Broadway Show Gift Cards and Gift Certificates

Giving The Gift of Broadway: Gift Cards and Gift Certificates

When you want to buy a great gift for the theatre fan in your life, a Broadway gift card or Broadway gift certificate can be an ideal choice. By giving a Broadway gift card, you allow the recipient to choose which show they would like to buy tickets to and for what date.

This is much better than just trying to guess what Broadway show they might enjoy and when they can actually make it to the show. Before you purchase a Broadway gift certificate or gift card, you should know what your options are:

• Telecharge Gift Card
• Ticketmaster Gift Card
• TKTS Gift Card
• Broadway.com Gift Card
• Other Ticket Broker Gift Cards

Many Broadway Gift Cards Go Unused

Gift cards have been a huge profit center for businesses in the U.S. because they so often go unused. Usually they are lost or forgotten about and then the card issuer gets to keep all the money. All types of gift cards have come under intense government scrutiny recently and Broadway gift cards are no exception. With questionable practices abounding, the various areas of concern have been:

• Card expiration
• Dormancy fee
• Amount redeemable for cash (when the product price far outweighs the value on the card)
• Transferability to others

Telecharge Gift Card

Telecharge is the primary ticket agent for the majority of Broadway shows and many Off-Broadway shows and theatrical events. For this reason, we recommend this Broadway gift card most highly if you don't have any idea what show the recipient will want to see, since it gives them the most choice.

Telecharge allows you to buy gift cards in any amount ranging from $25 to $500. Keep in mind that full price Broadway show tickets tend to be $80-$140 each, so a $25 gift card isn't going to go very far. Even Off-Broadway show tickets are often in the $50-$75 range.

How To Purchase

To Purchase a Telecharge Broadway Gift Card CLICK HERE or call 212-239-6200. The person you give the card to will have the option of redeeming their gift certificate online, by phone, or in person at the theater box office for the show they want to see. When you purchase the card, you can have it mailed to you, or, if you're in a hurry and would like it to go straight to the recipient, you can send a personalized e-Gift Card.

When you buy a Telecharge gift card, we would advise you to write down the 15-digit gift card number and keep it somewhere safe. (The same goes for if you have just received the Broadway gift card.) If the card is later lost or stolen, Telecharge will replace it for you as long as you can provide them with that number. This is another significant advantage of getting a Broadway show tickets gift card from Telecharge.

If you have spent part of the money on a gift card that you've been given and can't remember the remaining balance, you can call 888-303-1175 to find out the balance.

Check The Balance

If you write down the 15-digit number before giving the gift card, you could also check the balance later on to determine if the recipient has used the card and if not, you could have it re-issued and give it to them again if you think they might have lost it. If you had it mailed to you the first time around, you can get it reissued to you again if the original one goes unused.

To find out what show tickets can be purchased with this gift certificate, simply go to WWW.TELECHARGE.COM and look at the lists of shows offered. Bear in mind, though, that the Telecharge gift card cannot be used for any restaurants that are sold through Telecharge, nor can it be used for events at the Citi Performing Arts Center and Eisenhower Hall. You can't use the gift card to purchase more gift cards, it can't be redeemed for cash (unless required by law), and it can't be used on previously purchased tickets.

Telecharge gift cards now have no expiration date and do not charge dormancy fees, allowing the value to last forever, assuming the card isn't lost.

Ticketmaster Gift Cards and Gift Certificates

Ticketmaster is also the primary ticket agent for a number of Broadway shows, but they don't handle as many shows as Telecharge. However they do handle the ticketing for a few major Broadway hits and tourist favorites, such as Wicked and Disney's The Lion King, as well as a few notable long-running Off-Broadway shows such as Stomp and Blue Man Group. If you strongly suspect that the person you're buying the gift certificate for might really want to see one of Ticketmaster's shows, then you might be better off buying a Broadway gift certificate through them. Also Ticketmaster has lots of other non-Broadway shows that they can buy tickets for.

Gift Certificate Denominations

You can buy a Ticketmaster gift certificate in one of the following denominations: $25, $50, $75, $100, $150, and $250.
To purchase a Ticketmaster Broadway Gift Card CLICK HERE.

The gift certificate, or gift card, can be redeemed online at ticketmaster.com, by phone, and in some cases at the theater box office (TM tends to be a bit vague about exactly which venues will accept the gift certificate in person). The gift card balance can be easily checked by going to WWW.TICKETMASTER.COM/GIFTCARDS or by calling 1-866-828-4400 - you'll need your gift card number and PIN number to check the balance.

Part Payment With Gift Card

If you're given a Ticketmaster gift certificate and it's not quite enough to purchase your Broadway tickets, you can still use it towards part of the purchase price and then pay for the rest using a credit card. And if you have multiple gift cards, you can redeem as many as five cards per order. If you're buying the Ticketmaster gift certificate from outside the United States, please be aware that a standard exchange rate will apply and the gift card might gain or lose value when using it cross-border. Also, it isn't re loadable, so you won't be able to add value to the gift card later.

The most significant disadvantage of the Ticketmaster gift certificate is that it is not replaceable in the event that your card is lost or stolen, so if you get a Broadway show tickets gift card from Ticketmaster, make sure you don't lose it!

Abandoned Property Laws

Although the Ticketmaster gift certificate has no expiration date, in certain states, after a certain period of time, Ticketmaster may remit the cash associated with the unused gift card balance to states pursuant to their abandoned property laws. Once the cash has been remitted to that state, if someone tries to redeem the gift card, Ticketmaster may direct them to their state's government instead.

Ticketmaster's gift certificates are not redeemable for cash except if you are a resident in one of the four states that will let you redeem the balance for cash if it falls under a certain amount: California ($10), Montana ($5), Washington ($5), and Vermont ($1).

Buying Discount Broadway Tickets Using Telecharge and Ticketmaster Gift Cards

You can maximize the value of a Broadway gift certificate or gift card that you've been given by using it with a discount code when you purchase Broadway theater tickets. (For information on getting Broadway discount codes Click Here

For Telecharge shows you use the Broadway discount code at www.telechargeoffers.com. For Ticketmaster shows, you use the discount code on the show's order page at Ticketmaster.com. Either way, once entering the code you will continue through the rest of the seat selection and ticket ordering process, and when you get to the pay page you'll find that there is an option to pay with a gift card.

Broadway Gift Certificates For the Theatre Development Fund (TDF) TKTS Half Price Ticket Booth

The half-price Broadway ticket booth also accepts gift certificates, which can be purchased at www.tdf.org in denominations of $25, $50, and $100. The recipient of the TKTS gift certificate can simply take it to the booth and use it as if it were cash.

This is another way to get more value out of a gift card, since most TKTS tickets are sold at a 25-50% discount off the regular full price. However, the downside is that the tickets can only be purchased in person on the day of performance. The buyer has to deal with waiting in a long line, sometimes bad weather conditions, when you could clearly get the same (or better) ticket offers in advance using Broadway show discount codes.

You cannot use Telecharge or Ticketmaster gift cards at the TKTS booth.

Avoiding Ticket Brokers Like Broadway.com

Broadway.com is a secondary ticket agent (or broker). Unfortunately many people are under the mistaken assumption that Broadway.com is the official ticket vendor for Broadway shows and is therefore a perfect place to buy Broadway gift certificates for show tickets.

Ticketmaster and Telecharge are the official Broadway ticket vendors, Broadway.com is basically a ticket broker (that just happens to have a great domain name for its web site). What this means is that Broadway.com will charge you more money to buy Broadway tickets that you could get more cheaply by simply going to Ticketmaster or Telecharge.

Broadway.com acts as a middle man between you and the official ticket vendors, and then slaps you with a surcharge for their "service".Broadway.com offers its own Broadway gift certificates, which can be used for any currently-running Broadway or Off-Broadway show.

We recommend that you avoid buying the Broadway.com gift certificates for your friends and family because they won't be getting as much value from them. Furthermore, you can't use any discount codes at Broadway.com, so that's even more potential savings that you will lose out on.

Other Ticket Broker Broadway Gift Certificates

A worse choice than Broadway.com gift cards are the many other Broadway ticket brokers out there that can charge up to 5 times as much for tickets to hot Broadway shows. Many of these brokers offer gift certificates that can be used to buy their massively over-priced tickets.

Because they frequently come up high in Google searches for "Broadway gift certificates," ticket buyers unfortunately will often make the mistake of purchasing Broadway gift certificates or gift cards through these ticket brokers instead of getting them through the official Broadway ticket vendors, Telecharge or Ticketmaster.

Discount Gift Cards

Often Telecharge and Ticketmaster gift cards can be purchased from other people who were given gift cards as a gift and are unable to use them and now choose to sell them. The most common web site for this is www.giftcardgranny.com. If you beware the expiration dates and other conditions, you can find Telecharge and Ticketmaster Broadway gift cards priced at 20-30% below their face value.

If you couple this with the discount codes found at OUR WEBSITE, you can effectively reduce the cost of Broadway show tickets by 80%. Not bad for a few minutes work.

It's not the best idea to give these Broadway gift cards as gifts, though, because the expiration dates may be short and depending on which states they were purchased in, the value may be ticking away under the gift card dormancy fee (which may be legal in the state of original purchase, irrelevant of what state that you or the recipient are located in).