Melbourne hosted the Australian premieres of The Book of Mormon, Come From Away, Moulin Rouge! The Musical and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

Cassel waited six years to bring Hamilton to Australia after acquiring the rights in 2015 and says he has another three “big titles” waiting to find venues in Sydney.

Producer John Frost, who regards himself as city agnostic, has met with Sydney and Melbourne tourism officials about securing a venue for West End hit Back to the Future, The Musical for 2025.

While the pipeline of new productions has slowed since COVID lockdowns, the backlog for both key markets has not eased because of the arts sectors’ enforced hibernation, he said.

“Musicals are only going to get bigger, and the demand for them stronger. They are going to get much more costly and complex to stage. Sydney needs to start thinking about building another major theatre to house those new productions because it’s not a dying art form at all, it’s thriving,” Frost said.

It’s not just first-run musicals that Sydney is missing out on. Sydney has no stage with the wings, dressing rooms, and back-of-house space big enough to put on a full Wagner Ring Cycle, an epic 15-hour performance judged to be the pinnacle of opera.

The Australian Ballet told the consultants it could bring more full-length productions annually to Sydney was there a suitable large stage, big capacity venue in addition to the Opera House. “While it’s a beautiful concert hall, it is not fit for purpose for the Australian Ballet’s large-scale, full-length ballet productions,” a spokesperson said.

The consultant’s report was completed following round table meetings with key theatre producers and owners and industry representatives in November 2021, and makes a “compelling case for the funding of new live performance venues in Sydney by the NSW government”.

It informed the Perrottet government’s $5 million stage and screens strategy which had been prepared for state cabinet before the retirement of its prime mover, the former arts minister Don Harwin, which had recommended that the Roxy Theatre, in Parramatta and the Metro-Minerva Theatre, in Kings Cross, be compulsorily acquired pending conclusion of a favourable business case.

By increasing its theatre infrastructure Sydney could grab more of the opening market share currently dominated by Melbourne, the report said. Currently, productions coming from Broadway or London’s West End struggle to secure a comparable venue in Sydney, let alone secure extended runs.

Approval for a 1550-seat Broadway Style theatre and 1000-seat live room in the Star Casino will ease the shortage. Foundation Theatres believes its two venues can soak up demand for the next five to 10 years.

But the report found Sydney to be short of an 1700-to-2000-seat lyric theatre, about the size of Melbourne’s State Theatre or Sydney’s Capitol, and a more intimate 500-to-1000 seat theatre, rehearsal spaces, and a multi-use art hub, even with these two new theatres.

Jason Marriner, chief executive of the family company that manages Melbourne’s Regent, Princess, Comedy, and Forum theatres, said Sydney’s two new theatres were welcome and much needed. Perversely, shortages in available dates in Sydney often impacted planning for shows in Melbourne.

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“Sydney, unlike Melbourne, has demolished its earlier theatres that occupied valuable land and it has given Melbourne an absolute advantage in having premium theatres in premium locations,” he said.

In 2021, the NSW government’s arts agency scouted locations in Sydney’s Haymarket and on George St to anchor a theatre district à la London’s West End but came up empty-handed. Central Barangaroo is the latest site touted for a new lyric theatre.

The report found a “clear rationale for government investment” to build up Sydney’s cultural scene given demand for cultural entertainment, and its magnifier of tourism dollars and jobs. Due to construction costs, the private sector was unlikely to step in. A new 1800-seat theatre could bring in more than 400,000 interstate and international visitors alone over 15 years, and $456 million in income, the report says.

As welcome as the new casino theatres were, John Frost said Sydney would still need another main stage 2000-seat theatre with large stage volumes to house mega-musicals, the future of theatre productions, as well as Opera and Ballet.

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And a smaller 1000-seat theatre, ideally the Metro-Minerva in Kings Cross, was needed to scale up productions. Frost has been unable to bring to Sydney his 2021 Adelaide Festival hit, A German Life, starring Robyn Nevin, for lack of an available medium-sized theatre. “One day. We haven’t given up on the idea,” he said.

In Melbourne, the departure of Harry Potter will free up the Princess Theatres, but the closure of the State Theatre next year for renovations was expected to keep demand for stage space tight for several years.

A NSW government spokesperson said it continued to work with the private and commercial theatre sector to investigate opportunities for increasing commercial theatre capacity in Sydney, a key priority. Its role in partnering with the private sector to restore the Theatre Royal was evidence of how it had been able to work with the private sector to deliver additional commercial theatre capacity in Sydney.