All you need is a smart-phone and a dream: Broadway Online Ticket Lotteries

Rent started the "rush" ticket trend back in the 90's. Shakespeare In The Park productions have had a popular (and almost impossible to win) online lottery and early morning rush line for years. And within the past year the online lottery has become the method du jour for this season's crop of new Broadway shows. At least 4 of the most popular Broadway shows of the season (Something Rotten, Gigi, Fun Home, and On The Town) currently utilize digital lotteries to give patrons the opportunity to win highly discounted tickets (about $25), Book of Mormon has done Twitter and Facebook lotteries, and the Off Broadway mega-hit Hamilton has the most impossible to win digital lottery of all, most days awarding tickets to only one winner.

It's certainly easier to tap a few buttons on your phone or computer than show up at the theatre to wait outside in the cold at a designated time on the slim chance that you'll be one of the lucky ones, but are these digital lotteries really a good thing? On one hand, yes it certainly is easier. Many are excited that it allows theatre fans from New Jersey, Long Island, or even the outer parts of the boroughs to enter without making the long and often expensive trip into the city. Enter from home, and make the trip only if you win.

But I must admit, the elitist New Yorker in me is a but smug. There's something special about gathering with fellow fans and going through the right of passage of hoping your name is called. Especially after many trips to the theatre and inevitably many unsuccessful attempts, you somehow feel that you've EARNED the right to buy those $25 tickets. Which of course you haven't, you just got lucky. But you put in the time and frozen fingers dammit! And that must be worth something. Also, the digital lotteries cause the number of entrants to go into the thousands instead of the low hundreds (or sometimes even less), thus drastically decreasing the odds for those who would have put in the time and been die-hard in-person entrants.

Alas, my luck has continued to be equally low with both in-person and digital lotteries. So maybe karma is catching up with me for being a lottery-snob...