Tens of thousands of “Hamilton” fans won the battle.
Tickets to the Hartford stop on the Broadway hit’s national tour went on sale Saturday morning and within a few hours, the least expensive seats (at $68.50 each) had all been snapped up. The rest, including top-tier seats at around $500 apiece, didn’t take much longer. For now, the show is sold out.
A notice on The Bushnell’s website says: “Tickets are not currently available … Additional seats will be available closer to the engagement.” No details have been made available yet about those “additional tickets.” Those not lucky enough to score up to now also still have a shot at the daily lottery once the show opens.
Paul Marte, senior communications manager at The Bushnell, says that Saturday went “super smoothly. We’ve been planning this for two years, since we first found out when ‘Hamilton’ would be here. Nothing crashed or didn’t work.”
There were no phone sales, which meant that ticket-buyers had to stand in either of two lines: outside the Bushnell box office on Capitol Avenue, or in the online “virtual waiting room” at bushnell.org.
Marte mentions that some customers were standing in both lines at once — attempting to buy tickets online while standing in line outside the theater. Some were successful, and left the box office line, which started forming Friday morning.
Some who made it all the way to the ticket-purchasing stage balked at the ticket prices and left empty-handed. “Gold Circle” tickets cost $495, and that’s all that was left for some potential buyers. Marte says that while the “Gold Circle” section can vary from show to show (“We can map the house into 15 to 20 different price ranges”), there were tickets available in a range of prices, and all sold swiftly. There were more seats available at $195 than any other price.
The main concerns among hopeful ticket-buyers who shared their experiences on social media were the wait times in the online “waiting room” and, in some cases, the lack of a prompt email confirmation when tickets were purchased. Marte confirms that “some email confirmations came within seconds, and others took two hours.” He says that complaints were handled “in real time — our director of marketing, Beth Hyland and [digital marketing coordinator] Taylor Shelly spent Saturday on the phone answering those concerns.”
“Hamilton” will be at The Bushnell for 23 performances (plus one “EduHam” show for local students) Dec. 11 to 30. The Bushnell has 2,800 seats, so that’s more than 60,000 tickets for The Bushnell to dispense. Many went to Bushnell subscribers and donors before Saturday, but more than 30,000 seats were estimated to be sold over the weekend.
Exact numbers were still being tallied, but Marte says “there’s no way we couldn’t have broken sales records with this show.”
For those who still need tickets, the best way to get them now is the “Hamilton” lottery. The Bushnell has confirmed that there will be limited amounts of tickets for each performance that can be won through a daily lottery. Winners are offered two tickets at just $10 apiece. Details of the Hartford lottery have not yet been announced, but at other theaters on the tour, 40 tickets (in very good locations) have been available for each performance. Lottery winners are notified 36 hours before the performance.
For The Bushnell, a primary issue with “Hamilton” is security measures against scalping, counterfeiting and other criminal activities related to the highly coveted tickets. The theater has been warning those who are tempted to post photos of these prized possessions to cover up the bar codes on the tickets, which could be copied and forged.
The website warns buyers that “tickets may not be purchased with the intention of re-selling the tickets at a profit. Fraudulent, misleading, or unlawful resale of tickets (or attempted resale) is grounds for seizure and cancellation without compensation.”
“There are tons of mechanisms in place” to ensure that tickets can’t be improperly used, Marte says, beginning with the rule that only four tickets could be purchased for each street or IP address. This requirement prevents scalpers from buying up blocks of tickets for resale.
Marte explained that the anti-scalping measures can’t be 100 percent effective, and that those who still seek “Hamilton” tickets should avoid buying from anywhere but The Bushnell, which is the only authorized dealer.
