LAST UPDATE | 5 Jul 2023

RTÉ HAS PROVIDED documents detailing the financial impact of last year’s Toy Show The Musical project ahead of this week’s Oireachtas committee meetings.

Documents seen by The Journal reveal that the inaugural Toy Show musical last year made just €495,961 in revenue against costs of €2,699,193. In total, the project made a loss of €2,203,231.

The musical was based on the annual Late Late Toy Show and was billed as one girl’s own Toy Show adventure.

“With the entire Toy Show in jeopardy, Nell and the local kids must find a way to save the night and keep everyone’s favourite TV show alive,” read the RTÉ synopsis for the musical. 

Tickets were priced from €25. 

RTÉ’s economic forecast for the second quarter of 2022 and had factored revenue from the event as being worth €3.215 million, based on the assumption that 83.75% of tickets would be sold across 54 shows.

Meeting this target would have required selling over 90,000 tickets.

In the end, RTÉ sold just 11,044 tickets across 27 performances (as half of the shows ended up being cancelled), the documents show.

Comp and guest tickets made up 5,573 total audience members, while competition winners made up a further 3,645.

Including RTÉ guests, free tickets, and competition winners, Toy Show The Musical managed to fill just 41% of the available capacity of the Convention Centre.

At the time, RTÉ reported that cancellations were due to illness among the cast and crew and RTÉ said the team did “everything possible” to avoid cancellations. 

These cancellations ended up forcing refunds worth €251,000. 

A breakdown of costs associated with the musical, which was spearheaded by RTÉ’s Director of Strategy Rory Coveney, shows that almost half of the cost went towards hiring the Convention Centre venue, and “showrunning costs”.

Just over half a million was spent on creative team and management costs, while €369,853 went on rehearsal costs. €156,020 was spent on “marketing and press”.

Speaking on Morning Ireland, Labour Party Marie Sherlock said: “I must say, in some ways I’m kind of almost gobsmacked at what we’re learning… Actual revenues were only about 15% of the forecast revenues.”

“I know the phrase ‘flop’ has been used, but that’s more than a flop, that is an absolute disaster in terms of the planning that went into that show and how it could have failed so badly,” said the Senator, who sat on the Oireachtas Media Committee last week in place of her colleague Annie Hoey.

In a statement issued on Wednesday afternoon, Minister for Media and Culture Catherine Martin noted “the deeply unsatisfactory nature in which information is being provided by the Executive”.

As part of the same statement, Martin said that Chair of the RTÉ Board Siún Ní Raghallaigh had “confirmed they will initiate a further Grant Thornton investigation of the Toy Show the Musical”.

The production was also criticised at the time for having an unfair advantage over smaller pantomime shows, which were largely cancelled during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Last December, the Dáil’s spending watchdog asked RTÉ to clarify how much money had been spent on the musical. 

Speaking at the time, the chair of the Public Accounts Committee Brian Stanley said the financial risks involved with the musical appeared to “be too high”. 

Stanley added: “On the face of it, it appears that proper market research was not done. There were empty seats and shows being cancelled.”

RTÉ had defended the production, with director of strategy Rory Coveney stating in December that while he was disappointed with ticket sales for the show, he hoped it would be a “longer term investment”.

Taking to Twitter today, playwright Philly McMahon said every theatre maker in the country would need a lie down after hearing the figures involved in the Toy Show musical. 

“Your standard independent company could make a decade worth of shows with that budget”, said McMahon. 

Every theatre maker in the country needing a lie down after hearing that Toy Show Musical cost €2.7M. Is that the country’s most expensive theatre show ever produced? Your standard independent company could make a decade worth of shows with that budget. Holy moly. 😳

— Philly McMahon (@McMahonPhilly) July 5, 2023

Documents pertaining to Toy Show The Musical have been made public following amid the scandal that has engulfed RTÉ in the wake of the discovery that a barter account had been used to make unreported payments totalling €345,000 to presenter Ryan Tubridy. 

What has followed is a wholesale examination of the national broadcaster’s corporate governance, financial and cultural practices.

RTÉ executives appeared before two Oireachtas committees last week and will do so again this week, beginning with the Media Committee at 1.30pm this afternoon. 

Ryan Tubridy and his agent Noel Kelly have agreed to appear before the committees as early as next week.

With reporting by Christina Finn