Hey,

I live in Baltimore, and am thinking of getting a 13 game sunday package this upcoming season to the Orioles, Hall of Fame level seating. I want to sell all the desirable games (there aren't many conisidering it's the orioles) but the yankees and red sox games always sell out. It is Camden Yards. A couple of the interleague games should sell out as well. 4 games are yanks/red sox, 2 are interleague. What kind of return should i should expect from a 40$ (season ticket priced) ticket to those games? Thanks for your help.

In September, I asked about the optimal time to buy tickets for this past weekend's Falcons/Packers game. I don't figure that anybody was wondering about what I ended up doing, but I figured I'd pass the info along for future reference.

Ended up buying two upper deck, close to the last row seats on StubHub for $20 each after fees ($15 before fees). Similar seats were going for around $60 before fees during the weeks leading up to the game (face value $39). Prices dropped substantially on Friday and Saturday and plummeted by Sunday morning.

Obviously, ticket availability and price drops will depend on the game and venue (ex: tickets for the upcoming Packers game at Lambeau are still around $100 minimum - haven't fallen much since Monday), but if you don't care where the seats are, it looks like you can get cheap tickets on game day at venues where the fanbase isn't super passionate.

Note: most last minute tickets on StubHub appear to have the local office pickup option only, which costs more than e-delivery. Fortunately, mine were e-delivery, which saved me $10.

Additionally, Hawks tickets are almost free on StubHub. There are good seats for games for less than $10. Some tickets are going for $1.

Great thread.

I know this is an absurdly general question but...

If I want to buy tickets to an event what steps should I take to get a good price?

Hi everyone,

I haven't been on 2+2 much, but I have gotten a bunch of PMs from people asking to continue with the thread. I have been a lurker on 2+2 for many years and this is my first OP and am happy so many people find this information interesting. I am going to try to reply to the unanswered questions...



This is a good question. Ticket Network is a company in Connecticut that is a huge player in the secondary ticket market. Their business is split into two main components: (1) Software services for ticket brokers and wholesalers and (2) Selling tickets as a "retail broker" to the general public.

Their main product for (1) is the TicketNetwork Point of Sale. This service costs $200 per month, and provides access to the broker exchange. Every broker on the TN POS lists their tickets at wholesale prices (The price they ultimately want for the ticket). All of this inventory is published in real-time on the exchange, so if I want to look for tickets to the Rose Bowl, I can see pretty much every single ticket owned by a ticket broker across the country.

When I get a call from a customer (either a repeat-customer, a referral, or a new customer from craigslist/search engines, etc), I will first try to sell them tickets that I physically own. If the location/price doesn't work, or I don't have anything for this specific event, I can easily go onto the exchange and offer any of those tickets to the customer at whatever markup I choose. If I make a sale, I will bill the customer, and then send the "holding broker" an invoice with a Fedex label. (Many times the tickets can be emailed so I'll just forward the .pdf to the customer.

TND - Ticket Network Direct:

This is TicketNetwork's retail arm. TN uses tons of SEO and Adwords and has several sites that sell tickets at the wholesale price listed on the POS plus the dreaded "Service Fee." TND includes ticketnetwork.com ticketliquidator.com and tons of other shell sites (hint: click on those, plus vividseats.com ezticketsearch.com etc). They are all selling the exact same tickets, the only difference is in the amount of the service fee and the 1-800 phone number listed on the site.

Most of my sales are TND sales, meaning somewhere a fan googled "knicks tickets", went to ticketliquidator.com and bought my $100 ea tickets for
$100 ea plus $36 service fee. I get a notification in my POS pretty much instantly with the customer order, the credit card summary, etc, and it's up to me to accept it, bill the credit card, contact the customer, ship the tickets, etc.

You'll notice if you've ever bought tix from one of these sites, that in the fine print it says "xxx.com is an intermediary btw you and the holding broker", and you actually will get the broker's info AFTER you place the order.

(Essentially this is the Stubhub model. One of the reasons Stubhub is so successful is they did a great job hiding all that stuff. You place your order at Stubhub, you only get SH's phone number, you get the tix in a Fedex from "Stubhub", etc.)

Basically I own about $150,000-$250,000 worth of tickets at a time. All of these tickets are listed in my POS system (which you can buy at my website with no service fee, but good luck finding my website because my SEO is garbage). I will sell about 35-50% to Stubhub, 25-35% to TND orders, and the rest to other brokers who are selling my tix at a markup, just as I am trying to do with theirs.


Sorry for the long post, not sure if that was even coherent but let me know if you have other ?s

Sorry but I didn't get to this in time. Hope your team won

I actually am the opposite, my business is about 85-90% sports. I am definitely missing out on a huge market, but I am so invested in teams thru season tickets and group tickets that I don't have time to research what are the hot acts or even what's going on sale each week. Face values of big concert tours have really gotten outrageous so it's much more of a gamble these days buying $200ea Lady Gaga tickets. The secret is to be in tune with the market (I had never heard of Mumford and Sons but apparently they are huge and $35-50 tix are going for $125-175..same for Rammenstein and a bunch of other groups I'm not cool enough to know about)


There aren't any programs for telling if an event is close to sold out, but I can look at the secondary market and in 5 minutes tell you whether I think prices are going up or down, whether it looks like there's a bunch of tix still to be released, etc etc. This is all just from years of experience and a lot of my own trial and error

Whats the best way to get dirt cheap tickets to dead last place team games?

I want to go to some Islanders games, but their ticket prices are ******o, and even the worst non obstructed seats are like $20 on stubhub. Considering each game has MAYBE 7,000 our of 16,000 seats filled, this doesn't sound right. What's my best bet for 5 buck tickets or something like that?

lol, flipped 4 for the Detroit show for $500

bought some for the second show @ the dow, still listed but flipped for the Dayton show for a nice profit too

I'm on StubHub right now and see plenty of tickets for fairly cheap. For this Saturday's game against Atlanta, there are 4 available for $9.50 each and they can be Insta-downloaded for $5 total. So that's <$15 if you buy just one, less if you buy more.

Looks like there are plenty of other tickets for $15 or less.

http://www.stubhub.com/new-york-isla...1-2010-972759/

Onetimeplz,

Auburn fan here. Stumbled on this forum through a search. Going out to Phoenix for the National Championship game and most brokers are currently (as of 12/8 to today) are selling tickets for around 800 dollars for a 300 dollar face value ticket. The most I'm going to be able to shell out is 550 each for two. In your opinion do ticket prices go down: once the hype of the first week after the two teams are announced dies? after Christmas?

I'd like to get my two tickets squared away before I head out to Phoenix on Jan. 8 but the tickets are just too much right now. I've enjoyed reading through most of the thread and appreciate your or anybody's opinion. War Eagle!

Thanks, maybe the one game I looked at happened to be a more in demand game. Still, I'm kind of surprised with 9,000 empty seats every night, that there aren't some seats for $1-5 like some of the Mets games this year.

Yeah, maybe you were looking at a game against a team with a bunch of stars. I just picked the upcoming game.

I find it very interesting to look at the StubHub prices for various teams. Provides a quick lesson in demand and fan interest. I'm still keeping tabs on the Atlanta Hawks/Milwaukee Bucks game in January and there are very good seats for under $5. Of course, tickets for when the Lakers and Heat come to town are pricey, but almost every other game has tickets available for under $10. And this is for a good team.

Hi,
Cheapest even I could find right now at wholesale would be 830ea. If you have plane tickets already, I would say bring the most cash you are willing to pay and try to find tickets outside the stadium. Last year prices came down to around 500 each from this level, but you never know...

The superbowl will be close to home in New Orleans in 2013 and I am thinking about driving there to see if I can scoop up some tickets that day. I think it would be cool to go to a Superbowl but can't pay an assload for tickets. Is that the best way to get the best price on tickets? If so when is the best time to buy and where should I be looking for tickets? And I know you can't predict the future but what would you consider to be a good price for tickets?

Thanks! Great thread!

Any thoughts and recommendations on a ticket puller program?

I stumbled into 4 primo seats for the Rose Bowl. Considering flipping for a tidy profit. In order to maximize, I see earlier you suggest sell early. Our most likely route would be ebay. Thoughts?

Thanks

Any prediction on what seats will end up going for for the Pacquiao-Mosley fight. Online they're listed for $400 each for the cheapest seats which seems ridiculous.

I mentioned earlier in the thread about holding out on winter classic tickets. Evertything I see is still $250+. Still thinking about just tailgating and finding tickets, but this makes me nervous these days, since it's so easy to print out extra tickets. Should I expect to see a solid post christmas price drop in the nextg couple of days?

Along the lines of fake tickets being bought in person, you mentioned being able to check the bar codes on stubhub to see if they have been reported stolen. Is this something I can do as a non seller on my phone?

we bought a couple of tickets to the Bills-Steelers game a few weeks back and a pair ended up being reported as stolen. Other advice to avoid this?

First of all thanks for the information provided.

I just started buying and selling some tickets for concerts and sports. But did not have much success. I have few questions.

You said that you have a website to sell tickets. Can you send me the url.
Do you use any software or tool to pull tickets or sell them.
Can you provide me any tips or point to ticket brokering resources like forums, software etc


Again thanks for providing very useful information

Great thread read it through,going back for seconds...Just starting up myself so I don't have much to offer..I know that the best seat at a sold out event is an obvious buy. But you did talk about buying $11 tickets for good value (a playoff game). Can you give some advice as to what kind of ticket a noob should look for to get their feet wet in brokering.
I looked at the KC/Oak playoff game for $59.00 and wondered if that would of been a good purchase if in the first couple of rows. I am thinking that purchasing a ticketmaster ticket, to a sold out event, in the cheap seats in the first couple of rows might be a place to start.. Buying the first 10 rows at a sold out event seems like a good idea but really hard to do. Any suggestiions?

thanks

if the patriots go to the super bowl, i am probably going to go. whats the best way to get SB tics? i see stub hub is selling some lower end zone seats for 2600, will this market change depending on the participants?

.

My advice would be to buy the tickets before the event is sold out. Probably way easier.

You selling any tickets to the Patriots divisional playoff game on Jan 16th?