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An ongoing analysis of payment card purchases shows that spending by Connecticut residents continues to be at inflated levels compared to before the COVID-19 pandemic, so no area of ​​spending will increase more in spring 2023 than entertainment.
According to an Opportunity Insights analysis of payment card data by Affinity Solutions, Connecticut saw a 19.8% increase in overall spending on retail, travel and entertainment in the last week of March compared to January 2020. That was slightly above inflation, which averaged 17% from January 2020 to February this year, based on the Consumer Price Index published by the U.S. Labor Department.
But Connecticut residents have been splurging on entertainment this year. Compared to arts and entertainment spending in January 2020, payment cards purchased for this purpose are up 30% to 50% weekly, but have increased by one since mid-January.
“Household balance sheets are actually pretty healthy,” New York Fed President John Williams said, referring to the regional economy in an interview with CT Insider in Bridgeport two weeks ago. “That looks like a relatively solid part of the equation.”
New York City-based Affinity Solutions collects information from a certain percentage of payment card transactions, categorizing purchases by geographic area based on the cardholder’s address rather than the location of where they spend it.Connecticut publishes weekly data updates online on the Economic Recovery Dashboard at data.ct.gov.
A surge in supermarket spending early in the pandemic was followed by a surge in retail sales in June as people stocked up on items while staying home to reduce their chances of catching or spreading the COVID-19 virus. With a vaccine starting to become available in January 2021, health care spending rebounded as people booked appointments they had put off in the early months of the pandemic.
In July 2021, restaurants and hotels are starting to catch up as Connecticut residents feel comfortable traveling and eating out. However, the arts and entertainment industry still lags behind on this point and was even more subdued in the weeks following Labor Day as entertainment spending fell back below pre-pandemic levels.
The entertainment industry’s recovery really kicks in in the spring of 2022, with spending by Connecticut residents eventually surging 20% ​​or more from two years ago — before breaking through the 50% mark the week of Thanksgiving and Black Friday. Recreation spending by Connecticut residents has fluctuated up and down over the past few weeks, according to Opportunity Insights.
It’s part of a broader recovery in the entertainment industry. Shares of AMC Theaters soared 35% this week after better-than-expected ticket sales over Easter weekend and Passover, with AMC theaters in Stamford, Connecticut, Norwalk, Danbury, Trumbull, Southington, Puerto Rico Laneville and Lisbon have theaters. On Broadway, theater box office receipts for the week of March and April were 19% higher than a year earlier, according to the latest figures from the Broadway Alliance. More than 1 million people showed up in Major League Baseball stadiums on opening day, a record-breaking crowd that was nearly double that of 2017.
While spring has shown signs of a growing appetite to get out and about, Connecticut’s arts and culture department wants more financial support from the state, especially in the area of ​​marketing, to help attract more visitors or get residents to stay. of people trying new experiences. Goodspeed Musicals’ general manager told lawmakers in late February that the group had suffered $12 million in losses at its theaters in East Haddam and Chester between 2020 and 2022, adding that the nationwide State venues aren’t out of the woods yet.
“While we’re starting to see audiences slowly come back, we’re still in a recovery phase and need sustainable support,” said Goodspeed Musical’s David Byrd, a member of the Connecticut General Assembly Appropriations Committee. “We need longer runways to stabilize, re-grow audiences and create a new financial model.”
Alex. Soule@scni.com; @casoulman
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