Interesting. This thread would do well in oot. What was your biggest loss on in the last few years? Other than Gaga any great concert scores? Do you do better with concerts, events, or sports on a per ticket basis and is volume comparable?

Seems like you could do well figuring which artists are going to be hot and sell "above" their venue (though others will be trying to as well). May even be able to develop some sort of algorithm for this based on, say, style of music, age of avg fan, album and/or single sales, history of venue, etc..

Thank you for doing this, quite interesting.

Any tips on dealing with the thuggish scalpers? I live in a condo that is a 3 min walk from a NBA/NHL arena in a big city and see these guys every game/concert night. I figure the times I want to catch a game it would be easier to walk up to one of these guys a few mins into the game to get the best price. Is this thinking flawed?

My only experience was an NBA game last year that went down like this: walk up to thug scalper and ask for best seats. He has two seats at $200 each (as written on the ticket). He then repeatedly asks 'how much do you want to pay?' and refuses to answer my question of 'who much do you want to sell them for?'

So I ask, 'how about $120 per? He looks at me like I called his mother a slut. I mention the game has already started and besides, what is going to do with an unsold ticket?

He promptly says 'I'll rip 'em up' and walks away muttering expletives. Tilted, I eventually watch the game from home. How was my play?

If could shed any insight great, but if not, thanks again for an informative thread. Really liked the links you provided too, interesting sutff.

I'm about to head out but will post up some more replies and stories when I get home this afternoon.

On Deck: my week in miami for the super bowl, nfc championship weekend in new orleans, some funny scalper stories, etc etc

Interesting thread indeed.

I'm down like 800$ on concert tickets (ac/dc). I was thinking that I was smarter than other people, but I wasn't ;-)

I remember ac/dc playing in wembley in '09 and there were thousends of empty places in a sold out concert. lol scalperaments.

My biggest loss ever was in January for the Saints-Vikings NFC Championship game.

A big part of my (and most other brokers') business is "selling short". When a team clinches a playoff spot, I will sell tickets in the worst nosebleed sections in the highest rows, for day-of-game will call pickup at the venue. I am betting that the prices will be at their highest in the couple hours after a clinch, because that's when most bandwagon fans will hop online to find playoff tickets. 90% of the time (or more), prices the day before or on gameday will come down significantly due to releases from the box office of held-back inventory, and also because ticket-holders see the very high prices and decide to cash in and watch the game on TV.

The night the Saints won the 2nd round playoff game, I sold about 20 pairs of nosebleed and lower level end zone tickets for the NFC champ game at $325 ea and $550 ea respectively. I got into New Orleans on the Friday before the game to pick up tickets (fill my orders). Well...prices did not come down, in fact they heated up into one of the toughest tickets I've ever seen. 2 hours before kickoff I was paying $500 ea or more for nosebleeds to fill my orders. With my travel expenses plus losses I lost well over $8,000 that week. A LOT of people got shut out of that game outside the Superdome holding their fingers in the air looking for tix.

My biggest score last year was Lady Gaga in St Louis. She played at the Fox Theatre, which had about 3,000 seats. $70 tix were going easily for $350-450 each. I hit the onsale pretty hard, and with releases in the final week I cleared about $5,000 on that show.

Your play was fine. The key to dealing with scalpers is knowing that the prices they initially quote are BS. If I have some tix outside a venue that I'm looking to get $50 each for, my first quote will be $80 each to someone looking for tix. You would be shocked at the number of people who will immediately say "ok I'll take 4". The standard play with scalpers is to counter at about 50-60% of their asking, and then start walking away when they say no. They will usually walk after you gradually lowering their price, unless of course it's a super-hot event and there are dozens of people just like you on the same street corner looking for tix. It's pretty easy to go to a corner with scalpers and get a feel for the market...Are you the only customer next to 5 scalpers each clutching 10 tix? Just wait it out prices will come down. Can you not get a word in, because there's 5 other people offering to buy from the same scalper? You better be willing to out-bid them... etc etc

The ticket game can be pretty tough. NO ONE realizes how many "Scalpers" there are for a show, you'd be shocked. There are hundreds of pretty large companies all trying to pull tix at 10am with pretty sophisticated software and dozens of pullers on their behalf. Plus there are countless thousands of people who are pulling for tix just to immedaitely list them on stubhub and make a couple bucks. The competition compared to 2002-2003 is SHOCKING.


The result is that it's so hard to pull seats for hot shows, that you get tempted into pulling for mediocre events. Jonas Brothers in an arena in Oklahoma City? events like this get so F**ing overbought by brokers and wanna-be brokers that $5 tix on stubhub/craigslist the day of the concert are extremely common. For Michael Buble, I shorted floor seats for basically every single stop on the tour. I sold Floor, row 33 to about 10 shows for $175-200 each. I ended up buying them at $80 or less the day of/day before and either email them to my customers or arrange for them to meet the person who is "selling them to me".

great thread so far, thanks for doing it.

I guess I have four questions:

1. the shorting is very interesting. but what happens if you can't cover? or don't cover, as seemed to be implied by the people waiting outside the superdome...? seems like there aren't necessarily a ton of consequences if you didn't sell those tickets through your account at stubhub?

2. I've seen articles about hiring Indians to solve captchas; it seemed exceedingly cheap per; can you comment on that and have you ever done that or plan to?

3. I have Hoyas season tickets in a nice section, but can't make every game, etc, some of which have been top-tier from year to year (Duke, Nova, etc...) can you comment on a good strategy as far as timing or pricing on stubhub for someone just selling a couple tickets a year.

4. I bought 4 tickets for the 2011 NCAA tournament at Verizon Center through the athletic department; I'm probably going to sell 2 and keep 2; any comments on selling those tickets for the opening weekend games?

OP,

Just wanted to say thanks, this is pretty interesting

1. the shorting is very interesting. but what happens if you can't cover? or don't cover, as seemed to be implied by the people waiting outside the superdome...? seems like there aren't necessarily a ton of consequences if you didn't sell those tickets through your account at stubhub?

Shorting tickets by anyone but the biggest, most established brokers is generally frowned upon. This is because to do it very successfully you need to sell a lot of volume, and you need to have a ton of capital to be able to fill orders if the price spikes. I have heard more horror stories than I can count of shady brokers and even amateur ebay-ticket sellers busting orders when the event gets hot. This year's Masters was a prime example. Tons of guys sold Wednesday practice round tix at $250 each and when the price spiked, rather than lose $5k they just refunded their customers and turned off their cell phones.

The night of the NFC/AFC Champ games I only shorted about 15 pairs of Super Bowl tix at $1450-1600 each, because I wasn't comfortable losing more than $10-15k WORST CASE. I won't say the company name but one of my closest friends in the business (over 3,000 feedback on ebay, pretty big ticket seller) shorted over $300,000 worth of Super Bowl tickets the night the Saints/Colts made it and the next day (mostly on ebay). He made a crap-load of money because get-ins fell to <$1,000 in Miami on Saturday, but I know for a fact that had prices gone to $2,000 ea or more, these guys didn't have the $$ to fill at those prices.

2. I've seen articles about hiring Indians to solve captchas; it seemed exceedingly cheap per; can you comment on that and have you ever done that or plan to?

I don't want to get too much into the tech-side of this discussion because to be honest I'm not really that tech-savy. I will say that when I used Ticketmaster programs I had other people typing in captchas on my behalf in real time. As I said earlier in the thread, I don't use this software anymore because of changes Ticketmaster has made on their site.

3. I have Hoyas season tickets in a nice section, but can't make every game, etc, some of which have been top-tier from year to year (Duke, Nova, etc...) can you comment on a good strategy as far as timing or pricing on stubhub for someone just selling a couple tickets a year.

Your best bet to be honest is to list the tickets on Stubhub on a per-game basis AS EARLY as possible...like as soon as the schedule comes out. Very few ncaa bball games will go up in price as the games get closer. If you want to PM me your locations and games available we can talk about me listing them on consignment, but to be honest Stubhub at 15% commission is your best bet.

4. I bought 4 tickets for the 2011 NCAA tournament at Verizon Center through the athletic department; I'm probably going to sell 2 and keep 2; any comments on selling those tickets for the opening weekend games?

You want to sell those the night/morning after the matchups are announced. Hopefully you will get lucky and have duke or some local team and prices will shoot up.

hey, thanks for the reply.

You mention consignment, but would you, since you sell for free, sell my tickets through your account at my risk and you pocket the 15% I would have paid in fees?

How much do you figure the average chump scalping tickets on the streets makes? Seems highly unprofitable and a waste of time for them.


And I am referring to mostly MLB and NHL games. NFL games seem profitable since tickets are expensive and games are always sold out.



I really don't get why she would play there. With four major venues in the city (Scottrade, Edward Jones Dome, Busch Stadium, and Chaifetz Arena) and one 20 minutes away (Family Arena), she could've sold a lot more tickets like she did this year playing at Scottrade. Obviously it was good for you.

No offense at all but this is what kills the argument to me that brokers are providing a service.

Have you noticed more teams/venues doing things to prevent buyers from around the country such as manditory will call or zip code requirements for purchase? Or are these methods pretty much only for small venue and high desirable concerts?

what do you think about band fan clubs? how many fan clubs are you a member of?

How much do you figure the average chump scalping tickets on the streets makes? Seems highly unprofitable and a waste of time for them.



And I am referring to mostly MLB and NHL games. NFL games seem profitable since tickets are expensive and games are always sold out.


Most of the thuggish looking scalpers that you see at every mlb/nba/local event downtown are just street hustlers, many are drug addicts. They will spend 2 hours across the street from the venue hoping that someone will give them free tix or take $5 each and then flip them. For them, making $50 for 3 hours of work is huge!

However there are definitely legit "scalpers" on the street who are holding brokers' unsold inventory, the standard commission is 30% for a really weak event like a WNBA or nfl preseason game, to 15-20% for an easier-to-move ticket.



I really don't get why she would play there. With four major venues in the city (Scottrade, Edward Jones Dome, Busch Stadium, and Chaifetz Arena) and one 20 minutes away (Family Arena), she could've sold a lot more tickets like she did this year playing at Scottrade. Obviously it was good for you.

She made a huge mistake. The promoter had no idea her first tour would be so hot. Immediately after the show in STL at the Fox on Jan 7, she completely canceled her next 5 shows at small theaters in Chicago and Detroit, refunded all ticket purchasers (who had bought the tix and made plans 4 months in advance) and immediately rebooked at Allstate Arena in chicago and Joe Louis Arena in Detroit (5X the capacity for 6 new shows). Now that's what I call a sellout!

She took a couple months off and rebooked a new tour that's going on now. All arenas. Cheapest lower level face value, $175 each