Disney’s ‘The Lion King’ grosses more than $2.6 million in El Paso

City officials said Disney’s “The Lion King” broke box office records at The Plaza Theater during its two week stint.

Many may not know “The Lion King” Broadway musical coming to El Paso was more than 10 years in the making.

“It was 15 years in the making because when we started the project to renovate the theater and more performing arts to come to El Paso, this was a part of that” said Brian Crowe, general manager of Destination El Paso.

Crowe said in two weeks the production put out 16 performances and ticket sales broke The Plaza Theater box office records.

“The show grossed $2.6 million here in El Paso,” Crowe said.

The estimated impact of a show like “The Lion King” for El Paso’s economy is three times the gross sales.

“The Broadway League estimates 3.5 times the amount that is spent on the tickets goes back into the economy and so here for El Paso that’s almost $9 million of economic impact,” Crowe said.

Crowe said the staff from the Broadway show alone take advantage of the city.

“We are talking about bringing in a group of 120 people who stay in hotels and live in our city for two weeks and there’s dollars spent for marketing in the hundreds of thousands of dollars,” Crowe said.

Crowe said about 16 percent of the attendees for the show are from out of town.

“El Paso is the largest city in this region. For communities like Midland, Odessa, communities like southern New Mexico or even into northern Mexico like the city of Chihuahua the show is not going to perform in those markets,” Crowe said.

Crowe said sold out shows in the city means more big shows to come.

“It helps us to bring the next big show because this is a very small community, they talk to each other, they talk about cities that are welcoming places they loved and they talk to folks about coming back to those cities so it’s good for us and it’s good for El Paso,” Crowe said.