Hamilton West End tickets appear on resale sites despite anti-tout measures

Tickets for the London run of hip-hop musical Hamilton, the most anticipated theatre event of the year, have already appeared on secondary ticket websites for almost £3,000 despite measures to prevent them being touted.

Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Pulitzer prize-winning show, based on the life of one of America’s founding fathers, Alexander Hamilton, will transfer from the US to the newly renovated Victoria Palace theatre in the West End in November.

Less than two hours after tickets for the London run went on early sale, Viagogo listed several tickets at between £999 and £2,500 each, rising to nearly £3,000 once VAT and the company’s booking fee were included.

Tickets for Hamilton on Broadway were like gold dust after rave reviews prompted unprecedented advance box office sales, and Michelle Obama proclaimed it “the best art I have ever seen in my life”. It went on to be nominated for a record 16 Tony awards, picking up 11, and also won a Grammy.

The show’s producers introduced strict new measures to combat touts, after 20,000 tickets for Hamilton in New York were snapped up by software designed to bulk-buy tickets online, and resold on secondary ticketing websites. US tickets were originally priced between $139 and $549, but were being touted for upwards of $2,000.

Despite a paperless ticket system – where ticket holders have to go to the theatre with a confirmation email, the bank card used for the booking and photo ID – being introduced for the West End show, tickets quickly found their way on to secondary ticketing sites.

Cameron Mackintosh, producing the UK run of the show, said he hoped paperless ticketing would help “combat the gouging of the public with hugely inflated ticket prices by third-party profiteers”.

But security consultant and ticketing expert Reg Walker, of Iridium Consultancy, said touts could still prosper, despite efforts to shut them out. “It’s great to see the people behind Hamilton trying to stop touting but it’s unlikely to be 100% effective,” he said.

“It’s viable for a tout to buy four tickets, sell three of them, then go with you to the box office to pick them up using his credit card. He can then walk the ticket purchasers in and walk out again, or even watch the show himself.”

“At those prices it’s still worth it for them because they make enough on three of the tickets that they don’t mind losing the money they spent on the fourth.”

Similar measures to stop touts were attempted by Adele for her recent tour, with only those with their names printed on the tickets supposedly allowed entry, but they still made their way on to resale sites for upwards of £8,000.

Viagogo and other secondary sites such as StubHub, GetMeIn and Seatwave have come under increasing scrutiny in the past year, prompting the Competition and Markets Authority to announce an investigation into secondary ticketing last month.

While the prices listed on Viagogo for Hamilton tickets are high, relatively few appeared on the website, suggesting the producers’ attempts to stop touts have had some effect.

But a gig by U2 at the Twickenham rugby stadium in July has sparked a feeding frenzy among touts, particularly those based abroad. Tickets for the event, featuring Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds as the support act, are being advertised on StubHub by ticket traders from the US and Isle of Man at prices far above face value.

K Voorhees Inc, based in the Florida city Safety Harbor, is offering four tickets at £1,299 each, compared with their face value of £200, equating to a potential profit of £5,000 on a single concert.

Row2Tickets, based in Michigan, lists two tickets for £349, six at £265 and one for £249, suggesting a potential combined profit of more than £1,600. And at least 38 tickets are advertised by I Want Tickets, a firm based on the Isle of Man.

Nicole Nadig, who lives in New York, will be among those from the USwho will fly to London in 2018 specifically to see Hamilton, having managed to get her hands on early tickets.

“I’m really excited,” she told the Guardian. “I tried to get tickets in New York earlier in the run last year and was unsuccessful and couldn’t afford to buy them at resale prices, ie $1,000, and by the time more face-value tickets went on sale most of the cast was leaving.

“When I saw the show was going up in London with most of the original cast I figured I’d wait and see it there. I thought it would be a nice holiday that would probably only be slightly more expensive than two $1,000 Hamilton tickets.”

All tickets found being offered on resale sites will be voided.

Miranda became an advocate of new legislation against secondary ticket-touting in America after he saw touts snap up tens of thousands of tickets for his show. He wrote in the New York Times: “I want you to be there when the curtain goes up. You shouldn’t have to fight robots just to see something you love.”

Those hoping to get their hands on early tickets for the West End run had to sign up to priority booking last year and were given a code to get their hands on the first batch of tickets, which went on sale on Monday at midday.

The tickets were priced between £37.50 and £127.50. Despite massive demand, none of the ticket websites crashed and social media was full of praise for the “stress-free” and “surprisingly painless” online booking system. Tickets go on general sale on 30 January.