Credit
Sara Krulwich/The New York Times
“Hamilton,” the hit musical that has struggled to combat profiteering by scalpers, is trying a new tack with its next block of Broadway tickets: a technology from Ticketmaster that scrutinizes the purchase histories of potential ticket buyers in an effort to eliminate bots and high-volume resellers.
The show is the third on Broadway to embrace the technology, Verified Fan, following “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” which opens on Broadway next spring, and “Springsteen on Broadway,” Bruce Springsteen’s one-man show, which opens on Broadway this fall.
“Hamilton” implemented the technology on Tuesday morning, giving potential buyers until 6 p.m. Friday to seek verification from Ticketmaster to qualify for an early opportunity to purchase seats at performances between March 6 and Aug. 19, 2018. Once verified, fans will be allowed to buy tickets starting on Monday; the general public can buy a day later, beginning next Tuesday.
“This is a new effort to put tickets into the hands of theatergoers at regular prices,” said Jeffrey Seller, the lead producer of “Hamilton.” “We’ll always be fighting the resellers because their incentive to keep trying is so powerful. Are we making progress? Yes. But is it foolproof? Not at all.”
The “Hamilton” use of Verified Fan, which allows verified buyers exclusive access to a one-day pre-sale, is more limited than that of the Springsteen show and the Potter play, each of which appears to be planning to use Verified Fan for all individual sales.
The fan base for “Hamilton” remains strong two years after the show opened. It is grossing over $3 million a week on Broadway — more than three times as much as most other plays and musicals. And a phone app introduced last Friday, which is intended to allow the show to communicate more directly with its fans, was downloaded more than 500,000 times in its first 72 hours. Among the app’s uses: It will allow those seeking last-minute discounted tickets to enter digital lotteries in each city where the show is running.
