Lin Manuel-Miranda has transformed Broadway with Hamilton, and now he’s taking on the “ticket bots.”
The Hamilton creator and star has written an op-ed article in The New York Times supporting the drive for New York State lawmakers to stamp out the illegal use of “ticket bots” that swiftly buy tickets to the most popular shows on Broadway from sites like Ticketmaster and re-sell them for vastly inflated prices — sometimes for as much as 1,000 times the price on the open online market.
Hey NYers, Re: Bots.
518-455-4100 is the # to call to find out your NY State Assemblyperson’s office #.
Let’s get the bots.
Tomorrow:????.— Lin-Manuel Miranda (@Lin_Manuel) June 7, 2016
Miranda wants an end to this larceny. He writes:
I want the thousands of tickets for shows, concerts and sporting events that are now purchased by bots and resold at higher prices to go into the general market so that you have a chance to get them.
I want theatergoers to be able to purchase tickets at face value at our box office and our website, rather than on a resale platform. And if you do go to a resale platform for tickets, I want the markup you must pay to be clearly displayed.
Most of all, I want you to be there when the curtain goes up. You shouldn’t have to fight robots just to see something you love.
Tickets for Hamilton have reached several thousand dollars on the black market, with the massive mark-ups not going to the show’s producers.
The thousands of people that bought Hamilton tickets and flipped them for resale for $6,000 each within 2 hours… Disgusting
— Kylie Gilbert (@kngilbert) May 12, 2016
As well as suggesting all these changes, Miranda is doing his bit to cool down the Hamilton resale market by leaving the show next month, news first reported by Heat Street.
I JUST WANNA SEE HAMILTON WHY ARE TICKETS SO EXPENSIVE
— Wyclef Jen (@Jenny_XJ_9) May 20, 2016
