Dataset
For my first Viz of the Dashboard week we were challenged to find a story in the Broadway database from playbill. This was not your typical excel dataset or a SQL database to extract and immediately start analysis, it was a shown as a weekly gross table highlighting all the Broadway shows of that week with key metrics such as the avg ticket price, number of seats sold, theatre capacity and capacity fulfilment
ETL Process
The first task was to scrape this data and process it in Alteryx to a format usable for analysis. Since this database was starting from 1985 to present it would have been a massive undertaking to download that volume and process with a same-day deadline. To ensure efficiency in processing the data and sticking to my deadline I limited the extraction from 2024 onwards and challenged myself to find a story within this timeline.
This part of extracting process was quite challenging because i had go back to notes and see how regex worked to web scrape it from the site. apart from regex tool i used few tools like formula, data cleansing and select to get my data into a proper structure for my analysis.
Exploration
To start off I wanted to explore and understand the dataset because I had a limited timeline to play with so extensive trend or growth analysis would not be possible. In this stage I found it helpful to drag in and recreate a table similar to the original webpage data, but at an aggregated level. I then bought in some additional metrics like the avg. weekly gross per show and number of weeks running. I wanted to see who the standout performers were. This is where my story jumped out to me, I saw some big numbers for shows that were running for a long time however, the surprise was the list toppers were a couple of shows with a limited run but almost 1.5x the weekly gross. This piqued my curiosity, and I explored further.
The story
I wanted to first understand why these limited run shows were able to command such a high-ticket price and weekly gross. Doing some quick desktop research, it became apparent that Broadway is split into these long standing and yearlong productions and limited run but higher priced shows. I picked a few of the standout limited runs to see what the drivers could be and what immediately jumped out at me was the star-studded cast. I mean who wouldn’t want to pay $300 per ticket to watch a live performance of George Clooney! in good Night and Good Luck. Othello similarly was headed by another oscar winner in Denzel Washington. These big-name cards are instrumental in drawing the premium ticket crowd. These stars are only available for a limited time and the ability to see them up close and live definitely impacted their show’s stellar performance against some longstanding Broadway juggernaut like ‘Wicked’ and ‘The Lion King’.
You can find the link to my dashboard below
https://public.tableau.com/shared/6JS9Z2P4N?:display_count=n&:origin=viz_share_link