Conventional wisdom holds that if you say something three times you’ll remember it. The safest, most affordable tickets to Straz Center shows come from only one place:
“Strazcenter.org”
“Strazcenter.org”
“Strazcenter.org”
With sold-out season ticket packages for the huge Broadway season ahead featuring a four-week run of Hamilton, we’re trying to get you the best information about single tickets before scam artists with fakes find you first.
People, this thing about our upcoming season and ticket buying is serious.
You may hear the thundering approach of a particularly revolutionary Broadway blockbuster.
But – there are hundreds of other people who hear cha-chinging cash registers racking up your credit cards with fake tickets.
Those people have already set up websites that look like they sell Hamilton and other Broadway tickets to Straz shows. However, they’re either lying and the tickets aren’t real, or they managed to buy season tickets from us and now they’re going to jack up the prices 500% and illegally sell our tickets to you. Another problem is that those illegal seats are often sold several times. If you don’t buy through us, we usually have no way of knowing whose tickets are legit, and we have no way of helping you get your money back.
So, the best choice you can make is the best choice you’ve always had: buy straight from strazcenter.org or our Ticket Sales Office (813.229.7827). We also invite you to come to the Ticket Sales Office in person so we can meet you and give you good, old-fashioned, face-to-face exceptional customer service. The bottom line is that we need you all to be extra vigilant this year and help us spread the word that 1) tickets are going to be more difficult to come by for all Broadway shows on the regular season because we have so many new season ticket holders and 2) predatory scalper schemes will be on the rise.
We can learn a lesson from the folks in Los Angeles who posted their Ham tix on Facebook, only to have some very crafty people lift the barcode from the pictures and create counterfeit tickets they then sold online at exorbitant cost. If you don’t buy directly from us, there’s no way to prove the seats are yours if there has been a double sell – even if you believe you bought them fair and square. Trust us, this happens even during seasons when we don’t have the cultural phenomenon of our time, so please stay away from ticket brokers, scalpers or any source other than strazcenter.org or our Ticket Sales Office.
“Hamilton has permeated pop culture, and no other show has done that, at least not off the bat. Theater people were excited about Wicked or The Phantom of the Opera. Everyone’s excited about Hamilton,” says Vice President of Marketing Summer Bohnenkamp. “There’s been a 68% increase in the number of season tickets we’ve sold since last season. That’s exciting for a number of reasons. We’ve never seen a jump like that in the 18 years I’ve been working on Broadway shows. The closest was the first time The Lion King came, which was about a 20% increase. The challenge for people wanting to buy single tickets, though, is that all of the inventory is now very limited. So, if you want to buy a ticket to, say, Hello, Dolly! or A Bronx Tale, there will be limited seats available because we have thousands and thousands of new season ticket holders.”
If you’re not a season ticket holder and you still want good odds at seats to our shows, the best bet is to become an annual donor to The Straz. By doing so, you get priority access for single tickets, which means you get the chance to buy tickets to most shows before they go on sale to the public. Give our Development Department a call for more information.
“The inventory is still limited, but at least you’ll have early access to that inventory,” says Bohnenkamp. “Buy when the tickets go on sale. I know we’ve been saying ‘don’t wait,’ but we really mean it. We’ve been saying it for a reason, and that’s so you don’t walk away disappointed. We want everyone who wants to see a show here to be able to see that show. This year is going to be a little bit harder. Remember – don’t search for tickets online because the paid ticket broker ads show up first, not the real Straz. Just type in strazcenter.org.”
In addition to the regular Broadway season, we offer a boutique collection of Broadway encores not on the subscription season. Thus, these shows have many more seats available. If you want to grab dinner and a show without confronting the Hamilton effect, you’ll have some super choices throughout the year. “We’ve got the new tour of Les Mis which is gorgeous, and it will be here for a week,” Bohnenkamp reports. “We’re bringing back Kinky Boots, which everybody loved. We’ve also got Tap Dogs coming back – it’s having an international resurgence so we are really looking forward to presenting it in Tampa after almost 20 years. Then there’s Rock of Ages for an entire week over the summer which will be tons of fun.”