Broadway shows with a daily lottery

Which Broadway shows have a digital ticket lottery?

Eighteen Broadway productions currently run a digital lottery. Entry is free and drawn at random, and winning tickets run from ten dollars for Hamilton to sixty for The Lion King. Most entries open the day before the performance and close mid-afternoon. Four platforms handle nearly all of them: Telecharge, Broadway Direct, Lucky Seat, and TodayTix.

A digital lottery is the only mechanism on Broadway that costs nothing to try. Entry is free, you enter from your phone, and the draw is random — so unlike rush, where the queue rewards whoever is willing to get up earliest, the lottery asks nothing of you but the entry itself.

The prices below and the windows they run in were checked on the date above. Every one of them is set by the individual production and can change mid-run, sometimes without an announcement. Enter through the platform listed, but treat the production’s own site as the authority on the day.

How the lottery actually works

You enter for a specific performance, usually the day before. Entries close in the afternoon, winners are drawn and emailed shortly afterwards, and a win gives you the right to buy one or two seats at the stated price — not the seats themselves.

The part that catches people is the window to pay. It is short, commonly about an hour, and an unclaimed win is released to someone else. If you enter a lottery, watch your email that afternoon.

Entering early confers no advantage whatsoever. The draw is random among all valid entries, so an entry submitted a minute before the deadline has exactly the same odds as one submitted at midnight. The full mechanics, and how the lottery differs from rush and standing room, are in Broadway rush, lottery, and standing room.

Which lotteries are worth entering?

All of them, since entry is free — but the odds vary enormously and nobody publishes them.

The rough heuristic is supply against demand. A lottery at a large house for a show that is not selling out has far better odds than one at a small house for a hit. Wicked at the Gershwin allocates more seats than Oh, Mary! at the Lyceum, but it also draws vastly more entries.

Hamilton at $10 is the outlier in both directions: the cheapest ticket on Broadway by a wide margin, and correspondingly the longest odds. Its weekly window means a single entry covers several performances, which improves your chances of winning something without improving your chances on any given night.

What you are actually trading

Money for certainty. A lottery win is the cheapest legitimate way into a Broadway house short of standing room, and you cannot plan a trip around one.

The honest way to use this list is as a supplement rather than a strategy: enter for the shows you want, every day you are in town, and buy a ticket to something you are sure about through the authorized seller. Anything the lottery gives you is a bonus.

You also do not choose your seat. Lottery allocations vary by production and can be anywhere from the front row to the rear mezzanine, which is worth understanding before you win — see where to sit in a Broadway theatre.

What's on this list

How we chose

Broadway productions running as of the date below that operate a digital lottery open to the general public, listed with the platform each production uses. Rush and standing room are excluded — they are separate mechanisms with separate rules. Productions whose only discount program is a student or member scheme are also excluded, because they are not open to anyone.

Current as of October 15, 2026.

Hamilton

Musical · 2015

$10 through HamiltonMusical.com — the cheapest lottery on Broadway and the one that made the format famous. Its entry window is also the most unusual: it opens on Friday morning and runs through the following Thursday, covering a week of performances at once rather than a single date.

The Lion King

Musical · 1997

$60 through Broadway Direct, entries opening 9am the day before and closing at 3pm. The most expensive lottery on the list, which is still a fraction of what a comparable seat costs at the box office.

Wicked

Musical · 2003

$55 through Broadway Direct, entries opening 9am the day before and closing at 3pm. One of the longest-running lotteries on Broadway, and correspondingly one of the hardest to win.

The Book of Mormon

Musical · 2011

$49 through Lucky Seat. Entries close at 9.30am the day before for weekday performances, and at 9.30am on the Friday before for weekend performances — worth noting, because the weekend deadline arrives earlier than people expect.

Hadestown

Musical · 2006

$49 through Lucky Seat, on the same schedule as The Book of Mormon: 9.30am the day before on weekdays, and the preceding Friday morning for weekend performances.

Oh, Mary!

Play · 2024

$47 through Telecharge, entries opening at midnight and closing at 3pm the day before. One of the more competitive lotteries in town given the size of the Lyceum and the length of the show's run.

Operation Mincemeat

Musical · 2019

$49 through Telecharge, opening at midnight and closing at 3pm the day before. A West End transfer that kept its lottery when it moved.

The Great Gatsby

Musical · 2023

$45 through Telecharge, opening at midnight and closing at 3pm the day before.

The Lost Boys

Musical · 2026

$45 through Broadway Direct, with an unusually early window — entries open at 7am the day before and close at 2pm.

Aladdin

$45 through AladdinTheMusical.com rather than a third-party platform, opening 9am and closing 3pm the day before. One of the few productions running its lottery on its own site.

Maybe Happy Ending

$20.64 through Telecharge, opening at midnight and closing at 3pm the day before. The oddly precise price is deliberate and refers to the show itself.

MJ The Musical

$49 through Broadway Direct, entries opening 9am the day before and closing at 3pm.

SIX: The Musical

$45 through Broadway Direct, with the latest closing time on the list — entries open at 9am the day before and run until 6pm. Its final performance is announced for 3 January 2027.

The Outsiders

$49 through Telecharge, opening at midnight and closing at 3pm the day before.

Buena Vista Social Club

$49 through Telecharge, opening at midnight and closing at 3pm the day before.

Schmigadoon!

$45 through Broadway Direct, entries opening at 10am the day before and closing at 2pm.

The Rocky Horror Show

$30 through TodayTix, and the only lottery here that runs overnight — entries open at 5pm the day before and close at 9am on the day of the performance.

Other Desert Cities

$49 through Lucky Seat, with entries beginning at 10.30am the day before. A new production this season, so the policy is more likely than most here to change.

Sources