# The First Commercial Flutter App Makes Exclusive Hamilton Musical Content Accessible to All

> The first commercial app built with Flutter outside of Google! We created and maintained the official Hamilton mobile app to bring exclusive content to any device.

- Source: https://verygood.ventures/success-stories/hamilton/
- Client: Hamilton
- Industry: Entertainment
- Services: Design, Engineering, Program Management

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The first Flutter app outside Google opened on Broadway.

We built the official Hamilton app in three months, launched it on iOS and Android at the same time, and we still run it. It was the first commercial app built with Flutter outside of Google.

- **3.5M+** app installs
- **500K+** peak monthly active users
- **100M+** lottery entries

## The ask: Give every fan a shot at the show, whatever phone they carry.

*Hamilton: An American Musical* has run on Broadway since 2015 and won 11 Tony Awards, a Grammy, and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Its seats are some of the hardest tickets in the industry to get.

The show wanted an app that opened its daily ticket lottery to every fan, with inclusivity as the central value. That meant iOS and Android together, a short runway to launch, and a long feature list, from the lottery to merchandise, inside a fixed budget.

**The catch:** Most launch teams pick iOS or Android first, or cut features to make the date. Hamilton wanted neither.

## The build: One code base, two app stores, one opening night.

With Flutter, one team shipped the app on iOS and Android at the same time, three months in, with full feature parity on both. Nobody waited for the second platform.

One code base kept the experience the same on every device and kept the build fast and inside the budget. The design put fans first, with accessibility, performance, and consistency across every screen.

## In the app: What fans carry in their pocket.

- **Daily ticket lottery.** Fans enter the lottery for seats in each city the show plays. More than 100 million entries so far.
- **HamCam filters.** Camera filters that put a fan under a royal crown. Swipe through them, take the shot, share it.
- **Sticker packs.** Illustrated packs of the show’s characters, unlocked with stars fans earn in the app.
- **News and updates.** Announcements from the show, like Hamilton Australia’s return to Sydney, with tickets one tap away.

Plus trivia, karaoke, a treasury of archive pieces, and an in-app merchandise store.

## Under the hood: Serverless, before serverless was the default.

The Hamilton app was one of the first large-scale commercial apps built entirely on Firebase and Google Cloud. With no servers to babysit, the team spent its time on features, and the backend scaled by itself when a new city opened or a lottery announcement went out.

Firebase handles real-time data, push notifications, authentication, and analytics. Cloud Functions run the lottery logic, the merchandise integrations, and the content pipelines.

> The VGV team created an unprecedented experience for Hamilton fans and has been a trusted partner since 2017. There’s no better team to help us give our fans incredible ways to connect with the show.
>
> Mike Karns, CEO, Marathon Digital & Hamilton Marketing

## What changed: The show never had to choose.

- **No trade-off, Both platforms and every feature on day one.** Hamilton skipped the iOS-or-Android decision and launched without cutting the feature list to make the date.
- **One partner, VGV is the team.** Product leadership, design direction, architecture, backend development, growth and reporting, and Flutter development, from one partner since 2017.
- **The first, Flutter’s first commercial app outside Google.** The app that started the Flutter revolution is still in production, and VGV still runs it.

## If you’re next: What we’d tell a team in Hamilton’s seat.

- Don’t pick a first platform. One Flutter code base ships iOS and Android on the same day, so nobody in your audience waits.
- Put the backend on managed services early. The team should spend launch week on features, not on servers.
- Plan for the spike, not the average. A lottery draw or a new city brings everyone at once, and the stack has to scale on its own.

## Roll credits

- **Client:** Hamilton: An American Musical
- **Our part:** Product leadership, Design direction, Architecture, Backend development, Growth and reporting, Flutter development
- **Platforms:** iOS and Android
- **Built with:** Flutter, Firebase, Google Cloud, Cloud Functions
- **Timeline:** Three months to launch, Partner since 2017