I graduated from college in May 2008 and have made a living as a professional ticket broker ever since.

I scalped tickets (bought and sold) online as a hobby throughout college and opened my own website in June 2008. Since 1/1/2010 I took in $350,000+ in sales and have managed to make about 60-70k net profit per year.

The secondary ticket market is pretty fascinating and has matured A LOT in the last few years.

If you have any questions ask away! I thought this might be entertaining or informative for some people.

How do you get your hands on sold out event?

How do you get people to your site?

How do you see the industry 5 years from now?

Is this your primary job?

why are you such an *******?

I am heading home right now but will post some good replies in the next couple of hours.

is it possible to profit at stubhub with 10% and 25% commission?

I thought selling tickets for a huge markup was illegal? Anyone crack down on this?

I think it is but I have never bought tickets from anyone other than a scalper so obviously that doesn't stop them. I think it is much like escorts where unless you do it in public and cause an issue no one bothers you.

Depends on where you are - the laws in the US are very location-specific. Ranges from legal to legal if licensed to illegal but not enforced to illegal and haphazardly enforced.

Yes this is my full-time job. It's definitely a grind, but I really enjoy it. I usually have a few Stars tables running at various slow times during the day, but this takes up a ton of time.

Yes, but if I had to rely 100% on Stubhub for my business it wouldn't be as profitable. I'm in the Large Sellers Program with Stubhub so I only pay 10% commissions on my sales, and I can buy tix without paying 10% comission, so it's not so bad. If I have tix for $100 each on my site, you can buy them from my site for $100, from Ticketnetwork.com or ticketliquidator.com for about $108, and on Stubhub for $110. I would get $100, $95, $90 respectively.

The great thing about Stubhub's business model is that it's very difficult to find the holding broker of the tickets unless you have a Ticketnetwork point of sale. (There are other POS like eventinventory.com, tickettechnology.com but TN is the biggest.)

It's a state-by-state law. There's no federal law about scalping. Most states either forbid it or had price caps (25% over face lol) but no one could ever enforce it online. If you stand across the street from the Superdome in Nawlins and ask $500 ea for NFC Champ tix you better pray you're not talking to a cop, but if you sell on Stubhub or ebay or craigslist or whatever, there's no chance really of getting caught.

In the last 2 years the mlb teams have gotten on board with Stubhub and have mostly dropped their opposition to scalping. Most state legs have removed the laws from the books. A few states techinically it's illegal, but my business is based in a state where it's legal.

Most people tend to have a pretty negative view of ticket brokers, but the way I see it we are providing a significant service.

Most people can't afford season tickets, and if they want to see 2 or 3 games a year and sit in good seats...this is how they do it.

I spend thousands of hours hunting for deals and wasting my time trying to find tix. Most people who want good seats to a concert don't have the time to get prime seats at face value, and so I deserve a service fee for my time.

How about ebay, have you ever sold tickets there?

So what are your plans for the future, poker, getting a job?

I sold a lot of tix on ebay from 04-07, when ebay was one of the first places fans looked for tix after a sell out.

After ebay bought Stubhub, they started phasing out the ticket category for the more profitable 25% stubhub commissions. Now most of the tix on ebay are listed at buy it now prices at about 15-30% over wholesale (tix on Stubhub are listed at 10-15% over). Dealing with auctions isn't worth it anymore. Most of the big $$ bidders prefer to buy from Stubhub with an AMEX than dealing with an individual seller and Paypal. Also it's way too easy for a bidder to tell Paypal they didn't get the tix and do a fraudulent chargeback...

I'm going to do this full time at least through this year's NFL and NCAA seasons, and then reevaluate. The money has been great (better than any "real" job I'm qualified for as a recent econ major with no internships), but the hours are tough, and psychologically it's a serious grind.

Poker is more of a hobby, there's no future in that for me.

So you're basically admitting to using illegal software which violates TicketMasters term's of service to circumvent CAPCHA.

Do you do any face to face transactions at the ballparks/stadiums?

Do you even end up going to games b/c you weren't able to unload the tickets?

How many tickets do you usually end up eating in a week? Going unsold?

From speaking with another ticket broker at a poker table recently, I was told that there is tons of money in NFL and college football but less in baseball and basketball (not counting playoffs and major rivalries). Is this true? It seems like you do well with MLB teams (Twins).

From your point of view, what percentage of ticket brokers are large companies vs individuals like you?

Thanks

One of my clients (I am an it consultant) is a ticket broker. They have about 5 employees and do over 10 million in sales. They told me that they 'just got into retail' and are currently putting up a website. How do they make their money?

I setup the server for them for the ticket technology program. Do you use this and what are it's capabilities?

They also have 5 or 6 guys that rent space from them and user their internet/server/phones, is this common in your industry?

The owner got me some tickets to a show. The tickets had a price of 0.00, what is the story with these tickets?

Thanks!!!

The legality of programs/scripts to get through Ticketmaster faster is pretty interesting. A couple months ago there was a huge bust of a company called "wise guys tickets" that claimed to do $25 million last year. It's in federal court now. Here's a really interesting article about it: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/201...guys-indicted/

I used software a couple years ago, but don't anymore because it's much more difficult now. (Your IP gets blocked by TM a lot faster now). The software I had wasn't nearly as sophisticated as described in the article (I still had to enter the captchas, but the rest of the buying process was totally automated).

When I said I have a huge edge, I mostly meant that I can get through faster than 99% of "fans", and for a big onsale I have 10-15 other people pulling tix for me simultaneously.

I'm a big baseball and ncaa fan, but I usually buy tix from other brokers/scalpers if I'm going myself.

How many tickets do you usually end up eating in a week? Going unsold?

Totally depends. I'll sell a pair of tickets for $2 before I'll eat them. I have a bunch of stl cardinals season tix that I've sold for $1 on stubhub this year the day of the game because they are so overbought.

From speaking with another ticket broker at a poker table recently, I was told that there is tons of money in NFL and college football but less in baseball and basketball (not counting playoffs and major rivalries). Is this true? It seems like you do well with MLB teams (Twins).

This year so far the Twins are my best investment. $10 a seat season tix are averaging $30-35 a ticket so far, plus opening day was a $150 get in. If I had season tix to every single mlb team I'd lose a ton of $$.

From your point of view, what percentage of ticket brokers are large companies vs individuals like you?

That's a great question. I use a Ticketnetwork.com point of sale to manage/sell a lot of my inventory, and there are over 4000 brokers on that system paying $2400 a year plus commission for the POS. In the industry I am definitely bigger than a "small fish", but compared to brokers who have multiple employees/retail locations/millions in sales I'm very tiny. I'd guess that of the thousands of "professional brokers" only 10% are full-time.

Thanks[/QUOTE]

One of my clients (I am an it consultant) is a ticket broker. They have about 5 employees and do over 10 million in sales. They told me that they 'just got into retail' and are currently putting up a website. How do they make their money?

A lot of brokers are just wholesalers. Many of the biggest online ticket brokers don't own any inventory themselves, they just sell wholesalers' tickets at a markup. If you go to ticketnetwork.com and click on an event, you will see the tickets listed at wholesale prices (the price the holding broker actually receives) and ticketnetwork tacks on 18% service charge at checkout. Retail brokers list these same tickets at a 15-20% markup and don't charge a service charge. They can get away with this because most wholesalers or smaller brokers like me can't get enough traffic to our own sites/phone numbers so these brokers actually can sell our tickets at 15% markups faster than we can sell them at wholesale.

Your client "Getting into retail" means they are going to spend more of their business on marketing/SEO/ppc to get retail customers, rather than selling their own inventory at their wholesale cost. (If I have a ticket that I need $100 for, often I'll get a call from goldentickets.com or vividseats.com or some huge $10M+ broker who has a client on the other line about to purchase my ticket for $120.

I setup the server for them for the ticket technology program. Do you use this and what are it's capabilities?

Ticket Technology is a point of sale system that Stubhub bought a couple years ago. Their biggest competitors are ticketnetwork.com and eventinventory.com. I use TN but have heard good things about TT. I list all my inventory on TN and it synchs all my tix to my website, Stubhub and 1000s of other brokers websites in real time. TT does the same thing, but doesn't have as big a reach IMO.

They also have 5 or 6 guys that rent space from them and user their internet/server/phones, is this common in your industry?

I'm not sure. I have a small one person office downtown in the city I work at. When customers pick up tickets from me, I just meet them in the lobby of my office building. When there's a big onsale, I have people pulling tix for me but not at my own office.

The owner got me some tickets to a show. The tickets had a price of 0.00, what is the story with these tickets?

These were comp tix from the venue. Bigger brokers all have relationships with box office managers/promoters/teams to sell tix on commission. The New Jersey Nets notoriously sold 1000s of season tix last year to brokers for 50% under retail because they couldn't move tix. Lots of promoters will hold some VIP tix and pass on to brokers to line their pockets. The brokers keep a small % of the profit and those tix are often "comp" tix.

This is a great article about the UKansas box office. They got caught this year dealing with a few brokers for bball for $millions and heads rolled.

http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/basketb...utickets052610

Thanks!!![/QUOTE]

I guess theres only really 2 strategies to this business.

One, arbitrage or buying tix from TM or wherever you can find them and flipping them higher.

Two, if you follow sports closely, you can buy season tix for teams that you think will perform better than consensus. Obv still need the right economics to make this work.

I dont follow baseball so sorry if dumb question but was the Twins purchase an example of the second strategy? How much do you use the second strategy?

Also, side question, do you bet sports?

Also another question, how are you only making $60-70k on sales of $500k?

Your overhead seems very small? Is it all IT and service fees?

Last year sales about $360k. Average profit margin is tough to figure because I take a lot of losses, some minor some very huge.