Hamilton Cracks Down On Ticket Resales By Limiting Ticket Purchases

By Rachel Vorona Cote  |  May 14, 2016 | 5:30pm
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The walloping success of Broadway musical Hamilton has, unsurprisingly, enticed a host of sneaky enterprisers to buy tickets in bulk and resell them at exponentially high markups. But now the producers have taken measures to hamper this practice.

According to the New York Times, Hamilton’s “producers have long sought to limit reselling by capping the number of tickets that could be purchased per person.” This week, they implemented one method: “Ticketmaster canceled purchases that exceeded those limits; on Wednesday night, the show’s producers abruptly released those tickets for sale.” Hamilton announced the sale via their Twitter account, and of course the newly available tickets were gone in a flash. Currently, “there is a 14-ticket limit per person for performances within a seven-day period” although that number fluctuates.

Lead producer Jeffrey Seller explains the protocol. “When people exceeded the limits, we refunded them, and we pooled all the refunds and put them on sale,” he said.

And for those of you lucky enough to be local—no, I’m not bitter—take heed that new rules have been enforced for those camping outside the Richard Rodgers Theater. To wit: no camping.

Sellers tells the Times that “there are brokers who hire people to stand in line for them—they set up tents, they sit in chairs with sleeping bags—and we don’t want a tent city that encourages brokers to resell.” If someone has patiently withstood weather and leg cramps for last-minute tickets, the producers “want to ensure…they are a beneficiary of the line. But this camping out has to stop, because it had crossed over into public nuisance.”

Some disgruntled fans have already taken to message boards “[complaining] that they were already caught up in the crackdown, and had lost their tickets to the show.”

Apropos nothing, if anyone finds it in their heart to bestow tickets upon a poor, but avid fan, this writer is, shall we say, willing to wait for it — and to listen to “It’s Quiet Uptown” on repeat as she gently weeps and her cat stalks away in annoyance.

Top Image via Getty. Embedded Image via Twitter.

 
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