Tony Award Viewership from 1974–2021

The Tony awards is an award show that recognizes excellence in live Broadway theater. The first award show, 75 years ago, was aired in 1946. In light of the Tony awards happening this Sunday, it’s nice to look back and see the different viewerships among the years. But according to Forbes, the 2021 Tony’s was an all time low amongst viewership.

This data goes all the way back to 1974 and gauges the number of viewers in millions all the way up to 2021. The highest recorded number of viewers was in 1974 with 20.3 million viewers. And then took a sharp decline from 1976 to 1988, going from 16 to 12 million viewers.

In 1999 only 9.16 million viewers tuned in, and that number would stay under 10 million until 2021. The highest peak it reached since then was in 2016 with 8.7 million viewers, a good 2 million above the viewership that came in 2015.

The sharp increase in 2016 is no surprise, with the breakout musical at the time being Hamilton, which earned the most awards at a whopping 11 including best musical. Not only was this musical revolutionary in bringing viewers back to the theater, it brought people outside of the theater community to tune in because of how popular it became.

From 2017 onward it was a slow decline in viewership, but 2021 had the worst viewership, only bringing in 2.6 million viewers. The reason being not only was this Tony award a year late, this was a ceremony for the 2020–2021 season that was postponed during COVID, but it also was only available on streaming, which hurt viewership immensely.