Inside the Growing World of Theatre Tickets Insurance

Theater tickets are famously known as non-refundable. But there are sometimes insurance options out there, they just aren’t well publicized. As expected, the industry not having a centralized buying platform leads to a more confusing purchasing experience in terms of insurance. Different forums offer different insurance or none at all. This, even though, everyone asked believes clear insurance offerings are a plus for the consumer.

Ticket insurance primarily operates like travel insurance—you pay an extra fee at checkout and a separate company, not the show/theater owner directly, administers it. Ticketmaster partnered with Allianz Global Assistance to administer such insurance, called Event Ticket Protector, over a decade before the pandemic. This insurance has terms and conditions similar to what you can buy when you buy an airline ticket: you pay an extra fee at checkout and you can obtain a refund in the event of a “covered illness or injury, traffic accidents, mechanical breakdown” and additional specified circumstances. (I’ve heard mixed things on the process of actually obtaining such a refund.) But this insurance only applies on shows that Ticketmaster serves as the official box office for, which means, currently, for Broadway, only purchasers of Aladdin can buy this insurance.  It also does not include merchandise or any add-ons purchased at the time of the ticket purchase.  The price of the insurance per ticket varies with the ticket price—as some examples, for a $215.50 ticket ($250 with fees), insurance is $17.50; for a $143.50 ($168 with fees), insurance is $11.76.

Now that ATG is a big Broadway landlord, it has brought its own preferred outside insurance company with it. ATG has long used the UK-based Secure Refunds Limited at its venues, both abroad and in the US.  In mid-2022, Jujamcyn had introduced a “Flexible Rate Ticket.” If you purchased that ticket, which was a higher priced ticket, Jujamcyn itself administered a refund if you submitted a request at least 72 hours prior to the advertised performance date and time.  Following the combination of Jujamcyn and ATG, the legacy shows at Jujamcyn houses now offer the Secure Refunds Limited insurance instead.  This insurance is broader than the Allianz insurance—it allows you a full refund if you cannot make the performance for any reason and includes all add-ons purchased with the ticket purchase (so everything but the insurance fee payment, which is never refundable, even if the performance is cancelled).  For a performance of Hadestown, for a $349 ticket ($388 with fees), insurance is $32; for a $99 ticket ($111 with fees), insurance is $10. For the new shows at what were Jujamcyn houses it’s a little trickier. Cabaret just started offering the insurance a couple of weeks ago, but you still cannot purchase it with the table (read: most expensive) seats. That’s in process. Insurance hasn’t gone online yet for Sunset Blvd., but will soon.  

Currently, shows in Nederlander and Shubert houses do not offer such insurance if you buy the tickets from the official box offices. (Of note, Nederlander shows are still listed on Ticketmaster, but because Ticketmaster is no longer the official box office for those shows, the insurance is not an option.)  Of course, past dating or back dating your tickets is a possible option, show and availability dependent. And, Disney, long a customer service innovator, has added options. Both Disney shows offer exchanges for $10 per ticket. Exchanges must be requested at least 48 hours prior to start of original performance. Aladdin also has a Refundable Ticket available for any seat, as long as you are buying over a month in advance. This covers the entire ticket cost, including fees, but is for those that are canceling pretty far in advance, as requests need to be made over one week before the performance date.  For sample costs, for a seat where the standard ticket price, inclusive of fees, is $209.50, a refundable ticket is $281.50, which is a substantial $72 per ticket difference between the two; for a seat that costs $88.50 all-in, the refundable price is $116.50, a $28 per ticket difference. Because this program is administered by Disney, you can go straight to the physical box office and buy a refundable ticket, saving the Ticketmaster fees, though I suspect it is mostly for tourists, who likely won’t be strolling up to the New Amsterdam over a month before a performance date.

There are also more protection options out there. If you buy tickets from TodayTix, even if TodayTix is not the official box office for a show, you can purchase TodayTix insurance. This allows you one-click cancellation as long as you cancel more than 24 hours before the show. However, you don’t get your money back, you get a TodayTix voucher for the full cost of your tickets including transaction fees. For a $229 ticket to SIX ($254 including fees), that insurance is $24.50; for a $88 ticket ($101 including fees), that insurance is $7. If you get your SIX tickets directly from its online box office, Broadway Direct, there is no insurance option, but you pay slightly less in processing fees. (More confusingly, if you buy tickets from the Lortel Theatre site for Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, there is no insurance option, but if you buy them from the show’s website, the ticket interface is TodayTix, so there is insurance offered. So that is a weird case where there is sort of two official box offices, with different options depending on which one you use.)

This is in addition to whatever credit card and travel insurance may cover. These are simply the main insurance options specific to New York theater.  

I’ve heard from insiders that insurance purchases have risen after the pandemic and rise with Covid spikes. However, insurance has never been something that all or even nearly all ticket buyers opt for. Additionally, with more people buying last-minute tickets, there is less need for insurance on those sales. That said, everyone interviewed said they’d prefer having insurance as an option over not having it as an option. At least one survey also backs up the premise that ticket buyers feel more secure when insurance is at least an option.

TicketPlan, a UK-based ticket insurer about to celebrate its 25th year in the event insurance industry, commissioned a study in 2023 regarding the desirability of ticket insurance. It used Pollfish (a platform that has a network of respondentswho opt-in to certain surveys) and polled 1000 people in the US and UK—the vast majority of which had purchased tickets to shows and events within the last year and were likely to again—about their ticket buying habits. In that study, 82% of respondents said they would be more likely to pay for tickets in advance if offered insurance with purchase, 69% would be willing to pay for that insurance (though the amount of extra charge was not specified), and 73% of those polls preferred ticket vendors who offered insurance. Now, of course, this was done by a ticket insurance agency, so keep that in mind in terms of possible question phrasing, but they didn’t just poll their own customers. And it makes sense that people would want the option of insurance and giving them that option would be good for business.

“I’m for anything that helps people feel better about buying tickets,” said producer Ken Davenport. “We have gotten a lot of good ideas from the airline industry—premium tickets, dynamic pricing—this is another one.”