so in other words, you think that tickets should continue to be poorly priced and that you should benefit from that poor pricing. ticket pricing, for the most part, seems to be to be as low-variance as possible. this is in part because these agencies know that the worst-case scenario for an in-demand event, their tickets are bought up by a bunch of speculating ticket brokers. there is an issue if all the ticket brokers are colluding on prices, but it doesn't seem like there's an incentive for them to do that.

he is taking a risk that he will not be able to re-sell the ticket or will have to sell it at a loss. that is a legitimate risk that people such as yourself may not be able to come down from their high horses in time.

note: i am not a ticket broker, nor do i know any ticket brokers.

I've talked about scalpers a few times in the thread already. If you have a specific question about one of my responses let me know and I'd be happy to get more in depth. While many of these guys are thugs and straight up hustlers, a decent number of them are actually good peoples (even some of the scary ones). I imagine if you grow up in the projects and drop out of school, buying and selling tix to make $50 a night is probably not a bad gig at all.

I realize there has been some "you buy up all the tix and double the price F U!" sentiment in the thread, and I understand why a lot of people feel this way. It should be noted that most of the low level street scalpers don't really have the capital to buy tix when they go onsale. These guys either sell other broker's inventory for a commission (take no risk) or show up with a " I need tickets" sign and offer peanuts to fans for seats. But this is very clearly providing a service. Many fans show up to the game with an extra pair of tix to unload, and they don't have the time or interest in standing out there for 30 minutes to maximize their price, they're happy dumping them to the nearest scalper for a few bucks so they can go into the game. Without scalpers unloading extra tix would undoubtedly take more time, and let's face it most people don't enjoy standing on a street corner holding up tix.

You're missing the point. Ticketmaster has sold more tickets than any other company/firm/group in the history of the world put together. They have a HUGE market presence. If you are a singer or promoter putting a tour together, you can't imagine the amount of work that goes into a tour (stage/booking venues/marketing/security/transportation/lights/effects/set list...etc etc etc), it's a MASSIVE undertaking. Notice that I left out ticket-selling which is one of the most important parts of the process.

Ticketmaster already has a tremendous ticket-selling infrastructure with hundreds of call center reps, retail outlets, advertising, etc. Do they charge very high service charges? Yes. But this is because when you buy a $50 ticket from Ticketmaster, $50 goes to the act, and the $10+$2.50+$4.75 goes to Ticketmaster for their services. Is this high? Yeah I think so. The merger with Live Nation this year insures that the company's market share will only increase and they will have no reason to lower these service charges.

While it seems that TM is a huge monopoly and there's no way you can avoid the service fees, remember that you can always go to the venue box office and get tickets for face value. Ticketmaster is ultimately a middle man. They aren't a broker because they don't buy the inventory in the first place, they don't take any risk in the show. But they do a damn good job of selling tickets, and that's why everyone uses them. There are a few other primary ticketeting companies like tickets.com tickethorse.com etc but when you check out those websites and buy tix from them, you realize TM.com is lightyears ahead of the competition.

I guess I didn't realize that you could go around ticket master by going to the venue. I also guess I didn't realize how much infrastructure was used to determine who gets a seat and who doesn't. It seemed to me that it was more a problem of generating GUIDs and bar codes that mapped to certain seats.

I take a lot of pride in the fact that I've never busted an order and have perfect feedback on ebay. (You can't short tickets on Stubhub because you have to list the exact location and they frown on offering substitute tickets, so 80% of my shorting is on ebay, the other 20% on my website). Unfortunately there are a lot of guys out there that see it as a risk-free strategy. If I'm right and the price goes down, I'll fill the tix and make money. If the event gets super hot, I'll just refund the customers and I don't lose anything. But I can't afford to do that to customers. If I take a $5k loss on an event, fine. It would cost me way more in loss of reputation on ebay or with fellow brokers for me to leave customers shut out.


You are probably thinking that only "total scumbags" would bust orders and refund customers on the day of an event, and that the huge reputable brokers are immune from this, but you'd be wrong. Goldentickets.com was THE biggest broker in the world in the 90's and they left hundreds of customers stranded in San Diego at the Super Bowl years ago. Also the founder of Razor Gator is still notorious among insiders for a stunt his company pulled at the 1998 World Cup in France. The week before the semi-finals, he reported a "break in" at his office and claimed all their semi-final tix and finals tix were "stolen". They refunded all the customers and tried to play the victim, and then basically took the next flight out of the country before the "investigation" even started. LOL

It's funny to read the comments in that article. All the anger is towards the ticket brokers when the Red Sox have MORE THAN DOUBLED face value in the last 4 years at Fenway. Also, what that article skips over is the Red Sox's relationship with Ace Tickets (biggest ticket broker in Boston, they have a TV studio in their retail store for the TV post-game broadcast. They spent over $1mil just to build the studio in the back of their store).

The Red Sox charge broker prices for "Face value" http://boston.redsox.mlb.com/bos/tic...ng_pricing.jsp ($95 each for loge-box for a Tuesday game LOL) and sell as many as they can in season tix and single-game sales. They dump the rest to Ace Tickets to sell on consignment under face for them. This way the Sox don't have to lower prices to insure their sell-out streak. I have first-hand knowledge of deals between teams-brokers for about 5 mlb teams, 10 nba and 10 nhl teams.

Ticketmaster claims that Paperless tix is a way for them to stop ticket scalpers, and "insure that fans get to go to the show for the price the artists meant to charge".

This is absolute 100% BS garbage. The entire aim of Paperless tickets is to insure that Ticketmaster controls the scalping market for these shows. Ticketmaster owns Ticketsnow.com and eventinventory.com Point of Sale. They spent $30M to buy ticketsnow.com. Trust me, they know this market. They know how much $$ is in ticket reselling.

Ultimately Paperless tickets is a racket that forces fans to resell their tickets ONLY through TM. Daughter got sick and can't see Miley on Friday? The ONLY way you can resell them is if you find a customer yourself, go all the way to the venue the night of the show, and actually swipe them in at the gate. Are you kidding me? The other option is to sell them on Ticketmaster in their paperless transfer section and pay the 15-20% service fee.

I have a bunch of AMEX, that's how I know that their presales are much much better than any fan club presales. This is because they pay big $$ to the artist to insure their members have access to prime seats. AMEX is one of the biggest scalpers out there in a way

Your best bet is to go to TF and deal with the scalpers in the bottom of the first inning. I sat in section 115, row 3 (best seats in the house) for Thome's walkoff last night and paid $40 in the 2nd inning. I would have gotten $100-120 net on Stubhub for that seat the day before.

yeah this is really the best way to do baseball, ainec

there's a bar across the street from comerica with $6 pitchers before games

go over there, buy your last one just before the first pitch, watch on tv for an inning or two, walk towards the stadium, profit

If you weren't dropped on your head as a child, you'd probably see the difference between one guy buying a tickets to hopefully sell for a small profit and some guy who's already admitted to using technology to cheat the system to get as many of the tickets as possible, thereby creating a secondary market where people who would normally buy a ticket for $11 or $15 or whatever now need to pay this guy $50 or $60 for the same damn seat. For example, for the most part, I could personally afford to pay his price markup, but **** paying a guy $60 for an $11 ticket because he basically cheated me out of an $11 ticket in the first place.

Yes I would like to continue to benefit from low ticket prices if possible; obviously, I'd rather pay a smaller price than a larger price, all other shiz being equal. However, I would prefer that ticket prices be increased if it would deter scalpers from creating an instant sell-out (there really needs to be a new term for this kind of sell-out btw.) It's a much tougher pill to swallow to see a "sold-out" show with tickets all over the scalper sites at ridiculous markups than to just see a legitimate sell-out.

I understand perfectly well that he is taking a risk that he will not be able to re-sell the ticket or will have to sell it at a loss. It is a legitmate risk, but it is irrelevant. It doesn't represent any extra service (i.e. it is not shielding me from any risk I would have to assume,) and it doesn't make being a scalper any nobler.

Why can't you understand that he didn't cheat you out of anything? If there isn't excessive demand in the first place then the tickets will not be sold out even with scalpers!
$50 or $60 is the FAIR MARKET PRICE for those tickets. He's not the only one selling them, and if he prices them too high people will simply buy similar tickets from other sellers!

I'd say it really slllllloooooowwwwwwwlllllyyyyy so you could understand, but this is the internet, so it probably wouldn't help.

Putting "FAIR MARKET PRICE" in all caps is moronic. There is a finite number of tickets available for any given event. There are no "similar tickets from other sellers", at least not beyond a certain point. Those tickets go on sale for $x. People like OP use cheat technology (ok, used, past tense, maybe) and teams of buyers to buy tickets to events they have no interest in going to, then resell them for $Y, where Y is 4-5 times X, and sometimes more. Just because there are people out there willing to pay X doesn't mean it's "FAIR MARKET PRICE", it's just bastardizing the concept of supply and demand.

"I have teams of people sitting in front of their computers at the second tickets go on sale so I can keep people from buying them at $20 and then turn around and charge those same people $100 for the same seat".

Yes, Ticketmaster is garbage. Yes, they're a monopoly. But exchanging garbage fees for markups by greedy people who hoard tickets to sell at some exorbitant markup...maybe even you and Triumph can see why people have a problem with this. Does it take work? Clearly. Is it a real "service" to anybody but those who are OK paying $100 for a $20 event ticket? Not even close.

lol @ bastardizing the concept of supply and demand. i'll admit that using 'cheat technology' is obviously bad. i will not admit that ticket brokers do not provide a service, they absolutely do provide a service to people who can't afford to sweat when every concert is happening, or who do not have the time to spend all day online waiting for available tickets.

edge doing his best to ignore economics 101 itt

I would feel a lot better about this process if there was at least a window for local fans to have first crack at tickets (ie: will call only seats, local zipcode/ip address, etc) for a short period of time before it became a giant free for all across the country.

Edge obviously understands the service scalpers are providing. But he is also aware of the same disservice they are providing to a larger group of consumers.

As I understand it, Phish fans have (or had I guess?) a pretty good method for dealing with scarce tickets. When they go on sale they buy up tickets to all the shows (even the ones they're not going to) and then trade with each other for local tickets or face value. It's a pretty good way to do it.

If primary ticket sellers sold at market price, these guys wouldn't exist. Of course you're going to have arbitrage when that isn't the case, c'mon. Bitching about it is like bitching about the laws of physics.

Might be a stupid question, but I'm always nervous about buying tickets from scalpers because i don't wanna get scammed and have them sell me counterfeit tickets. Is there a way to make sure I don't get scammed? Especially at events I have never been to before and wouldn't even know what a real ticket would look like...

I have appreciated your posts and demeanor in this thread, I'm glad that this topic is generating constructive discussion.

With that said, You don't understand basic economics. The price the tickets go onsale for initially is 100% irrelevant. Whether the face value of an event is $1, $500 or $10,000 each, the tickets will still trade on the secondary market for the fair market price. (I'm not talking about "fairness" in the traditional sense here, that is an important point. I have said already in this thread that the ticket distribution system isn't fair in a moral sense).

This market price is determined by the number of tickets available in the open market vs. the total demand of people who want to go to the event.

What you don't realize is that in a very basic sense, the more tickets I (and other brokers/scalpers like me) purchase when the tickets go onsale in the first place, the cheaper the price in the open market. That doesn't make a whole lot of sense right away, but think about it.

In my example of the releasing of the $11 tickets that are worth $50-60, if the only people who catch them are fans who want to go to the game, those tickets will never get to the open market, and thus the price of tickets available will not go down. If I buy a bunch of them strictly to resell, the "market price" of the tickets will actually come down, as the total supply of available tickets in the market has gone up.

If Tyco released 10,000 super-special-limited-edition beanie babies tomorrow morning for $10 each on their website at 9am, and all 10,000 people who buy them are kids who love to collect beanie-babies, the market price of those beanies will be THROUGH-THE-ROOF, because there's no supply on the open market! Those kids will never part with their beanies. Some 30-year old weirdo who loves beanies will have to pay a fortune because there might be only a few on ebay or at shops.

Suppose a bunch of people like me heard about the sale and went in and bought 2,000 just to resell (Hey, those $10 beanies are way underpriced and they didn't make enough to satisfy demand, I will buy them and put them on ebay).

What is the result? The market price of the beanies be significantly lower (there are 2,000 available for sale). Collectors who didn't have time to hit the onsale or were busy at work, they get to buy them at a lower price!


You seem to be mostly upset at the unfairness of this system. I bought 2,000...that's 2,000 fewer little kids who could have gotten them at $10. But $10 is an artificially low price. At $10, demand is WAY higher than supply so they will sell out instantly.

When there's a playoff game at a 40,000 seat stadium, there might be 150,000 people ready and willing to pay face value. Only 40,000 will get in. The more ticket brokers who buy up seats, the more people will actually have a chance of going to the game by buying them on the open market. Who should have the most right to see a sold out game? The ones who were lucky enough to be at a computer at 10am with a fast internet connection? or the ones who value the ticket the highest thus are willing to pay the most?

Was it nine inch nails that had a tour where they auctioned off all the tickets or am I making this up? I recall some band doing auctions to create a fair market value and eliminate the brokers.

My reply above explains how it is a service. I realize you don't agree and that's cool. 99% of my customers are smiling and shake hands with me and ask for a business card or my email when they come to my office to pick up their tickets. They paid market price and are happy with the selection. They work hard at their jobs and in their time off they are too busy spending it with family and friends to find out exactly when the event is going onsale and sit in front of their computer to pull the tickets.

I am also providing a service by providing liquidity to the market. Fans find out they can't go to the game, they get sick, or they decide the prices are so high they would rather have the $$...I am ready and able to buy their tickets from them. I send someone over to pick them up at their office or residence, I offer COD fedex, etc.

I realize you still think it's unfair but those are 2 very obvious services I provide and the people I deal with are happy they did.

One Time,

Instead of banging your head against the wall arguing with people who just don't get it - let's get back to answering questions!!

+1 plz, i posted a couple of questions back up a bit.

if you post something this read in oot and only one person attacks you for it its pretty safe to assume that the vast majority of people are somewhere between apathetic and condoning. haters gonna hate.

This is not a good time to get into the industry. I don't plan on doing it full time for more than a couple more years, as business is seriously drying up. This is because it's a LOT harder to pull real quantities of seats on TM because the site has gotten more restrictive. Also, face values on the primary market for concerts have gotten ridiculous. This is because for years the promoters/acts have been really jealous about secondary market prices and have always wanted to get in on the market. They have started offering these "VIP packages" when shows go onsale. The floor seats face value is $80 each let's say...a VIP package with 2 floor seats and a poster and maybe a laminate will be $299 each...Whatever they don't sell after a few weeks is quietly released into the general inventory for $80 each and guys like me scoop them up in releases.

1999-2002 was the best for this industry. Online sales were just starting out and it was super easy to ram through onsales on TM. You could literally open 10 tabs, F5F5F5F5 and have tons of floor seats for any concert in your shopping cart. I remember in 2002 or 2003 for Madonna, I joined her fan club like 15 times and had floor, first 12 rows for literally every single concert on her entire tour. (Also the economy was really good then and people were paying $500 a seat for shows...now not so much and it's only going to get worse). Now that's impossible to accomplish (see the article I linked earlier about "Wise Guy Tickets").

If you really wanted to get into it, and signed up for the Heat waiting list after Lebron signed and got a few seasons, and maybe hunted Craigslist to buy into people's season tickets for Heat, Steelers, etc (teams that sell out every game), and spent your weekends on TM.com, you can eek out $20-30k but it takes a LOT more time than you might expect to manage all of it. Also, capital is huge. If I didn't have access to like $50,000 in credit when I was starting out, I wouldn't have been able to grow my business in half the speed I did.

For your 2nd question about ppc...A lot of brokers I know have given up on PPC after throwing away thousands on it. The problem is that you can bid a ton on keywords, but unless your website is pretty sweet and have people to answer the phone all the time, you're not going to convert those clicks to sales at a good enough clip. Earlier this season, I was on adwords for Twins tickets and paying $2.50-$3 a click just to get traffic (any lower and I wouldn't even show up on google). I'm only making like $50-75 a sale anyway, so it was way too expensive for me.