Opening and box office records
Hamilton's off-Broadway engagement at The Public Theater was sold out,[6] and when the musical opened on Broadway, it had a multimillion-dollar advance in ticket sales, reportedly taking in $30 million before its official opening.[146]
By September 2015, the show was sold out for most of its Broadway engagement.[147][148][149][150] It was the second-highest-grossing show on Broadway for the Labor Day week ending September 6, 2015 (behind only The Lion King).[7]
Hamilton set a Broadway box office record for the most money grossed in a single week in New York City in late November 2016, when it grossed $3.3 million for an eight-performance week, the first show to break $3 million in eight performances.[151]
Ticket lottery and Ham4Ham
Hamilton, like some other Broadway musicals, offers a ticket lottery before every show. Initially, 21 front-row seats (and occasional standing room tickets) were offered in each lottery. Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda began preparing and hosting outdoor mini-performances shortly before each daily drawing, allowing lottery participants to experience a part of the show even when they did not win tickets.[152] These were dubbed the "Ham4Ham" shows, because lottery winners were given the opportunity to purchase two tickets at the reduced price of one Hamilton ($10 bill) each.
The online theatrical journal HowlRound characterized Ham4Ham as an expression of Miranda's cultural background:
Ham4Ham follows a long tradition of Latina/o (or the ancestors of present-day Latina/os) theatremaking that dates back to when the events in Hamilton were happening. ... The philosophy behind this is simple. If the people won't come to the theatre, then take the theatre to the people. While El Teatro Campesino's 'taking it to the streets' originated from a place of social protest, Ham4Ham does so to create accessibility, tap into social media, and ultimately generate a free, self-functioning marketing campaign. In this way, Ham4Ham falls into a lineage of accessibility as a Latina/o theatremaking aesthetic.[153]
As a result of the Ham4Ham shows, Hamilton's lottery drew unusually large crowds of people who created congestion on West 46th Street.[154] To avoid increasingly dangerous crowding and traffic conditions, an online ticket lottery began operating in early January 2016.[154] On the first day of the online lottery, more than 50,000 people entered, crashing the website.[155]
After Miranda left the show on July 9, 2016, Rory O'Malley, then playing King George III, took over as the host of Ham4Ham.[156] The Ham4Ham show officially ended on August 31, 2016, after more than a year of performances.[157] The online lottery continued, with an official mobile app released in August 2017 that expanded the lottery by offering tickets for touring productions of Hamilton as well as the Broadway show.[158]
