I'm thinking of buying 2-4 tickets for Packers at Falcons on November 28th. Any optimal strategy for this (looking to pay on the lower end of prices - I'm not a $100+ ticket type of guy) aside from waiting until after the game starts? I'm assuming the game will be a sell out, particularly because both teams should be strong contenders at that point, so maybe it's just best to buy them as soon as I know I can go?

Does it matter that it's Thanksgiving weekend?

$300 for 2 club level tickets at the 30 yd line (+ parking pass) to the SD @SEA game this sunday a good deal?

What happens if someone you sell some of your season tickets tickets too gets in a fight with someone at the game? Do they take away the rest of your ticekts and ban you from purchasing again in the next season?

Got a couple questions for you,
How do you get around things like TicketHorse's Flash system? I've heard of people mailing their actual CC's to people but there's got to be an easy way to get a CC with a preloaded amount and random name and info on it. Heard of people using Green-Dot but they're a little pricey for my needs. Most of their Flash seats are transferable but some are not.
Is it legal for me to have multiple credit cards with different names and addresses? One of the bands I like to see has a mail order lottery but the odds of hitting for the hard shows are way over 1:10, more like 1:100 this is why I ask. You're only allowed one entry per CC and billing address. Now if there were a cheap way for me to have a hundred CC's from different names at different addresses my odds would greatly improve.
Lastly, I know TM outlets pull from the same stock now but I've heard the computers dont have catchpas and dont put you into that "Waiting Cue" like normal online does which is why they can usually pull a couple sets in the time it takes someone at home to get shutout, is this true? If the "waiting cue" part isnt at least the captcha skipping step would shave valuable milliseconds off the time.
I ask this one because there's a TM outlet here with no one ever in line. I know a lot of tickets are only sold at local outlets but I've had friends pull tix at TM outlets on the other side of the country. Is there any way of knowing if the tix I'm going after are available at my outlet before the onsale?
Hope you're still checking in on this thread.

The cheapest seats for the twins home playoff games are 100 dollars on stubhub. Do you see this going up or down? Also if I show up in the 1st or 2nd inning will I pay quite a bit less buying from a scalper?

The NHL Winter Classic is coming to Pittsburgh this January, and I think there is a good chance tickets on the secondary market might be cheaper then face value, how do you feel about that?

When Pens played in Buf a couple years ago, tickets were goign for about $40, now most tickets are in the $200+ range:

http://capitals.nhl.com/v2/ext/WC_Heinz_Field_Map.pdf

I feel like a lot of people are going to be trying to buy these tickets just to make a buck, and I think there is going to be a flooded market, plus, I don't think Washington even sold out their allotment to the season ticket holders, and the day after most people are partying hard for new years, and a game having 3 times the seats available for most hockey games, I just feel like there will be a lot of tickets out there come close to game time.

I put my name in for the lottery, and will buy them for face value if I get a chance, but, what do you think the chances are of getting tickets for face or less close to the game?

I'm mildly interested in UFC 119 in Indy this weekend, ie I'd like to go but think its overpriced badly.

Can you handicap my chances of getting in cheaply? Its an hour drive and I don't want to go up there unless I have a pretty decent shot at a deal.

I can pick up seats right now for 65-70 each. I think prices should come down a bit from that point, but you won't be able to find 30 dollar tickets on the street if that's what you're looking for.


edit: I didn't even know about the event until this post and just looked at the inventories for a minute. There definitely isn't a huge supply right now, which is why I don't think prices will come down that far. I could be totally wrong about the street, you never know

This is definitely a game to buy day-of. Last year at Fenway, face values were between 150-300 for a ton of seats...Day of the game I could pick them up for less than half-price.

If the Twins play the Rays, Game 1 should be on a Wednesday afternoon, so prices should not be TOO outrageous. If it's a 7pm game vs NYY, all bets are off.

Today and yesterday I picked up about 16 seats for $90-$95 each FYI. I think this has the potential to be a $150+ get-in.

My advice to you is to keep checking Stubhub especially around 10/2. If you see total quantities of seats decreasing rapidly, it's going to be an impossible ticket to get on the street. If Stubhub still has 500+ tickets on the day of the game, you should be able to find deals out there.

Sounds like you know some things about the business already, let me know if you have more questions.

Edit regarding outlets not having captchas: It's true that the outlet worker doesn't have to put in a captcha, but you still have to wait until 10:00:01 before they can get in the system, and in my experience the people working these machines are pretty unskilled at pulling tickets quickly and don't have any incentive to try really hard. You can get through much faster online even with the captchas

Great deal. If you don't want to buy them, I'll pay $301

Good question. Luckily that's never happened to me. Technically I'm sure you could lose the seats.

how much volume do you have to do on stubhub in order not to have to pay buyers fees?

You have to confirm and deliver 99% of your sales, have an average time to confirm >5 hours, and the sales metrics are by quarter.

Q1 this year was 50,000, Q2 75,000 Q3 100,000 and they haven't told us about Q4 yet

Thanks for the quick reply.

I looked on ticketmaster and you can still get 8 together in the lower bowl, which makes me think its going to be a ghost town.

Oh, ok right on. I assumed it was a sell out and was just checking brokers. That explains why brokers don't have a lot of seats, it's not even sold out!

Should be loads on the street in this case.

Earlier in the thread I was asking OTP about the Roger Waters concert and he pm'ed me offering his services to find the cheapest prices. So on Tuesday he kept in touch with me following the ticket prices as they were dropping, because apparently the shows were not selling as well as previously anticipated. Well that's good news for me! OTP helped me score 3rd row seats for $125, which is half off face. Very cool of him!

I thought I'd post a mini TR about the concert here. I've been big pink floyd fan for a few years, and now Roger Waters is performing the Wall in Chicago. Perfect! As soon as I walked in the United Center the myriad of lights and speakers set up in the rafters immediately caught my eye. This was going to be one hell of a show!

Around 8:15 Roger appeared on stage, silver hair and all, looking quite well for his age. The first song was In the Flesh, accompanied by a remarkable display of lights, fireworks, and a giant hydraulic platform lifting uniformed men about 30 feet in the air. It was like a friggen broadway production! Throughout the concert a wall was slowly being built up on the stage, which also served as a canvas for the multimedia extravaganza. I've never seen a concert that was as visually exciting as this. Complete with giant inflatable puppets, ghoulish cartoons, and haunting war images with sounds of helicopters and trains blaring through the speakers. Its kind of hard to describe the atmosphere of the show but it was truly captivating. And when Roger came out to play comfortably numb, all the multimedia stuff was toned down and it was just him silhouetted against the giant white wall. It was very cool. I had goosebumps all over that whole song. The wall comes crumbling down of course to conclude the epic album. I was very happy I went to show. It really was a sight to behold, especially from the 3rd row. I took a couple of crappy iphone pics too, to give you some idea what it was like



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Nice, maybe some of the "OMG hes a scummy scalper!" people will chill out now.

thats is alot of volume!!!

OP, great thread, I've learned a lot and appreciate you taking the time to do this.

One thing I've always wondered about is with eTickets. For a big event, why can't someone make a copy of the tickets, give them to a buddy to sell and get there immediately when the doors open. Then the person with the duplicate seats would get denied as i'm sure the bar code would recognize it as a dupe?

Happens way too often unfortunately. If you are buying e-tickets on the street, you should be very careful, and even ask them to walk you into the doors to make sure you get through.

Also unfortunately you can't even be certain hard-stock tickets are valid. The person might have sold them on Stubhub or NFL ticket exchange and the barcodes are no longer valid. (The tickets could have been purchased with a stolen credit card and are invalid from the get-go.) Always pay with a credit card or with Paypal funded by a credit card, and if you are paying cash, make sure the person doesn't look like a crack-head or a scammer, and you should be ok. Pretty much every single event I've worked at, I've seen people get turned away.

Thanks for the thread, appreciate all the info. Any chance you have hookups for the Lakers/Timberwolves presason game in London?

What's the best way to get tickets to a Leafs game (consistently sold out)?

Good luck! Probably have to wait till they have a losing season and tickets become less desirable...