Ticketmaster, Broadway Direct, Ticket Fees and the Truth

Last week, Forbes ran a piece about The Nederlander Organization, Broadway's second biggest landlord, leaving Ticketmaster. The piece was fairly light on details, so confusion spread, and I read a bunch of incorrect takes. This piece (filed well before sundown Sunday) is my attempt to provide some clarification.

In April, I wrote about how shows at Nederlander theaters were available for direct sale on Ticketmaster, the Nederlander-owned Broadway Direct, and the Shubert-owned Telecharge. At that point, Broadway Direct was far from new, it had already been selling tickets for some time. There were grumblings that Nederlander would officially launch Broadway Direct as a primary ticket seller with a release and maybe an article in The Times. That never happened and what we’ve seen is a slow rollout.

In early summer, the ticketing link on shows’ websites started changing to Broadway Direct. In July, The Lion King even made an announcement that Broadway Direct was now the official online seller for the show. But all the Nederlander shows still remained on Ticketmaster, as they had been. In other words, if you go to Ticketmaster directly right now to buy Six tickets for this week, you will receive a pure Ticketmaster experience. (The ticketing processing on the backend is a little different than it was years ago, but that is irrelevant to ticket buyers.) That won’t change until early next year—and, to make things more confusing, it will change on a rolling basis. For example, the last day MJ will be available directly on Ticketmaster is January 21, but the last day Shucked will be available directly on Ticketmaster is February 11. (Nederlander road venues will be on Ticketmaster for a lot longer.) If you go right now to buy tickets to MJ on January 21, it is the old Ticketmaster experience. If you click on January 23, you receive a message stating the date, time, venue, “ON PARTNER SITE,” and a hyperlinked “Find tickets” linking to the MJ page on Broadway Direct.

I reached out to several producers with shows in Nederlander theaters and they are unclear what exactly will happen after their shows officially transition—whether the shows will still be listed in the same manner on Ticketmaster or not. Currently, for Shubert theater shows, for example, Ticketmaster has resale tickets listed and a link to the Shubert site (annoyingly not Telecharge, but the main Shubert Organization site) with the following statement: “Discover more ticket options for this show: purchase tickets from the venue site.” I imagine Nederlander shows will have at least that presence. Meanwhile, there is no indication Disney is dumping Ticketmaster as the primary ticketing agency for its theater, the New Amsterdam Theatre, so Aladdin will still be available directly on Ticketmaster. 

What all this means from a customer experience perspective is subjective. Every site says it offers a better customer experience. In terms of Broadway overall, it’s better for Broadway to have more avenues for direct sales. In my last story, I discussed why having so many individual sites with different tickets is problematic. So, for Broadway, it would be great if shows were available directly always on Ticketmaster, SeatGeak, ATG Tickets, Telecharge, and Broadway Direct. But that’s not the world we’re currently in.

Right now, for Nederlander shows (that at least to the general public appear to be) available directly from Ticketmaster, Broadway Direct and Telecharge, the site you go to will factor into what you pay. A pair of standard center orchestra seats for Six on Thursday, November 9, row M, with a base cost of $169 each, will carry a $14.50 per ticket service charge on Broadway Direct. That is the same with Ticketmaster, but Ticketmaster also charges a $3.20 order processing fee, so you will pay $3.20 more. And you’ll pay the most from Telecharge, which will charge a $16.50 per ticket service charge on those same two tickets. For shows in Nederlander houses that I checked, Telecharge charged a higher per-ticket fee than Broadway Direct. However, for shows in Shubert houses that I checked, Broadway Direct charged a higher per-ticket fee than Telecharge. Tickets purchased at a theater's physical box office of course continue not to have a processing fee. 

Another thing from the user perspective is Broadway Direct utilizes the TixTrack system Nliven, which color codes for each different ticket price, similar to ATG Tickets (which is listed as a client on the TixTrack site, despite TixTrack being owned by The Nederlander Organization) and SeatGeek. Telecharge—which color codes only premium seats—and Ticketmaster have not traditionally done that as part of their native platforms. However, if you buy a Nederlander show on Telecharge it utilizes the Nliven seat map with color-coding. And if you buy a Shubert show on Broadway Direct, it also has the color coding. (I’ll spare the average reader details about the backend of these sites. But, if you’re interested, this Nliven video gives you a good idea of the type of data producers can see about ticket purchases.)

Why is this happening? Because The Nederlander Organization wants to collect ticket fees like the other landlords. It’s that simple. It’s not about the bad press Ticketmaster has been receiving. It’s not because a specific producer wanted to be off of Ticketmaster. In fact, the producers I spoke to want to remain on Ticketmaster. Ticketmaster is a global brand for tickets and also allows for added promotion. For example, when I searched for my Carly Rae Jepsen tickets a couple of months back, right underneath there was a ”promoted” event listing for Shucked. No one goes to Broadway Direct or Telecharge for anything but theater because those are solely theater sites.

Whether this move away from Ticketmaster as a direct seller will impact ticket sales is an open question because, right now, it is a direct seller. And even in 2024 or 2025, we may never truly know the answer. In post-reopening times, there are so many variables that impact sales, it’s going to be hard to do a direct comparison even for long-runners such as The Lion King. So, it is very unlikely the move will be beneficial for individual shows, but whether it is detrimental is going to be difficult to pinpoint.

Industry Trends Weekly is a short column that runs in the weekly Industry Pro Newsletter. You can read past columns and subscribe here. If you have an idea for the column, you can reach the author at cara@broadwayworld.com.