Getting Discounted Broadway Tickets

My husband and I lived in New York City for six months. During this time, we watched 4 popular Broadway shows (Aladdin, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, The Phantom of the Opera, Wicked) and paid less than $50/ticket for each of those shows. Here are some notes on how we did that. Before reading my notes, please read this great resource for scoring discounted Broadway tickets, as I will assume you know the information they share: How to get cheap Broadway tickets in five easy steps.

 

Show #1: Aladdin: We downloaded the TodayTix app, which has discounted Broadway tickets. Around Thanksgiving time, there was a sale on the app for Aladdin tickets at $29/ticket, so we jumped on it and bought those tickets. The seats were in the nosebleeds, but it was an awesome deal that didn’t require winning any lotteries, allowing us to plan ahead. The percentage discount on tickets fluctuates a lot, so don’t lose hope if you first download the app and are underwhelmed by the choices and prices.

 

Show #2: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child: This show has a lottery through the TodayTix app, and it’s called the Friday Forty. You enter the lottery once a week for all of the show times in the upcoming week. Trevor and I both entered the lottery every week for about 3 weeks before one of us won (winning the lottery means you can buy 2 tickets at the discounted price of $40/ticket), but we finally won and were able to see the show at a great price. We had second row seats, which was great but a little bit too close to the stage to be able to see everything (but we weren’t complaining, because it was a steal!).

 

Show #3: The Phantom of the Opera: This show has a lottery of its own (just Google "Phantom of the Opera Broadway lottery" and you’ll find it) but it was online and easy to use. Miraculously, we won on the first day we entered the lottery, and Trevor didn’t even enter so it was just me. These tickets were also second row seats, which again, was a tad bit too close for a complete view of the stage, but it was amazing nonetheless. Especially because we paid $40/ticket.

 

Show #4: Wicked: My husband’s uncle worked on Wicked, so he was incredibly kind and was able to hook us up with some free tickets with great seats. However, Wicked does have a daily lottery for tickets on BroadwayDirect, and if you win, tickets are $59 a piece, which is not too far north of $50.

 

Alternative Show #4: The Lion King

Additionally, Trevor and I technically won the lottery for the Lion King, which is also on BroadwayDirect. Both of us had been entering the lottery daily for 2-3 weeks before we finally won this lottery. We didn’t end up going to the Lion King because we didn’t see the confirmation email in time*, but it was good to know that we had finally won the lottery for this show after entering it so many times.

*This is the one kicker of entering these Broadway lotteries: if you win, you have to claim your tickets and pay for them within 1 hour of being notified. Each show has a different system and timeline. None of them are inherently complicated, but when you’re trying to keep track of 5 lotteries simultaneously it gets tricky.

 

Popular methods that we did not use:

Simply buying tickets from the official vendor: The official vendor of Broadway tickets is Broadway Direct (not Broadway.com, not any of the other ones, so don’t overpay for tickets thinking you are getting them from the official vendor when you are not). My understanding is that because of this, fees are lowest and availability is highest on Broadway direct. If there had been a show we were dying to see that we weren’t able to get discounted tickets for, this would’ve been our backup.

TKTS: You can Google the TKTS ticket board to see what shows are on sale for what prices. We looked at this a couple of times but never saw anything that really caught our attention, so we never used this method. I know plenty of people who have, though.

Waiting in person at the box office on the day of a show: I’ve heard of people scoring some amazing deals with this method, but I personally didn’t want to wait in line for the box office to open, so we never ended up doing this. Not every show allows you to purchase last minute (aka rush) tickets. For example, I’ve heard that The Lion King doesn’t do rush tickets. So, make sure you do a little bit of research (consulting Reddit as necessary) before committing to do this.

Some of the “promoting young people watching theater” clubs: There are 3+ groups you can join to get discounted tickets to shows, based on your age (you have to be under 35, I think?). I was optimistic about this method but was never excited about the shows they were providing discounted seats to, so we never ended up using this option.

 

Special note on Hamilton:

Hamilton is, I believe, the most popular show on Broadway. Hamilton has a lottery for tickets (through the Hamilton app), and Trevor and I entered every week for 4 weeks but never won. We hear it's extremely competitive, so we aren't surprised. A friend of mine was able to get an awesome deal on the TodayTix app (around the end of November/early December) for $200 tickets in the Front Mezzanine, which I hear, for Hamilton, is an incredible price for a great seat! We considered waiting in line at the box office to get same-day tickets to Hamilton, but Trevor had already seen it live and I saw the recorded version on Disney+, so we didn’t feel like it was worth waiting several hours + a lot of money for us to watch it live together.

Hopefully something in there is helpful as you try to score your own discounted Broadway tickets!