x

The latest industry news to your inbox.


I'd like to hear about marketing opportunities

    

I accept IQ Magazine's Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy

news

Hamilton touts pocket $240,000 a week

The producers of the sold-out musical weigh up whether $1,000 is too much to ask for a premium-priced ticket as resellers rake it in

By IQ on 05 May 2016

The producers of Broadway musical Hamilton are considering doubling the cost of premium tickets to the show in response to high levels of touting.

At least US$30,000 from every show goes to ticket resellers instead of producers, cast and investors, says economics professor Matt Rousu – which, based on eight shows a week, means touts are pocketing $240,000 a week, or almost $12.5 million a year, from the Grammy and Tony Award-winning musical.

Producers “are having discussion after discussion about what they should do about this,” Mitch Weiss, a Broadway manager and analyst, tells Bloomberg. “They don’t want to charge people that much to see a show. But if someone is going to make money, it ought to be the people who work on it.”

“They don’t want to charge people that much to see a show. But if someone is going to make money, it ought to be the people who work on it”

The proposed increase in price would see premium tickets set theatregoers back $995.

Primary tickets for Hamilton – a hip-hop musical about the life of Alexander Hamilton, the Nevis-born founding father of the United States, currently running at New York’s Richard Rogers Theatre – are sold out until at least January 2017.

Lead producer Jeffrey Seller told The New York Times Magazine in April that a broker had bought 20,000 tickets to the show using an automated ticket bot. New York attorney-general Eric Schneiderman announced last week that he is to introduce harsher penalties for companies found to be snapping up hard-to-find tickets with the illegal software.