The Nederlander Organization

Then, obviously, it was the Palladium, 1018, Tunnel, there was Limelight.

There was a club that was right around the corner from the Nederlander.

Roseland, right? There's Roseland.

I also performed in all of those places as a dancer.

They're eventually acquired by a different company.

And then there's the Nederlander Organization, which had been a Detroit presenter.

And you're from Michigan, you probably know the Nederlander-

Oh, yes

... uh, uh, legacy.

The decree said for almost everything, it had to be maintained as a live commercial theater, otherwise you, you, you wouldn't restore competition.

And so it took years sometimes to do this.

The Nederlanders were always making bids.

Well, uh, what, what is this latest one you got?

So there's the Nederlanders.

The Neder, the, the theater people?

Yeah.

Sounds like a government agency.

Well, they have, they're the largest footprint in, in the, in the theater space in New York, London, and all over the world.

Oh, they're bigger than the Nederlanders and the-

Yeah, yeah.

Only three theaters are located on Broadway itself, the Broadway Theater, Palace Theater, and Winter Garden Theater.

The rest are located on the numbered cross streets extending from the Nederlander Theater one block south of Times Square on West Forty-First Street, north along either side of Broadway to Fifty-Third Street, and Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center on West Sixty-Fifth Street.

While exceptions exist, the term Broadway theater is used predominantly to describe venues with seating capacities of at least five hundred people.

Smaller theaters in New York City are referred to as off-Broadway, regardless of location, while very small venues with fewer than one hundred seats are called off-off-Broadway, a term that can also apply to non-commercial avant-garde or productions held outside of traditional theater venues.

While the League and the theatrical unions are sometimes at loggerheads during those periods when new contracts are being negotiated, they also cooperate on many projects and events designed to promote professional theater in New York.

All four of the four nonprofit theater companies with Broadway theaters, Lincoln Center Theater, Manhattan Theater Club, Roundabout Theater Company, and Second Stage Theater, belong to the League of Resident Theaters and have contracts with the theatrical unions, which are negotiated separately from the other Broadway theater and producers.

The majority of Broadway theaters are owned or managed by three organizations, the Schubert Organization, a for-profit arm of the nonprofit Schubert Foundation, which owns 17 theaters, the Nederlander Organization, which controls nine theaters, and ATG Entertainment, which owns seven Broadway houses.

Both musicals and straight plays on Broadway often rely on casting well-known performers in leading roles to draw larger audiences or bring in new audience members to the theater.