How to watch Broadway affordably

The first show I ever watched on Broadway was Wicked in 2013. Watching Elphaba sing Defying Gravity while suspended above the stage gave me literal chills, and ever since then I have been hooked on live theater. However, Broadway had always seemed so expensive to me, with tickets costing hundreds of dollars.

In 2014, my summer roommate taught me the ins and outs of rushing Broadway shows, where you can buy cheap tickets for day-of performances. This transformed Broadway from a luxury item to a more affordable activity, which has helped me amass this collection of playbills over the past 10 years:



Playbills stacked by year, starting in 2013 in the top left to 2023 in the bottom right. Also shown is one unimpressed cat and some West End programs that are annoyingly less uniform in shape compared to Playbills.

tl;dr the definitive guide as to which Broadway shows offer rush, lottery, or standing room lives here on playbill.com. This post is the collection of strategies I use to maximize the number of shows I watch in a year without breaking the bank.

First, some stats

Before I started writing this blog post, I didn't actually know how much I spend on the average Broadway ticket. I had an intuition that it wasn't that much, given how many rush and lottery tickets I've bought. Since I save all the Playbills and tickets for each show, I was able to compile a spreadsheet of data about every show I've watched on Broadway:



Based on that, here are some fun statistics (at the time of writing):

• I have watched 80 Broadway and Off-Broadway shows.
• Tickets cost on average $49.10, which includes tickets bought at full price.
• Rush tickets account for 45% (36) of the shows I've watched.
• I've seen 18 shows via online lotteries.
• I've actually won the lottery 36 times, but I'm bad at checking my email.
• Of the shows I've watched, 50 of them were musicals



Full disclosure, since I've watched shows with friends and family I haven't paid for literally every ticket. But the fact remains that it can be surprisingly affordable to watch a Broadway show every now and then!

Ticket strategies

There are 4 main ways I buy Broadway tickets (sorted in order of average price that I've experienced):

• Rush: Same day tickets sold on a first-come, first-serve basis at the box office. Average price: ~$38
• Lottery: Next day tickets sold via online lottery. Average price: ~$39
• Online discounts: Bought either through TodayTix or show-specific promotions. Average price: ~$64
• Box office: Full price tickets bought directly at the box office. Average price: ~$75

Shows will typically announce lottery and rush policies the week they start previews, which I find out by either checking playbill.com, following shows I'm interested in on Instagram, or reading the BroadwayWorld newsletter.

The seats I've gotten as a result of lottery or rush have varied quite a bit. Sometimes I've sat in the front row of the orchestra (and was thus once on the receiving end of a spit take by Zach Braff in Bullets Over Broadway). Other times I've sat in the orchestra, where tickets are normally $180+. I've also had my fair share of partial view seats, but you only miss activity at the very edge of the stage. Small price to pay for cheap tickets!



Lining up for rush

The concept of rush was pioneered by Rent in the 1990s, where producers offered first-come, first-serve $20 tickets to provide a more affordable price point to young and avid theater goers (article). This tradition continues today, with about 50% of Broadway shows offering some form of rush, either in-person at the box office or online via platforms like TodayTix.

The way I learned to rush shows was to line up in front of the box office before it actually opens. Most box offices open at 10AM Tuesday through Saturday, and at 12PM on Sundays (most theaters are closed on Mondays). There are also specific rules and etiquette to follow when rushing shows:

• Each person can only purchase 2 tickets: If you want to buy 4 tickets, you need at minimum 2 people in line. The box office is usually flexible in terms of who actually pays for each ticket.
• Tickets are first-come, first-serve for the same day: If the show is popular, this usually means that not everyone in line will end up getting a ticket. If the show is lesser known or longer running (e.g. Chicago), you can sometimes still get rush tickets in the afternoon or even when the show is about to start. Wednesdays and Saturdays also tend to have more rush tickets, because those are typically 2 show days (matinee + evening shows).
• Don't fuss over which seat you get: There is a specific block of seats reserved for rush in each show. As a result, there's not much wiggle room for the box office worker to give you an optimal seat. ~40% of the times I've done rush, the seats have been partial view. This can be due to anything from a column obstructing your view, sitting front row which blocks the view of the back of the stage, or sitting so far to the side that you can't see the edge of the stage closest to you.
• Don't reserve spots for your friends: Suppose you and your friend are looking for 4 tickets, but you arrive 20 minutes before your friend. Between the time you and arrive and your friend arrives, several people line up after you. When your friend joins, the polite thing to do is to join the end of the line – otherwise you're technically lowering the chances of the folks behind you in getting a ticket. If you and your friend were only going to buy 2 tickets, you can stay in line, because you could have bought 2 tickets on your own anyway.

Rush is a bit of a gamble, which makes it tricky to make plans around. To increase my odds, I usually research beforehand on Reddit or the message boards on broadwayworld.com to see when people have lined up. If I'm lucky, somebody will have posted what time they got to the box office, what place they were in line, and whether they got a ticket. Bonus points if they mention where they sat as well.

If a show is super popular (e.g. a famous actor/actress is starring, or it just won some Tony Awards), then I try to be at the box office between 7:30 and 8:30 AM. If the show just opened, is lesser known, or has stayed on Broadway for multiple seasons, then I'll go around when the box office opens. For shows that fall in the former category, there's definitely a sense of accomplishment when you finally get a ticket after waiting for hours (especially if it was winter).



[Image: Darren Yin, Landon Carter]

Rushing in the cold is definitely type 2 fun.

I've had very little success with online rush – I swear everyone has faster thumbs and internet than me. For the couple times I've managed to get rush tickets via TodayTix, the shows were lesser known. But honestly, those have been some of my most recent favorites (e.g. Hyprov and Fat Ham).

Entering the lottery

Most shows (~85% of those currently on Broadway) offer online lotteries. These are usually managed by one of three vendors:

• Broadway Direct: Open 9AM to 3PM the day before the show. You will get emailed whether you won or lost when the lottery is closed. If you win, you will have 1 hour to buy tickets, otherwise you lose the tickets. Only requires name, email, and date of birth.
• Telecharge: Opens at midnight the day before the show, and drawings typically happen at 10AM and/or 3PM. If you win, you will have about 5 hours to buy tickets, otherwise you lose the tickets. Requires either a Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter account to login.
• Lucky Seat: Opens the week before, with the option to enter the lottery for each day in one go. You are typically notified if you won a particular day's drawing the day before the show. You'll have a couple hours to buy the tickets before you lose them. Requires a Lucky Seat account.



I usually enter the lotteries on my bus ride to work each morning.

Lotteries are a low time commitment way of getting cheap tickets, since it only requires a minute of clicking buttons each day. I've also noticed that if a show is still in previews, there is a slightly higher chance of winning the lottery. Unfortunately, I'm not the best at checking my personal email throughout the day, so often times I don't notice I've won until after the deadline to buy the tickets has passed.

Online discounts

I tend to avoid buying tickets online because the fees can be steep. However, sometimes the allure of a sale will inevitably get me, either through TodayTix or a special promotion that a show is putting on. One way I learn about sales is by following the Instagram accounts of shows I'm interested in. Shucked had fantastic marketing that led to me buying $39 mezzanine seats when they were still in previews:

(Yes, this show was about corn)

Buying at the box office

My last resort is physically going to a box office and seeing if I can find a good price/seat combination. To be honest I used to do this a lot more before the pandemic when I really wanted to watch a particular show but wasn't having much luck with the lottery and they didn't offer rush. One thing I like about the box office is there's an actual human to talk to and explain the seats to you, and the feeling that more of my money is actually going to the show and not getting sucked into fees and ticketing platforms.

Post-pandemic, most of the shows I want to watch offer lottery/rush, or the online sales are good enough I just use TodayTix.

Hopefully this is helpful to someone, whether you live in the NYC area or are just visiting! With a little bit of diligence, you can watch a surprising number of Broadway shows without torturing your wallet too much.