Broadway shows can feel inaccessible for many reasons. Published ticket prices are high (even if some of the reasons may lie outside of producers’ control), especially for popular shows. This guide doesn’t solve any of those problems. In fact, it may just expose you to how expensive these shows really are. But this guide will attempt to aggregate the key resources for any ticket-buying hunt to one central location. And that should certainly help you get started!
To get the most out of this guide, you’ll want to know what show you want to see and when. A separate guide on that decision is forthcoming, but doesn’t exist today.
How to Buy Full-Price Tickets
Use this part of the guide if you’re booking tickets in advance.
Where Should I Sit?
Broadway theaters are weird. Each one has a different layout, and you might have a hard time deciding which seats are best from a seat map alone. Thankfully, there are a couple great resources for seeing what the view looks like from a given seat in a given theater:
- SeatPlan – I prefer this one because it centers a clean seat map in the interface
- A View from My Seat – slightly clunkier interface, but this site has seat maps for all the Broadway theaters as well
These are also great resources for researching concert and sports seating!
Where to Buy
If you’re in New York (or know someone who is), you can avoid substantial online fees by going to the box office in person for the show you want to see. If this isn’t an option for you, keep reading!
Many ticket websites sound official and will come up as sponsored results when you Google something like “Wicked Tickets” (see image). For any given show, there is only one official source of tickets. So I recommend following this process:
- To find a show’s official ticket site, navigate to the show’s official website (the bottom wickedthemusical.com URL in the example), then click “Buy Tickets” (or an equivalent button). Usually you’ll find yourself on the Telecharge, Ticketmaster, or SeatGeek site, although for the Wicked example you will end up on BroadwayDirect. In general, the official sites will have lower prices than the other sites that show up, which are generally resellers and almost always have higher fees.
- Once you have a sense of where you want to sit (see next section), open up TodayTix and see what options they have for your show/location (more on TodayTix below).
- Now, take a quick stroll through the reseller sites (StubHub, VividSeats, etc.) just to make sure there aren’t any screaming resale deals. If you’re close enough to the performance, you may find some sellers who can’t make it and are just trying to recover any of their money, so these options can come in handy.
You now have all the information you need to make your decision and know that you’re getting the best price for the seats you want.
TodayTix
TodayTix is a website and mobile app for buying tickets to shows all over the country, including basically every Broadway show. TodayTix uses two different methodologies for selling tickets:
- General area seating – you select “Rear Center Orchestra” for example, and the day of the show you’ll be assigned the best available seats in that section.
- Pick Your Seats – choose your seats from a seat map
If your show uses option 1, compare the TodayTix pricing to the official ticket site pricing in a given section, but remember you could end up in the worst seats within the specified section. For shows that aren’t selling well (guide to come on how to read box office data!), you’ll often get very good seats in your section. For more popular shows, I’d suggest going the official route and potentially spending slightly more to guarantee the seats you want.
If your show uses option 2, just compare pricing between TodayTix and the official site for the same seats. Pick the cheapest! They’re usually pretty close, but make sure you’re comparing the price after fees.
How to Buy Discounted Tickets
Discounted tickets are a good option in the following cases:
- You’re making the purchase a week or less before the day you want to see the show
- There’s not one particular show you need to see
- Your timing is flexible
- You’re not too picky about where you end up sitting
Some key terms will come up in ticket-buying research:
- Lottery – most Broadway shows have a lottery option where you enter for free to win the chance to purchase 1-2 discounted tickets for an upcoming performance
- Rush – rush tickets are purchased the same day (or, on occasion, the day before) the performance you intend to see. They are typically discounted to the ~$50/ticket range and vary widely in seat quality
- Standing Room – tickets to stand at the back of the theater and watch a show. Often only available in-person at the box office for sold-out performances
Both of these are mechanisms for getting tickets at a lower price than advertised. The best resource for finding information on discounted tickets for the shows currently on Broadway is B’Way Rush, which also features very cute and helpful visualizations of each show’s performance schedule. I would start there, although I’ve provided some more detail below too.
Lottery
As referenced in the section on full-priced tickets, a few different companies own and operate Broadway theaters. They each have different policies for lottery tickets, and individual shows may have additional nuances to consider. In general, though, you can find most lotteries on one of three sites:
| Site | Schedule | Notes |
| BroadwayDirect | Enter day before performance by 3pm (generally) | Nederlander theaters & Disney shows |
| Lucky Seat | Enter for the upcoming week of performances | Jujamcyn theaters |
| TodayTix | Usually enter for upcoming week of performances | Use “Rush & Lottery” search filter |
| Telecharge Lottery + Rush | Enter day before performance by 3pm (generally) | Shubert theaters |
You also may find Off-Broadway shows on some of these sites. Check those out too! And do note that upon winning a lottery you’ve just won the opportunity to buy tickets at a discount. You still need to accept and actually buy the tickets by a specified time! So pay attention to your email after the entry deadline.
Rush
The TodayTix and Telecharge links above will also reveal some digital rush ticket options. These open up the same day of a performance at a specified time. You can also get rush tickets to most Broadway shows the same day of a performance by going to the box office in person when the box office opens.
And that’s it! Thanks for reading this guide, I hope it helps consolidate a lot of the resources that are out there for buying Broadway tickets. I plan to continue evolving it, so feel free to contact me with any feedback!