‘Hamilton’ Tickets Lottery Suspended Over Safety Issues
"Hamilton," the hit Broadway musical started its $10 ticket lottery for matinee shows. With people vying for the discounted tickets, lines for the daily draws have gone longer and of late, the people on queue already covered most of the Broadway area -- from 46th Street to Times Square.
The #Ham4Ham also started a mini-show in an effort to entertain people who are waiting in line for the lottery ticket draws on matinee days. This small events further drew more people in and the crowd eventually got bigger and bigger. Police had to be called to control the fans and keep them within the fence.
Needless to say, the traffic was also affected as people filled the streets. They blocked the traffic and turned the 2-laned road to a single lane.
Safety issues were raised due to the crowding. Comments were left on the theater's forums and many were voicing out concerns regarding the overflow of Hamilton lottery participants from the sidewalk out near the Richard Rodgers. Others mentioned the blocked streets as people lined up.
In summary, throngs of fans caused traffic and risk of accidents. As a result, the show producers suspended the "Hamilton" lottery draws and decided to make the draws digital.
On Jan. 4, Jeffrey Seller, the show's lead producer, announced the digital draws through the Hamilton Twitter account saying: "Starting tomorrow, the #Ham4Ham lottery moves digital for the Winter. Join us online until the Spring!"
After the announcement was made, the Hamilton online lottery site went down on Jan. 5 as over 50,000 people joined the contest. Since the site crashed, the producer said that to be fair to everyone, the tickets on that day will not be sold.
"Over 50K unique entries, @BroadwayDirect's lottery site has fully crashed. As a result, we cannot award any #Ham4Ham winners tonight," the Hamilton Musical tweeted.
Although this may sound like bad news, the website crash is somehow good because it means that producer Lin-Manuel Miranda and his team will have to step out again, outside the Broadway theater, to hold a live lottery draw.
On Wednesday morning, the show's management posted on Twitter: "Two LIVE #Ham4Ham lotteries today: 11:30AM enter, 12PM drawing, and 5:30PM enter, 5:55PM #Ham4Ham show, 6PM drawing. #RiseUp #HamiltonBway"
They added that the #Ham4Ham lotteries will continue the live drawing for the rest of the week and invited fans to join them at the Richard Rodgers for the Jan. 7 draws at 5PM.
Meanwhile, the live lottery is returning full-time in March with better plans for safety of the fans.
"We love seeing so many fans show up to participate in the Ham4Ham lottery and show. But we need to figure out how to safely accommodate our fans without blocking traffic on West 46th Street. We're taking this winter break to work out some safety measures and improvements that we'll implement when we return to the live lottery in the spring," Seller stated on Wall Street Journal.
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