A study conducted in 2014 showed that more people attend London’s plays and musicals than London’s Premier League football matches. Live-streaming multiplies the audience numbers during the course of a show’s run: over 4m people have watched National Theatre Live since its inception in 2009. As well as increasing numbers of theatre-goers, there is also an inflation in hype. Tickets to see Mr Cumberbatch in “Hamlet” sold faster than any others in London theatre history, with online queues of 30,000. People camped outside the Barbican theatre in the hopes of securing a seat and, on the first night it was streamed, 225,000 people around the world went to their local cinema to watch it.
Source: State of the arts: Theatres are acting locally and streaming globally | The Economist