By Joanne Von Furstenburg | Posted on January 31, 2017 2:00 PM
The Hamilton Producers Are Now Offering Lottery Tickets, Creating An Opportunity For The Non-Social-Elite To Experience The Top Show On Broadway
"Hamilton" Lottery Opportunities Double on Broadway
Number of Lottery Winners increase from 21 to 46 Hamilton has increased the amount of tickets that is available for its ticket lottery from 21 tickets to 46 tickets for every show. For eight shows a week, there is now a new batch of opportunities for fans to get great tickets to Hamilton for just $10. Since Hamilton opened in August of 2015, it has become a very popular Broadway show. With weekly earnings grossing more than $2 million dollars a week, the show’s monolithic rise has been nothing short of unprecedented.
With decently priced face-value tickets almost impossible to purchase, fans are forced to spend a small fortune. The cheapest price of a face-value ticket,10 months in advance, is $549 for a mid-premium orchestra seat. The slightly more available seats, in premium orchestra, will run you a whopping $849 per ticket, but you still need to buy them way in advance. For those who want to try their luck and get their hands on tickets to see Hamilton, without breaking the bank, there is the Hamilton ticket lottery, which was just expanded to offer more seats.
Where Are the Broadway Show Lottery Ticket Seats Located?
Beginning January 31st, 2017 the online-lottery will more than double its number of winning tickets from 21 to 46. The original lottery seats consisted of the entire first row of the theater, row CC, which contains 21 seats. With the news of an additional 25 lottery tickets now available, the additional lottery winners will be placed right behind the first row, in row A, which is the second row.
All these lottery ticket seats may be in the front row sections, but they are certainly not the best seats in the theatre, because you are right under the nostrils of the actors. It is unclear if the winners of the new lottery will be allowed to choose the 2nd row instead of the front row, where they will often get spat on by the actors and may go home with a crick in their neck from looking upwards for two hours, almost like turning up to see a popular movie on a busy Saturday night and being forced to sit right in front of the screen.
Does Double the Tickets Double Your Chance at Winning?
It is well known that if you buy double the amount of NY Lottery tickets, it has little affect on your odds of winning the grand prize. Does the extra lottery tickets at Hamilton mean that you will be more likely to win a ticket? While there are now more than double the amount of potential winners than previously, the announcement and perception of having a higher chance of winning could entice more people into signing up for the lottery, thus increasing the odds even more so than before.
With a minimum of 100,000 people entering the lottery daily, more winners certainly creates the optic of a higher chance of winning. With an opportunity cost of zero, as you only pay for the $10 if you are one of the selected winners, the lottery is a legitimate option as long as you temper your expectations. It will be interesting to see, that as the hype of this announcement dwindles, whether this ticket change will ultimately increase chances in the long-run.
Despite Statistics, Broadway Show Lottery Still a Better Gamble
When Lin-Manuel Miranda made his final appearance as the Hamilton lead on July 9, 2016, the hype surrounding the show was expected to diminish. And diminish, it did. Although, the fall from grace was only marginal. Ticket brokers still monopolize the market and make getting a face value ticket next to impossible. The secondary ticket market, notably Ticketmaster and Stubhub have softened up a bit and you can still find a relatively good ticket price if you are savvy enough to conduct some “market-research” and try to find brokers who are looking to avoid a loss, usually by finding tickets on the same day as the show.
The ticket tides are changing on this show, and the long term price point of the tickets are falling. With news of Hamilton traveling to Chicago and also going across the pond to London, the Broadway venue will not be the only locale to experience the show. Although, with the news that show-creator Lin-Manuel Miranda has been nominated for an Oscar, for his contribution to the Disney animated motion picture Moana, the show may once again get a spike in notoriety.
Broadway Show Lottery Offers Extended Opportunity
Miranda will be a part of the rarefied “EGOT” club (those who have won an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony Award) and the Lottery will be an even-more appealing alternative to those hoping to test their luck and possibly win $10 tickets to see Hamilton on Broadway. With the new set of lottery tickets for Hamilton, there is an new cutoff time of 1PM to enter the lottery, which was previously 4PM.
