With over thirty-seven Broadway theaters in New York City and each Broadway show typically performing eight performances a week (usually two on Sundays and shows closed on Mondays), the choice of shows and tickets are plentiful for the average Broadway theater goer.

The actual total number of Broadway performances per week is approximately three hundred shows, representing total ticket sales for all of Broadway of approximately $20 million per week.

The number of tickets sold weekly is 255,000, which equates to almost 13 million sold per year, which is a huge number of tickets – all of this data puts the average ticket price for a Broadway show at $98, obviously. some sell for a lot more than that, but 72% of Broadway tickets actually sell for less than that amount, sometimes significantly lower.

To put that in context, the New York Giants play sixteen football games per regular season and their stadium seats 80,000, bringing their annual ticket sales to just 1.3 million tickets, making Broadway’s ticket sales volume is ten times that of the New York Giants.

Given the sheer number of Broadway tickets sold each year, it’s not surprising that buying tickets to a Broadway show can be downright confusing, given that tickets are available in so many forms and sources. Adding to the confusion is the age of the Broadway industry and, as with any aging industry, the inability of Broadway theaters and producers to advance the implementation and integration of new technology into Broadway ticketing. . What results is a disparate set of Broadway show ticket sources that both Broadway show producers and Broadway show fans alike end up hating.

Broadway shows don’t seem to come cheap, but when you compare the price of seeing a movie (currently $20 in New York City) to seeing a live Broadway performance by some amazing Broadway (or often Hollywood) stars, you just a few feet in front of you for around $100, it becomes clear that Broadway theater pricing is in the right ball park, albeit with a few aberrations.

Basically, Broadway show tickets come in three forms: full price from the official source, discount Broadway tickets from a bargain promotion company, and secondary market from a broker.

Full Price (or Face Value) Tickets: These are Broadway tickets that are priced by the producer of the Broadway show and sold at their standard face value through the official ticket source, usually Ticketmaster or Telecharge (but never both due to union rules at the theater) These tickets usually go on sale a year in advance.

Broadway Discount Tickets – These are deals or discounts for Broadway shows that may need a boost in ticket sales – A Broadway show will make use of this discount process when a show is new and needs to gain a following or when a show is failing due to poor critical acclaim, or when the show is receiving poor reviews on the street and therefore ticket sales will suffer. Sometimes when a show has been running for a while they will run a ticket price promotion to boost sales and the show will go back to full price when sales pick up. A great example of this is when “The Book of Mormon” first opened on Broadway in February 2011, it found it was having trouble selling tickets due to the show’s theme, little fanfare or credibility the show’s producers had in Broadway and the Bad Economy The show needed to resort to offering a discount on tickets that brought the price of their Orchestra seat (the best seat in the room) down to $69. This act spurred sales, and the show subsequently won Tony Awards that year and became the best show on Broadway, now priced at $477 face value for premium tickets and a secondary market price of $750 to $1,000 per ticket. , making it the most expensive Broadway show in history to date.

Secondary Ticket Market (or Secondary Market): These are various forums in which ticket brokers, scalpers, or speculators buy up all ticket inventory and resell it for a profit closer to the actual date of the Broadway show. Often ticket brokers will purchase large sets of tickets long before the general public may have a chance to purchase the same ticket. Ticket brokers are seen to add no value to the Broadway theater process and many of their actions are ultimately detrimental to the Broadway industry. Many of his Broadway ticket buying and selling strategies would be illegal in the stock market, where selling on spec, hoarding, insider buying, insider trading, short selling short are now illegal.

What makes matters worse is that the relationship between official ticket sources and ticket brokers is blurring with Ticketmaster becoming a large equity stake in a third-party ticket broker, potentially creating a conflict of interest. A great example of this is the 2007 Miley Cyrus, Hannah Montana ticket debacle, where Ticketmaster put only 10% of the tickets on the open market and dumped 90% of the ticket inventory directly into the hands of the ticket broker, where Ticketmaster then split the proceeds. This was quite profitable for Ticketmaster, but very detrimental to Ticketmaster’s overall image and reputation, as congressional doubts were raised on the matter when Hannah Montana fan club tickets were resold at a large profit (Hannah Montana fan club tickets $90 was resold for $2,000), but was ultimately deemed not to have violated the laws. Secondary market ticket brokers have long argued that their service allows tickets for Broadway shows to achieve fair market value (FMV), or a ticket price the ticket market can bear, but given the degree of unethical practices and market manipulation in the ticket market, the FMV is clearly inflated in the process and ticket buyers should beware. The most popular forum for secondary market ticket sales is stubhub.com

Other less important sources of discount Broadway tickets include: Rush, standing room only, canceled tickets, partial view, the Half Price Ticket Booth (TDF), student rush, charitable donations, discounts for Wednesday mornings, discounts for hungry artists and groups.

The Broadway ticket industry continues to experience many changes as it tries to innovate. We hope this article has helped you understand how the Broadway ticket industry works and has enabled you to purchase your Broadway show tickets at a fair and equitable price.