EXCLUSIVE: The highest-stakes succession race on Broadway appears to be over. Jeff T. Daniel is being positioned to take the reins at the Shubert Organization, Broadway’s largest landlord, people familiar with the company said.
Daniel joined Shubert in the newly created position of chief strategy officer in September 2023, recruited from the touring giant Broadway Across America. He’s also chairman of the government relations committee of the Broadway League trade association. He’s in line to succeed Robert E. Wankel, Shubert’s 78-year-old chairman and chief executive, who’s been at the company for 50 years.
The two have been meeting with producers and others in the industry on the second floor of Sardi’s, a Shubert tenant below its executive offices. Wankel and Daniel work in an executive suite across West 44th Street, atop the Shubert Theatre.
The torch-passing would mark a generational and cultural shift at the theatrical behemoth founded more than a century ago by three brothers from Syracuse, New York. Daniel, who’s well-liked in the insular world of commercial theater, would be the first Shubert chief who didn’t rise through the company ranks or isn’t a member of the Shubert family.
By virtue of his relative youth — he’s in his mid-fifties — he could run the show for decades. One industry insider is already referring to Daniel’s “reign.”
“The story is premature,” Wankel told Broadway Journal in a telephone interview on Thursday. He said that he has not set a retirement date and no “official successor” has been named. He declined to say whether Daniel is his pick to succeed him. “I’m only part of the decision,” he said. “Only the board can make the decision.”
By owning and operating 17 of Broadway’s 41 theaters, and investing in productions that may or may not run in one of its houses, Shubert has an outsize role in deciding which shows score a Broadway venue. In an unusual structure, the Shubert Organization is owned by the tax-exempt Shubert Foundation, which in June announced $40 million in annual awards to arts organizations. The foundation has pride of place as the nation’s largest source of unrestricted grants to nonprofit theater and dance companies.
The Shubert Organization and foundation share an eight-member board of directors. Wankel is chairman of both. He said that unlike some of his predecessors who died at an advanced age on the job, he plans to retire but he isn’t ready to. Daniel didn’t reply to a call, email and text.
Lee Seidler, who joined the board the same year that Wankel joined the company — 1975 — likewise declined to comment on Daniel’s role in a succession plan. “The board would not be doing its duty if it wasn’t considering succession,” Seidler said. A retired Price Waterhouse Professor of auditing at NYU Stern School of Business, he added in a telephone interview that Daniel “shows promise at the executive level of the company.”
Like Broadway itself, Shubert’s fortunes are cyclical. In 2022-23, The Phantom of the Opera shuttered after a record-breaking 35-year run at the company’s Majestic Theatre. Around the same time, Shubert produced Some Like it Hot, a musical capitalized at $19.5 million that was well-reviewed but nonetheless flopped at the Shubert Theatre.
That season, the Shubert Organization resumed paying an annual dividend to the foundation after suspending distributions during the pandemic. The $10 million payment was down from $25 million in 2018-19, according to Shubert Foundation filings.
The Shubert lineup improved in 2023-24. The season featured The Outsiders — which won the Tony Award for best musical — plus Alicia Keys’ Hell’s Kitchen and The Great Gatsby, which has been selling well, at least until Jeremy Jordan left the cast on Sunday. Current tenants also include Chicago — the longest-running musical revival — and the buzzy comedy Oh, Mary! This spring, Othello starring Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal and Good Night, and Good Luck, with George Clooney, are slated to open in Shubert houses.
Formerly the co-CEO of John Gore’s Broadway Across America, Daniel has experience in all areas of the business. He earned plaudits for his work with the League, which represents theater owners and producers in contract negotiations, government relations and marketing. Daniel collaborated with the U.S. Small Business Administration on the $14.6 billion Shuttered Venue Operators Grant program, which helped live entertainment, including Broadway, reopen following the industry shutdown.
Daniel also advocated for New York State to create a tax credit of up to $3 million per production, and helped people in the industry navigate reopening and getting aid. (This week, Gov. Kathy Hochul proposed a budget that extends the tax credit through 2027.)
Both aid programs stabilized an industry at its most vulnerable moment. They also distributed millions of dollars to blockbuster musicals that didn’t need the money. Five companies of Hamilton got a combined $50 million in Federal grants; Wicked and The Lion King on Broadway each received the $3 million state tax credit.
The Shubert Organization was a family-run business until 1972, when the in-house lawyers Gerald Schoenfeld and Bernard Jacobs staged a coup to replace the ineffectual nephew of the founders. Jacobs died in 1996. In 2008, days after Schoenfeld died, Philip J. Smith and Wankel, a former accountant, rose to the top. In July 2020, after Smith became incapacitated, Wankel became chairman and CEO.
