First-Ever Digital Hamilton Ticket Lottery Crashes Web Servers and Forces Change

The #Ham4Ham lottery offers front-row tickets to the musical for $10.

January 5, 2016

Daveed Diggs plays Thomas Jefferson in the Broadway production of Lin-Manuel Miranda's musical Hamilton. — Daveed Diggs plays Thomas Jefferson in the Broadway production of Lin-Manuel Miranda's musical *Hamilton*.
(© Joan Marcus)

With more than 50,000 entries, the first-ever digital #Ham4Ham ticket lottery for front-row seats to Hamilton fully crashed its host website. As a result, according to the show's Twitter account, the production will not be able to award any winners for the 21 available seats to tonight's show.

Due to over 50K unique entries, @BroadwayDirect‘s lottery site has fully crashed. As a result, we cannot award any #Ham4Ham winners tonight.

— Hamilton (@HamiltonMusical) January 5, 2016

Hamilton creator and star Lin-Manuel Miranda took to Twitter to explain the problem:

The issue is, the system sent “you’ve won” emails to more people than we have seats for. Which is the sh*ttiest. https://t.co/3IkcsIkVUG

— Lin-Manuel Miranda (@Lin_Manuel) January 5, 2016

As a result, all 21 tickets will go unused at tonight's performance in an effort to remain fair to all.

The tickets held for #Ham4Ham will go unsold and unused in an effort to be fair to everyone. https://t.co/lPZOE5k20v

— Hamilton (@HamiltonMusical) January 5, 2016

While the Web hosting remedies the problem, live #Ham4Ham lotteries will be held on Wednesday, January 6, for both matinee and evening performances. Further details are forthcoming.

Tomorrow, while we work on remedying this problem, we will hold LIVE #Ham4Ham lotteries outside of the theater. Stay tuned for more details.

— Hamilton (@HamiltonMusical) January 5, 2016

Owing to dangerously large crowds gathering nightly on West 46th Street, the show's producers of announced January 4 that the now-famed #Ham4Ham ticket lottery would go digital effective today, January 5. The #Ham4Ham lottery offers 21 front-row tickets to the musical at the price of $10.

Directed by Thomas Kail and inspired by Ron Chernow's biography Alexander Hamilton, Hamilton explores the life of the American founding father and first Secretary of the Treasury, as well as his experiences as an orphan of the British West Indies who immigrated to the 13 Colonies and helped shape the United States of America. It began Broadway previews July 13 and opened August 6 at the Richard Rodgers Theatre after an earlier run at the Public Theater.

Miranda leads the cast as Alexander Hamilton, alongside Leslie Odom Jr. (Aaron Burr), Drama Desk Award winner Renée Elise Goldsberry (Angelica Schuyler), Phillipa Soo (Eliza Hamilton), Jonathan Groff (King George), Daveed Diggs (Marquis De Lafayette, Thomas Jefferson), Christopher Jackson (George Washington), Anthony Ramos (John Laurens, Phillip Hamilton), Okieriete Onaodowan (Hercules Mulligan, James Madison), and Jasmine Cephas Jones (Peggy Shuyler, Maria Reynolds). Javier Muñoz takes on the role of Alexander Hamilton once a week.

The ensemble includes Carleigh Bettiol, Andrew Chappelle, Ariana DeBose, Alysha Deslorieux, Sydney James Harcourt, Neil Haskell, Sasha Hutchings, Thayne Jasperson, Stephanie Klemons, Morgan Marcell, Emmy Raver-Lampman, Jon Rua, Austin Smith, Seth Stewart, Betsy Struxness, Ephraim Sykes, and Voltaire Wade-Greene.

The link to the new digital lottery site can be found here.

For tickets and more information, click here.

Musical