In order to understand how Hamilton last minute tickets work you need to understand the structure of the ticket market. The so-called primary market is the first point of sale of tickets. Generally this means buying tickets directly from the venue’s box office. There is also a very active secondary market. This is where you can re-sell the tickets that you purchased from the box office. The secondary market includes people who cannot make it to the show and professional ticket brokers.
Buying tickets from the primary market is straight forward because prices rarely fluctuate over time — the same seat is unlikely to change prices. The secondary market on the other hand is subject to larger price swings. The same Hamilton tickets can change prices from $300 to $30 in a matter of hours.
Last Minute Ticket Offers for Hamilton
You will not find last minute offers at the box office. Even if the Richard Rogers theater didn’t sell all of its seats (very unlikely in the case of Hamilton) they will not lower the prices of their unsold inventory due to the moral hazard — people will learn this and next time they will wait until the last moment to make their purchase.
The original Broadway production starred Miranda as Hamilton, Leslier Odom, Jr. as Aaron Burr, Renée Elise Goldsberry as Angelica Schuyler, Phillipa Soo as Eliza Hamilton, Jasmine Cephas Jones as Peggy Schuyler/Maria Reynolds, Daveed Diggs as Marquis de Lafayette/Thomas Jefferson, Jonathan Groff as King George, Christopher Jackson as George Washington, Okieriete Onaodowan as Hercules Mulligan/James Madison, Anthony Ramos as John Laurens/Philip Hamilton, and Javier Muñoz as the Alexander Hamilton alternate. Rounding out the cast Carleigh Bettiol, Ariana DeBose, Sydney James Harcourt, Sasha Hutchings, Thayne Jasperson, Emmy Raver-Lampman, Jon Rua, Austin Smith, Seth Stewart, Betsy Struxness, and Ephraim Sykes. The company featured Alysa Deslorieux as standby and Neil Haskell, Stephanie Klemons, Morgan Marcell, and Voltaire Wade-Greene as swings.
But the secondary market is different. When you (the theater-goer) are buying ahead of time from resellers, you can expect to pay a significant markup. Ticket brokers will often markup their tickets by at least 50% (On top of that websites charge additional service fees of additional 10–30%).In cases where tickets are not selling as expected, ticket resellers have a strong incentive to lower their prices — sometimes below the price they paid for the tickets initially in order to minimize their losses. Imagine if you are stuck with 10 orchestra seats you purchased for $250 each. You were hoping to net a handsome profit by selling them at $350. However, there are now 2 hours left until the start of the show and you only sold 2 of them. You are suddenly willing to let the remaining 8 tickets go for $100 (or even lower) so you could at least recoup some of your initial investment.
Of course, the opposite can also happen. Prices can go up. Brokers might see that the demand is stronger than usual and they might increase their prices as their tickets are getting sold faster than expected. So waiting for a last minute deal for a show like Hamilton is not guaranteed to pay off.
How to buy last minute tickets for Hamilton?
You can read more here: https://medium.com/@broadwaypass/how-to-buy-last-minute-tickets-for-hamilton-on-broadway-c061d2561289
By definition, you can buy “last minute tickets” for Hamilton …. in the last minute. This usually means 2 hours or less before the opening curtain. But the best deals usually happen 30 minutes or less prior to the start of the show.
One of the best ways to take advantage of this is to stop the Broadwaypass Last Minute Ticket Booth located in Times Square (1578 Broadway, between 47th and 48th street). One of the ticket specialists there will inform you about the ticket availability and prices for Hamilton as well as all other shows.
If you prefer to do this online, you can sign up for last minute alerts for Hamilton at this link.
As for recent criticism regarding the script’s lack of focus on slavery in that period (evidently Hamilton was at one point somewhat involved with slave-trading), Miranda responds by explaining his source of inspiration. “Hamilton was the proto-immigrant amongst the Founders, “ says Lin-Manuel Miranda, whose own father came from Puerto Rico. “That’s how I found my way into the story.” At the same time, Manuel readily acknowledges what he calls “the original sin of slavery” in America. “The past will never be gone from us,” he acknowledges. “Ever. Ever. Ever. The conversations about systemic racism in our society have been with us since our founding.” Leslie Odom Jr. agrees: “The first step is being honest how we got here. We gotta talk about racism.” “We’re looking at our imperfections in the face,” agrees Philippa Soo (playing the role of Eliza, Hamilton’s wife). “We’re part of something greater than ourselves.”