We’re also seeing growth in individual sales among local residents and it’s just across the board. Given the demand we’re seeing, we’re now expecting approximately one million guests for this year’s show that will bring us back to pre-pandemic levels of attendance. All of this reflects a sell-through rate of over 90% compared to a mid-80s sell-through rate last year. And to your point, we’re actively monitoring ticket sales, depending on how demand continues to unfold, we may add more shows towards the end of the run, so we feel really good ahead of the shows opening next week.
Stephen Laszczyk: Great. Thanks for that. And then maybe just on consumer demand more broadly. There’s been a fair amount of concern just given the macro volatility we’ve seen over the last month or so. Could you talk a little bit more about some of the real-time indicators across your business, how they’re tracking in November, and particularly on the ticket sales or maybe even the per cap side over the last few weeks?
Dave Byrne: Sure. We continue to see strong consumer demand for live entertainment at our venues. On the ticket sales front for our bookings business – in terms of the second half of fiscal 2024, we’re currently on sale with more concerts at our venues than we were at this time last year for the second half of fiscal 2023. And of those on sales, a majority of those tickets are already sold and sell-through on those shows is currently up high single-digit percentage as compared to the second half of fiscal 2023 at the same time last year. It includes a number of sold-out multi-night runs at the arena, Radio City and the Beacon Theatre. In terms of per cap spending, this – the year-over-year comparison in the first quarter is a little noisy because of the Harry Styles, 15-night run at the Garden last year, which did see significant spending from fans on merchandise.
So while merchandise per caps for this quarter were down year-over-year, F&B per cap spending was up meaningfully. And with that, if you look at the first quarter relative to last year’s fourth quarter as well as all of fiscal 2023, combined food, beverage and merchandise per caps were up. So we continue to see strong in-venue spending from our guests.
Stephen Laszczyk: Great. Thank you.
Dave Byrne: You’re welcome.
Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Brandon Ross from Lightshed Partners. Your line is open.
Brandon Ross: Hey, thanks. I guess as we look at your guidance for the year, clearly increased venue utilization is a big part of it. And as we look out to the coming years beyond 2024, I was wondering if this can continue to be such a big driver for the business. I guess, overall, what’s your true capacity utilization for the venues, especially for The Garden, including load-in and load-out and some of the things that take days away? And then how much of a lever are rental rates to potentially increase the utilization, or on the other side to take advantage of the busy times to maximize your profits?
Ari Danes: Sure Brandon. To put the opportunity at The Garden in context, we hosted over 130 bookings events at the arena in Fiscal 2023, plus an additional 96 Knicks and the Rangers games, so a total of roughly 230 events. If you look at that, on a base of 365 days a year and to your point, taking in load-in and load-out days, the venue had an effective utilization of roughly 70%. So there remains utilization upside at the garden. And given the outsized impact of incremental revenue events at The Garden on our revenue and AOI, increasing utilization at the arena would have a noticeable impact on our results. First, we expect to benefit in future years from continued industry growth as an increasing number of artists and acts continue to go on tour.
