew You,” which she wrote and performed for Disney and Pixar’s upcoming “Toy Story 5” — followed by Olivia Rodrigo, whose highly anticipated album “You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love” comes out next Friday.