If you've been waiting for A Few Good Men to get cheaper before showtime, we have some news: it didn't. Tickets for the Lincoln Center Theater revival at the Vivian Beaumont, opening October 9th, have climbed from a low of $119 on September 25th to $244 as of October 5th — a 27% jump in just seven days. That's not a fluke. That's theater being theater.
The category that breaks the rule
Our best-time-to-buy research, built from 5,592 events tracked between late July and early October, found something fans in every other category would find surprising: in the final two weeks before curtain, theater tickets rose a median of 6%, with only 27% of shows getting cheaper. Compare that to concerts (down 9%, 59% cheaper), sports (down 14%, 67% cheaper), and comedy (down 10%, 59% cheaper) over the same stretch — and you can see why the usual "wait until the last minute" advice just doesn't translate to a Broadway house.
A Few Good Men is a near-perfect illustration. It's been tracked for 25 days, and its median price over that window sits at $135 — well below where it's trading right now. The lesson isn't that the show got more expensive out of nowhere. It's that limited-run theater, especially a starry revival in a 1,000-ish seat house like the Beaumont, tends to tighten as remaining inventory shrinks and opening-week buzz builds. Scarcity does what scarcity does.
Where theater sits on the price map
Zoom out to our theater price index, last updated October 6th, and the pattern holds across the board. The median get-in price across 644 upcoming theater shows is $82 — reasonable on its face — but the priciest tickets in the category belong to shows with real scarcity built in, like Much Ado About Nothing at a $218 median across 17 dates, or Absinthe running a $207 median over 23 dates. These aren't shows with thousands of seats to spread demand across; they're intimate, in-demand, and priced accordingly as dates fill.
None of this means theater is a bad bet — it means it's a different bet. If there's a show you want to see, and you can see the trend already moving the way A Few Good Men's has, the smartest move is often to buy on the dip rather than wait for one that may not come. Our own data shows the show's lowest recorded price, $119, came nearly two weeks before opening night. That window appears to have closed.
What this means if you've got a Broadway night in mind
New York remains one of the busiest live-entertainment cities we track, with 307 events live right now, and theater is a huge part of that pulse. If A Few Good Men is on your list, it's worth checking the show's page directly to see where pricing sits today before you commit. And if you're the type who likes to plan around data rather than guesswork, bookmark the theater price index — it's the fastest way to see which shows are trending up, which are easing off, and where the get-in price actually lands this week.
The broader takeaway for any theater fan: don't assume every ticket behaves like a football ticket. Scarcity-driven live events — a limited Broadway run, a one-night engagement, a small house — tend to tighten as the date nears, not loosen. Our data backs it up, show after show. Plan accordingly, and enjoy the night.
