Yes, a ‘Hamilton’ ticket for $10 ... if you’re lucky
A daily lottery for the L.A. engagement is in place. Much pricier tix also are available.
“Hamilton” is here. Great, you say, but can I still get tickets? And how many of those bills — the “Founding Father on the ten-dollar” — will it take?
Just one, if you are among the winners of the “Hamilton” ticket lottery, which launched Friday in Los Angeles. How it works:
Forty tickets will be sold for $10 apiece for every performance at the Hollywood Pantages Theatre, where “Hamilton” will play through Dec. 30. Ticket hopefuls enter by going to www.LuckySeat.com/hamil ton or by downloading a new “Hamilton” app (Hamilton Broadway.com/app).
The daily lottery opens at 11 a.m. (Pacific) two days before the performance date and closes at 9 a.m. (Pacific) the day before the performance. For, say, a Wednesday show, the lottery would open at 11 a.m. Monday and close at 9 a.m. Tuesday. About two hours after each lottery closes, winners are chosen and notified by email or text. Winners then have until 4 p.m. that day to pay online by credit card. Winners who
do not complete their purchase by the 4 p.m. deadline will forfeit their ticket.
Winners need a valid photo ID that matches the name on their lottery entry. Each person can enter just once per performance. Each winner can buy one or two seats. Seat locations will vary, the Pantages said. More rules and details can be found at www.HollywoodPantages.com/lottery.
Are there other ways to get into the show? Yes, starting with “premium” seats. Authentic, nonresale premium seats are still available through the Hollywood Pantages Theatre and its official ticket agent, Ticketmaster. You just have to pay. These are good orchestra seats that start at $650.
The Pantages and Ticketmaster also list “verified resale” tickets; a recent check of preview performances showed prices at $236 (for rear mezzanine) and up. Looking all the way into December, the lowest price was $214. Warning: Resale prices will change with availability.
You also can try other outlets such as StubHub or EBay. A scan of the former revealed tickets under $200 for only two nights during the L.A. run, and they were for some of the worst seats in the house. And why would anyone shell out $1,000-plus on EBay when $650 orchestra seats are still for sale directly through the Pantages? That is one plus of the show’s premium-seat pricing: It puts a theoretical cap on the profits of scalpers.
And if not Los Angeles, then perhaps San Diego. After the national tour closes in L.A., it moves to the San Diego Civic Theatre, where it will perform from Jan. 6-28. The on-sale date for those tickets has not been announced.
If you are that determined, yes, “Hamilton” is still running in New York (where tickets remain possibly more expensive than in L.A.) as well as in Chicago. For the latter, a spot check showed authentic tickets for as low as $147 (“obstructed” or “limited” view).
Or perhaps you’d prefer London?
A fourth production of “Hamilton” begins performances at the Victoria Palace Theatre in November. Or you can wait until February when a fifth production, a second national tour, begins in Seattle.