Hamilton composer Lin-Manuel Miranda announced yesterday that the $10 ticket lottery for the Broadway hit would go digital for the winter months because of cold temperatures and security concerns. Fans were thrilled, not only because the #Ham4Ham show will live on (Mr. Miranda will shoot video from inside the Richard Rodgers Theatre) but also because it would now seemingly be easier to avoid the crowds and actually get tickets to the show.
Of course, in practice things became much more complicated. The lottery opened at 9:30 this morning, and entrants were immediately greeted by an error message. #Ham4Ham began trending as disappointed theatergoers took to Twitter:
https://twitter.com/kealan10/status/684397640612757504
Entering the online #Ham4Ham is harder than registering for classes as a freshman.
— Helen Elizabeth (@hesilf) January 5, 2016
how lucky we are to be alive right now when the #Ham4Ham lottery can #BreakTheInternet w/o a single kardashian in sight! @HamiltonMusical
— Emily Chen // 심진미 (@emoleechen) January 5, 2016
https://twitter.com/telecomgoddess1/status/684388929085292545
I think my chance of winning the PowerBall is higher than entering the @HamiltonMusical online lotto #servercrashed #Ham4Ham
— Ernabel Demillo (@ErnabelD) January 5, 2016
@HamiltonMusical @Lin_Manuel We broke the internet again pic.twitter.com/vWWDZpP4Mz
— Sam Leopold (@sam_leopold) January 5, 2016
The musical’s official Twitter account felt the Internet’s pain, and responded with a brilliant hashtag:
Having trouble signing up for the #Ham4Ham lottery? Keep trying! We're getting things figured out. #Ham404Ham https://t.co/T4ufmXAa3Y
— Hamilton (@HamiltonMusical) January 5, 2016
Mr. Miranda, king of Twitter, also soothed nervous lottery entrants:
Your love is like Lennie in Of Mice & Men: yall petted the lotto so hard ya broke it!
NASA is on it. @kafine: on it! https://t.co/DeXMtQ6e3f— Lin-Manuel Miranda (@Lin_Manuel) January 5, 2016
It's getting back up. @kafine is storming around the Sit room like Leo Mcgarry getting updates. (her analogy) https://t.co/LajsqnGntq
— Lin-Manuel Miranda (@Lin_Manuel) January 5, 2016
Yay.
Here I gently remind you that while I have a lotta jobs at Hamilton, none are in the IT Dept.
Just here like 😍🖥 https://t.co/CpiKZkTCOW— Lin-Manuel Miranda (@Lin_Manuel) January 5, 2016
The Hamilton hassle is reminiscent of Ticketmaster’s server problems last month—fans looking to buy tickets for Bruce Springsteen and Adele concerts were met with error messages and captcha requests because the site’s interface wasn’t scaled properly.
The Hamilton lottery problems are more understandable, however, because this is the first time there has been unprecedented online interest in one performance of the show before. The site needs time to get its sea legs so it can deal with this kind of demand every day. Ticketmaster doesn’t have that excuse—its site has been around for decades.
So if you’re still having trouble with the #Ham4Ham lottery, “wait for it”—it’s open until 4 PM today, so you haven’t thrown away your shot yet.
UPDATE: The Hamilton lottery site fully crashed earlier tonight due to 50,000 unique entries, and no #Ham4Ham entrants got tickets. Out of fairness, the tickets will be unsold and unused, and the front row of Hamilton will be empty tonight. There will be two live #Ham4Ham lotteries before performances at the Richard Rodgers Theatre tomorrow while the Hamilton team works on fixing the problem.
