Broadway's 10 Priciest Tickets Last Week

Bea here. Celia has the League's new table, a pencil and strong opinions about what a seat's worth, so I'll be brief: this is the ten priciest tickets on Broadway last week, counted down, and every price here's one honest division you can check yourself. Celia, the aisle is yours.

The countdown

10. Paranormal Activity — $117.46 (August Wilson Theatre; $1,094,504 ÷ 9,318 people; 99% of seats filled)

The cheapest seat in this top ten is still a $117 night out, and it's a play — no orchestra swells, no dance break, just a stage that wants to frighten you. At 99% full, it's clearly working. What you're buying is the communal part: nine thousand people last week chose to be scared together, in the dark, in a beautiful old house. Horror's always known what theatre's relearning — a gasp is better with witnesses.

9. The Rocky Horror Show — $126.87 (Studio 54; $970,053 ÷ 7,646 people; 97% of seats filled)

Rocky Horror at Studio 54 is a ticket to a party that happens to have a plot. You're not paying for distance and reverence; you're paying to be inside the joke, in the building that was born for exactly this kind of night. At 97% full and $126.87 a head, the audience isn't watching the show so much as completing it — and honestly, that's the bargain on this list if your idea of a good seat includes permission to misbehave.

8. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child — $127.34 (Lyric Theatre; $1,629,103 ÷ 12,793 people; 99% of seats filled)

The biggest crowd on this entire list — 12,793 people in one week — at a price that sits eighth. That's the Cursed Child trick: the Lyric is enormous, the stage magic is genuinely astonishing (I won't spoil a single effect; the gasps are part of your ticket), and the family maths works out kinder than the top of this list. You're buying spectacle at scale, plus a cast change worth knowing about: Tom Felton's Draco run is the draw of the season in this house, and the company around him keeps rotating in fresh blood.

7. The Lion King — $129.53 (Minskoff Theatre; $1,571,842 ÷ 12,135 people; 89% of seats filled)

The family baseline of Broadway, nearly three decades in, still seating 12,135 people in a single week. What $129.53 buys is the most reliable first-Broadway-show experience in the city: the opening number alone has started more theatre habits than any advertising campaign ever printed. It isn't the fullest house on this list — 89% — which, between us, makes it one of the easier top-ten tickets to actually get.

6. A Few Good Men — $144.81 (Vivian Beaumont Theater; $1,277,792 ÷ 8,824 people; 100% of seats filled)

Sold out, every seat, for a straight play with no songs to hide behind. You're paying courtroom-drama prices because the room is electric in the way only a full house doing nothing but listening can be — and the Beaumont's the loveliest place in the city to do that listening. One warning from the aisle: it closes January 10, 2027. Pricy and perishable is a powerful combination, and the sellout says the city knows it.

5. MJ — $149.32 (Neil Simon Theatre; $1,616,111 ÷ 10,823 people; 98% of seats filled)

Ten thousand eight hundred people paid an average of $149.32 last week to watch Michael Jackson's catalogue staged like a thriller. What the seat buys is precision — the choreography in this show is the tightest argument on Broadway for the price of a ticket, executed nightly at a level most concerts never reach. At 98% full after years in the same house, MJ isn't a fad. It's a standing appointment.

4. 860 — $152.59 (Imperial Theatre; $1,353,611 ÷ 8,871 people; 99% of seats filled)

Billy Crystal, in a play, in a house at 99% — that's the whole review, really. You're paying for one of the great live performers of the last fifty years doing the thing he does best, a few dozen rows from your chair, and the calendar's part of the price: this run closes February 14, 2027. Seven performances a week instead of the usual eight, every one of them nearly full. Limited man, limited weeks, unlimited demand.

3. Oh, Mary! — $184.78 (Lyceum Theatre; $1,309,171 ÷ 7,085 people; 99% of seats filled)

A comedy — a gloriously unhinged comedy in a small, jewel-box house — holding the third-priciest ticket on Broadway, ahead of every big musical except one. The Lyceum doesn't have many seats, the show doesn't waste a minute, and at 99% full the city has clearly decided that laughing this hard is a luxury good. What you're buying is the hardest ticket-to-laugh ratio in New York. I've paid more for dinners I remember less.

2. Hamilton — $218.03 (Richard Rodgers Theatre; $2,317,475 ÷ 10,629 people; 100% of seats filled)

A decade in, it's still sold out at 100%, and last week it took more money than any musical in the city. What $218 buys hasn't changed: the best seats in American musical theatre's defining show, close enough to see the effort. One honest note from the desk: we divide 2,317,475 by 10,629 and get $218.03 — a cent under the figure some coverage prints. The cent doesn't change the rank, the sellout or the experience. It changes whether we print arithmetic we've actually done, so we printed ours.

1. Other Desert Cities — $301.23 (Hudson Theatre; $2,347,158 ÷ 7,792 people; 100% of seats filled)

The priciest ticket on Broadway, and it earns the headline: a straight play, in one of Broadway's smallest houses, out-grossing every musical in New York last week. Look at who's on that stage — Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Ed Harris and Allison Janney, together, in a family drama close enough to touch. Seven thousand seven hundred ninety-two seats exist in a week at the Hudson, every one of them sold, and the audience paid an average of $301.23 for the privilege of watching three master actors have an argument. It closes January 17, 2027. After that, this exact room, this exact cast, this exact electricity is gone — and suddenly $301.23 reads less like a price and more like a receipt for something that can't be restocked.

Bea, closing. Notice the shape Celia just walked you through: the top of this list isn't the biggest shows — it's the fullest rooms and the shortest runs. If your wallet's arguing with you, argue back at No. 10 through No. 7, where the crowds are huge and the averages are half the top. Either way, you're buying from the same table the League published, divided honestly. That's the whole trick of this page.

Every gross, attendance and seats-filled figure from the Broadway League's grosses table for the week ending Nov. 1, 2026, opened in full by this desk; every average ticket is this desk's division of those published figures. Casting and closing dates from Playbill and Broadway.com coverage opened for this desk.