Branson theater numbers look good—until you remove the giants

It’s been reported that Branson’s theater revenues are up. But it might not hold true for all theaters. The Old Seagull would suggest that the figures used for those purposes are somewhat askew if you include Sight and Sound and Dolly Parton’s Stampede in the totals used to make that determination.

The Ole Seagull wishes he had a dollar for every time someone connected with a theatre has told him how much their traffic is down. Of course, he’s not talking about the Goliaths—Sight and Sound, and Dolly Parton’s Stampede. From an operational, financial and marketing perspective, including their revenues to arrive at a figure that shows Branson’s shows are up is simply unrealistic, resulting in an inaccurate financial evaluation of the average Branson show.

Although there are many ways, one quick way would be to include a new item on the financials called the “Show Index.” The show index would not include the top two and bottom two revenue-producing shows in the total figure used. Although not perfect, it would be a start and would be much more representative of the actual performance of the average Branson show.

The result would not be by individual show, but like it is now, just one total figure. The only difference would be that there would be one figure for Branson shows, with the Branson index figure right next to it.“

But Seagull won’t certain higher revenue producing shows throw that off, too?” Not really. They will all be locally produced and backed shows, the very type of shows, absent the Goliaths, that the average Branson show is competing against.

If the index shows that it’s up and your show is down, at least you know where you stand as compared with you peers.

The neat thing about the index is that we’re not disclosing any individual information about a theatre. We use the financial data already in place, so we can go back years to see the trend in the index. An Ole Seagull will be shocked if the index is trending up over the last three years. What do you think?