While Tony Awards voters stay silent about their ballots, the Drama Desk Awards voters are loud enough to move the market.
After Schmigadoon! won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Musical last weekend, its odds of winning the Tony Award for Best Musical skyrocketed on the popular prediction market Kalshi, rising from 67.6 percent to a peak of 81 percent. Meanwhile, the odds for Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York) fell from 19 percent to a low of nine percent.
The Drama Desk Awards have long foreshadowed triumphs at the Tony Awards.
In the past 25 years, 60 percent of the shows given the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Musical also went on to win the Tony Award for Best Musical. Foretelling a twist at the Tony Awards in 2014, Drama Desk Awards voters chose A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder over the favored Beautiful: The Carole King Musical.
The correlations in the other show categories are even stronger.
Approximately 73.9 percent of the shows that won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Revival of a Play over the past 25 years also won the Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play. After Death of a Salesman took home the Drama Desk Award, its odds of winning the Tony Award on Kalshi soared from 78 percent to a peak of 98 percent.
In addition, 76 percent of the new plays crowned at the Drama Desk Awards since 2000 later won at the Tony Awards. However, the current frontrunner on Kalshi, Liberation, competed at the Drama Desk Awards last season. It lost to Purpose, which later won the Tony Award.
The strongest signal from the Drama Desk Awards is for musical revivals. In the past 25 years, about 82.6 percent of the shows that won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Revival of a Musical also won the Tony Award for Best Musical Revival. But, like Liberation, Cats: The Jellicle Ball was nominated last season and did not have to compete against the acclaimed Broadway revival of Ragtime.
The Tony Awards could still turn into a catfight.