Hamilton priced premium seats off the scalpers' own resale data, at $849 a ticket

By June 2016 “Hamilton” was earning an estimated $600,000 a week in profit, with the Times projecting eventual sales that could reach a billion dollars — but scalpers using ticket bots were snapping up seats online and reselling them at huge markups, potentially making as much as $60 million a year from the show. The producers announced they would raise the price of the 200 best seats from about $470 to $849, lift other tickets by significantly less, and expand the number of $10 lottery seats.

Lead producer Jeffrey Seller explained the number came straight from the gray market: “continually monitoring the secondary market and finding out where the average is.” Marketplaces like StubHub and SeatGeek, built for scalping, double as a fair-market price feed — they show exactly what people are willing to spend to attend.

James Surowiecki's New Yorker column argued the open secondary market also makes the hike publicly acceptable: it clarifies that the choice is between scalpers pocketing the premium and the show's creators, funders and workers getting it. The same logic, he noted, was available to sports teams and performers — the internet had made it easier to raise prices without alienating fans.

Secondary-market transaction prices reveal willingness to pay far better than any internal forecast, at zero cost to the seller.

Raising face value toward the resale average transfers the scalpers' margin to the production without adding a single new seat.

An open resale market makes the increase publicly legible as fair, where quiet bot arbitrage had been invisible and resented.

Expanding $10 lottery seats preserves the accessibility story that keeps the premium pricing politically defensible.

Your adversaries' behavior is data: if a gray market exists for your product, its prices are the most honest market research available, and pricing against it can beat policing it.

As announced in June 2016: top price of $849 on the best 200 seats, smaller increases elsewhere, and more $10 lottery seats. The show's estimated weekly profit stood around $600,000, with possible sales toward a billion dollars. Surowiecki framed the episode as a lesson for live events generally — pricing too high risks empty seats and gouging accusations, pricing too low sacrifices revenue to the secondary market, and the resale platforms' data lets producers walk that line without guessing.