1) Ticket prices on Stubhub are 100% supply vs demand. If tickets are underpriced, they'll be snatched up quickly, and if they are overpriced they will sit there until the seller lowers the price closer to market...I couldn't tell you whether or not you got a good deal without looking closer at the sales history for those 2 games. This year especially, prices on game-day have been really poor

2) Umm..good question. My guess is that the seller decided to list the latest possible in-hand date so that they wouldn't run into any problems. Often times if I'm listing a bunch of stuff on Stubhub, if the game isn't for a while, I will list the latest possible in hand just so I don't get an order cancellation if I run behind or get lazy shipping out orders..

Of course most pros will ship ASAP, because the sooner you ship the tickets, the sooner you get paid. This is a really tough cash-crunch time for a lot of brokers (especially me this year). My first payments are due for all my MLB 2011 seasons, and I have been putting insane amounts on credit cards for MLB postseason. I am still waiting on refunds from Twins Game 5+ALCS ($20k+), Reds Game 4 and 5 (15k) Giants Game 5 (13k), STL Cardinals playoffs ($10k)...etc. I am super leveraged right now and so are most brokers, so if we get an order especially through Stubhub, we make sure it goes out same day if possible!!


I had a huge year this year, definitely my best April-Oct ever, but my cash position r is actually negative at the moment!

Hey,

First of all, thanks a lot for your very informative give and take with this forum about tickets. As somebody who has dabbled in the ticket business I have a few questions for you.

1) What are your thoughts on phone calls to TM, rather then going in person to the outlet.
2) What about instead of having many friends on the computer, having multiple phones waiting on hold to get through to TM?

3) I recently saw Rammstein went on sale and their prices are through the roof. Yet checking on stubhub I saw that pit seats (91 face) were selling for 500+ a ticket on the very first day. Normally, you see a gradual increase to that kind of a mark up, but they were flying off the shelves right away. Can you explain how all the sellers on stubhub knew to list so high right from the get go and perhaps why Rammstein is doing so well?

Thanks again.

1+2) I've addressed this in some pretty good detail at least twice in the thread, look back and check out my responses.

3) Wow, I had never even heard of Rammstein until you posted this and I checked Stubhub...hot show. I still don't know who/what Rammstein is but Stubhub has already sold 30 Pit tix for an ave price of 512ea since the onsale last week.

Check out this dude on ebay:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...m=370445129205

He grossed almost 15k in 2 days selling Rangers world series passwords, and looks like only about 3k total for Giants pws (He probably wholesaled out the Giants pws to brokers outside of ebay)...not a bad week

1)How much research do you put into buying a specific show.

2) How many pre-sale password websites do you pay for? Are there any good free ones still left.

3) Could you go into more specifics about the extra batches of tickets that TM puts out for sold out shows. How can your programs navigate the website over and over searching for a new batch without triggering the IP Ban function? Also, i've heard there are sometimes a specific time (i.e 12 AM) that new batches come about, is that true.

4) What are your thoughts on Katy Perry's upcoming North American Tour? Hot or not?

Thanks again. You rock.

those passwords dont even guarantee you anything

What % of sellout events would you say employ a ticket sales strategy of holding out some tickets until closer to the event in order to combat scalping? Why do you think more events don't employ this strategy to combat scalpers? I presume it's because they don't care about what happens on the secondary market?

Background: One of my few intended scalping experiences came back in college for WrestleMania 18 in Toronto. Friends and I got tickets, saw ticket availability was becoming scarce, got a few more to scalp. It sold out (no more tix available through TicketMaster), but in the week before the event, TM starting releasing more blocks of tickets, undercutting the entire secondary market. The scene outside the SkyDome was ridiculous....hundreds of people looking to sell - ZERO buyers. We ate the tickets.

He's right it is clearly not a fair market pricing system. It is artifically controlled supply and demand. Now let's say all tickets were just available at the same time to all customers to bid on based on the demand set by one another. This would be a fair market price.

Because broker's buy up the tickets the supply of ticket's is controlled... it is also not a fair market price because the intial asking price is set by ticketmaster... If you think this system is anything like an economic system that would lead to a fair market price you are completely mistaken.

Then again many sector's of our economy and the world for that matter are taken advantage of in the same way. Those with purchasing power use purchasing power, not demand, to curtail supply thus artifically raising demand. Check out Diamonds, gold, or the coco bean... happens on the reg

I've read this whole thread and thought about it for a while and still can't come up with a reasonable explanation as to why all venues consistently under price their tickets. You've mentioned some vague reasons along the way but nothing that makes me go "aha". So I have two questions for you:

1. Why are venues so bad at pricing their tickets?
2. Are you worried that they will ever correct this obvious market failure?

The only way possible to have a "true" market price is to have each seat be bid on, and trying to guess this figure would be very hard.

Two reasons to avoid trying to guess the highest market price possible is that venues run the risk of not selling out and they also run the risk of getting bad press due to insanely high ticket sales which leads to fans no longer buying albums or jerseys.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-part_tariff?wasRedirected=true

Tickets are underpriced so they can be sure to sell overpriced refreshments and merchandise. Note the monopoly and demand uncertainty aspects of when this pricing scheme is effective.

I think the venues, not the artists, get to keep most of the concessions.

First off, awesome thread OPT. Very informative stuff, I'm a new to the world of ticket brokering, but started doing some part time stuff last year. I mostly bought under-priced tickets on kijiji or ebay and flipped them on stubhub or ebay. Had decent success. Grey Cup and Winter classic NHL tickets were best profit margins for me.

I am now working on the other side of things as an affiliate now, but also looking to get into the ticket selling game again as well, so as I read through this entire thread I'll probably have more questions for you if that's cool. Here's what I got so far:

1) You mentioned you were running your own ticket website, which was primarily promoted through craigslist. What is your success on posting on CL? Are you posting multiple ads in multiple cities? If so, do ads constantly get flagged/ghosted and accounts/ips banned?

2) You mention that you were using google adwords briefly for 'lady gaga tix'. What sort of conversion were you looking at with google adwords. From your research what keywords would you say convert the best. ie: I would think "Lady Gaga Tickets" would convert way more than "lady gaga tix" and even the long tail keywords ie: "Lady gaga tickets Montreal" would convert well. What sort of keywords have you experimented with and what was the conversion like?

3) You mention ticket release information software and other brokering resources. Would you be able to point a n00b out in the right direction for where to look for such ticket brokering resources. Ie: brokering forums, software, tips ect...

4) Also, have you tried any SEO work on your own website to rank for search terms?


Again thanks for making this thread, hard to find good information out there.

I'll pm you later today when i have a moment.

Can you CC me on that as well? I had similar questions. Thanks!

Thanks for helping out a newbie OTP, much appreciated

people saying tickets are underpriced are dead wrong
for many events the resale market is priced below what the team sells the tickets for
case in point these stupid rangers alcs tickets i have

This is mostly a brag post, but if there are any ballers in SF, pm me.

We still have one pair for the Giants-Phillies Game 5 tonight - Dugout Club 115, row BBB for $950 each delivered. PM me if interested.

i'd take em off your hands for ya =) but don't really like baseball.

for real though...how do u go about getting rid of these hours before the game. or do u just plan to eat the cost at a certain point?

Just got into an undercutting war with another pair of these seats on stubhub, he's down to 833ea on them. I won't take less than 750ea net until about 30 mins before gametime... Stubhub closes in 10 minutes but after that I can work the phones and craigslist, and this pair will still be listed on every ticket broker website in the country...

well good luck. does stubhub always stay open this close to game time or is it only because of it is mlb playoffs? cuz i thought i remember once trying to sell knicks tickets i had and it was a day or two before that the listing got pulled. but i don't remember details (such as delivery method).

also, do u just have a guy in SF to deal with all this? is he a "friend" or an "employee"?

Stubhub closes 2 hrs b4 game for MLB. In some ways its a good thing, as the market appears to shrink considerably. Look at http://www.ticketnetwork.com/tix/nlc...s-1446438.aspx This link shows 90% of the nation's broker inventory right now. If a customer calls I can say, "look there's literally 30 tickets left on the market, this is your best price", and they can't cross-check to Stubhub or anywhere else.

PS we're down to 750ea on the dugout clubs. Whoever sits in the seats will be on FOX the entire game.

Looking to get 2-4 tickets to game 6 or 7 of the world series, assuming the Giants are in it. What price range am I looking at and what's my best strategy?

PM sent!

Honestly now is a good time to buy. If you buy on Stubhub or from a reputable broker, you don't have to sweat a refund. If Game 6 is a clinch game for the Giants prices are going to be ridiculous (Just look at the game tonight). PM me with your budget and what seats you're interested in and I'll see if I can do a little better than Stubhub prices for you.