The advertised price of a Broadway ticket is not the price most people in the room paid. Between lotteries, rush sales, standing room and the discount booths, a substantial fraction of any given audience got in for well under a hundred dollars, and often for thirty or forty.
The catch is that all the cheap routes trade money for either flexibility or certainty. If you must see one specific show on one specific night, you will pay for that. If you are willing to see whatever is available, New York theatre becomes remarkably affordable.
The four routes, ranked by value
1. Digital lotteries
The best value by a wide margin, and free to enter.
Most shows run a lottery through their own site or a ticketing app. Entry opens either the day before or on the morning of the performance and closes a few hours before curtain. Winners are drawn at random and pay a flat rate, typically thirty to fifty dollars, for seats that are frequently very good — front rows are common, because those seats are held back precisely for this.
Enter every lottery you would be happy to win, every day of your trip. It takes about ten minutes total. People who do this for a week usually win at least once.
The rules: you normally get one or two tickets, you have a short window to pay if you win, and you have to collect at the box office with the card you paid on.
2. Rush tickets
Sold at the box office when it opens on the day of the performance, at a low flat rate, in limited numbers, first come first served.
Some shows restrict rush to students with ID. Some sell them online at a set time instead of at the window. The details vary per production and change, so check the show’s own site the week before.
For a popular show this means queueing early in the morning. For an established long-running production it often means turning up at ten and walking away with a ticket.
3. Standing room only
Sold only when a performance is otherwise completely sold out, usually released at the box office on the morning of the show, and usually around thirty dollars.
You stand at a rail behind the last row of the orchestra. The view is generally good and the price is excellent. For a ninety-minute play this is a bargain. For a two-and-a-half-hour musical with one interval, be honest with yourself about your feet and your back.
4. TKTS
The booth under the red steps at Duffy Square in Times Square sells same-day tickets at 20 to 50 per cent off. There is a board listing what is available, updated live, and the queue moves faster than its length suggests.
Two things people do not know: there are other TKTS booths — at Lincoln Center and in Downtown Brooklyn — with the same stock and much shorter queues. And the Times Square booth opens earlier for matinees than for evening shows, so the timings are worth checking rather than guessing.
TKTS takes a per-ticket service charge on top of the discounted price.
What to avoid
Resale sites. StubHub and its competitors mark up heavily and the seats are frequently no better than what the box office has. For most shows there is no scarcity that justifies the premium.
Street sellers. Anyone offering you tickets on the pavement in Times Square is not doing you a favour.
Third-party “discount” sites that are not the show’s own box office, Telecharge or Ticketmaster. Fees vary enormously and some are not disclosed until checkout.
Practical things about the theatres themselves
Broadway houses are old — many date from the 1910s and 1920s — and they are small by modern standards. Legroom in the upper balconies of the older theatres is genuinely tight, and the rake is steep. If you are tall, the mezzanine front is usually a better buy than the rear orchestra at the same price.
Obstructed view seats are labelled as such and are sold cheaply. They are often perfectly fine — a pillar at the extreme edge of your vision — but read the seat map notes.
Curtain times are 7pm or 8pm for evenings, 2pm for matinees on Wednesdays and Saturdays, and sometimes Sunday afternoons. Many shows are dark on Mondays.
Latecomers are held until a scene break, which in some productions is fifteen or twenty minutes in. Allow for the Times Square crowds when timing your arrival.
Dress code does not exist. Jeans are entirely normal.
Interval drinks can be ordered before the show starts and will be waiting on the bar, which saves the crush.
Beyond Broadway
Off-Broadway houses seat 100 to 499 and cost a fraction of Broadway prices. The work is often better and more adventurous, and the theatres are more comfortable. Theatre Row on West 42nd Street between Ninth and Tenth is a row of small houses; the Public Theater on Lafayette Street is one of the most important producing theatres in America and where Hamilton and A Chorus Line both started.
Shakespeare in the Park at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park is free every summer, with tickets distributed by same-day lottery and by queue. It is one of the best things New York does.
St Ann’s Warehouse in DUMBO and BAM in Fort Greene programme the most interesting theatre in the city and neither is on any tourist itinerary.
The honest summary
If you want a specific hit musical on a Saturday night, book it months ahead and pay what it costs. If you are flexible about what and when, enter four lotteries a day, check TKTS on the afternoon, and you will see two or three shows for the price of one full-price ticket.