The 75th annual Tony Awards drew an audience of 3.86 million viewers on Sunday, which is up 39% from last year’s hybrid telecast.
The awards show was also streamed on Paramount+ and other CBS platforms, where viewership was up 30%, according to CBS. It marked the most-viewed livestream to date on digital platforms.
As for ratings, data on how the show fared among the key 18-49 demographic are not yet available.
This was the first traditional Tony Awards since 2019, after the show was canceled in 2020 due to the COVID pandemic. Last year, the Tonys opted for a hybrid special titled “The Tony Awards Present: Broadway’s Back,” where some awards were also handed out.
That telecast settled for 2.6 million total viewers and a 0.4 demo rating, which was less than half of the 5.4 million viewers the show got in 2019 — an all-time low at the time. The 2019 show got a 0.8 demo rating.
The year before, the 2018 telecast had 6.3 million viewers and a 1.0 rating among adults 18-49. (The 2017 show fetched 6 million viewers and a 0.9 rating in the key demo.)
Ariana DeBose kicked off the CBS telecast on Sunday night — quite literally — with a snazzy opening number which blended the lyrics and scores of two random musicals at a time all while wearing a white-hot Michael Jackson-inspired sequined suit.
It was otherwise a fairly by-the-numbers ceremony with some notable firsts (first-ever non-binary winner Toby Marlow, who co-won the Best Score Tony for “Six”, and Jennifer Hudson became an EGOT winner at long last, as producer of Best Musical winner “A Strange Loop”).
See the full list of winners here.
