what's the diff between a broker and a scalper?

I dont follow baseball so sorry if dumb question but was the Twins purchase an example of the second strategy? How much do you use the second strategy?


I don't really invest in a team because I think the team is going to do better than expectation, but I will if I think there's some reason why the season will be more valuable. For instance I bought a bunch of cardinals seasons last year because each season account entitled you to all star game tickets, which made the package much more valuable (I could sell under face for all the weekdays, over face for most weekends, and make a couple $k from the ASG tix.

This year I bought a bunch for Twins because they moved into their new stadium, and that has made them one of the toughest tickets in sports this year. Similarly, the day after Lebron signed, I signed up about 10 friends/families to the Heat waiting list and ended up getting about 6 season tix for next year... (nothing huge but should make a few k...if they are in the finals could be worth $10k.).


Also, side question, do you bet sports?


I will bet sports to hedge in playoff situations. In 2006 I was in Denver working the Rockies-Red Sox world series and put $5,000 on BOS for game 4, because I stood to make a ton on game 5 tix if the Rockies could have won a game.

In 2006 I had a bunch of Cardinals world series tickets from the onsale, and I decided to bet $4,000 on the Mets to win NLCS game 7 to hedge. I did it through Bodog and was still rooting hard for STL. They pulled it out, and I didn't log into Bodog for another 4 months. Next time I logged in, I realized I had accidentally bet on STL and had like $7,000 sitting in the account

A scalper is generally someone who just works the street at games. They don't invest a lot in tickets, but hope to pick up extras from fans at the game, or from releases at the box office.

Most of the thuggish guys at games with fistfulls of tickets are just selling them on commission for bigger brokers who had priced the tix too high and were left with them on game day. I don't really have anyone that I use for that, as most of my tickets can be emailed, or I will overnight them to a reputable local broker who in turn will try to sell them or pass them to the scalpers at last resort.

There's a whole network of street scalpers who are on the road 300+ days a year. At the Super Bowl, Final Four, ASG, the scalpers are from all over the country. They "work the circuit" and will show up to random mlb games when there isn't a bigger event. Most of them are degens but it's possible to "sort of" eek out a living doing that I guess.

Speaking of scalpers, this is a fascinating article from SI in 1997 about street guys and a little about bigger brokers. It's a really well-reported article. The industry has evolved so much since then...

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vau...25/7/index.htm

The exchange of sexual gratification for consideration between consenting adults is not illegal in Canada... though laws that pertain to establishments, procuring, and public soliciting make it tricky.

As for escorts, in theory (and legally) you are paying for companionship. Other than vague euphemisms like "girlfiend experience"... no one will ever discuss sex with you until the girl arrives. Sexual acts are then negotiated in private as a way of creating repeat business. The escort/massage space depends to a very large degree on regular customers and word-of-mouth.

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

What's is the best way to go about finding tickets from individual season ticket sellers?

Is it through word of mouth or do you spend money on marketing to find sellers.


Also, when buying directly for an event is it best to buy over the phone or web? Are there any specific tricks to buying over the phone because all I ever get is the engaged tone for popular events?

Can you give anymore details automated programs used to purchase tickets over the net?

I totally understand your point. I was a huge sports fan and moderate concert-attendee way before I got into this business, so trust me I understand both sides of this issue.

The first question to ask is why would a team put tickets for sale at face value prices significantly below the fair market price? Why was the face value of prime tix for Yankees Game 1 World Series last year $425 each when they were worth $2,000 each at least? Why are 50-yard line Ohio State-Michigan tix sold for $60 each at the box office when they are worth $300 each easy? Why did Lady Gaga put VIP Little Monster Gold packages for sale at $450 each for this tour when they were worth $250-300 each at best? (for a ticket with laminate and a free tshirt)

You can figure out the answers yourself, but we both can agree that for any event there's a fixed supply of seats, and a variable demand for ticketless fans who want to see the game. These tickets will trade on the open market at whatever they're actually worth.

When a hot game goes onsale at 10am on Ticketmaster at ridiculously low prices, and there are 10 people who want a ticket for each available ticket, your only chance of snagging one is to be at your computer with a fast internet connection willing to waste an hour, or a willingness to camp out at the box office for hours. Most people don't have that kind of time, most people have real jobs.

Is the ticket distribution system currently in place fair? How do you define fair?

In 2004 my dad and I went to Busch Stadium for the Cards-Astros NLCS game 7. My dad brought $1,000 in his wallet and we spent 2 hours trying to find a pair of tickets. No one would sell us one, because we were surrounded by people readily paying $550-600 each. We got shut out. If we had brought $1250, we would have seem Jim Edmonds hit his 12th inning HR. I really really really wish we had.

We didn't have time to sit at the Cardinals website at 10am when NLCS tix went onsale for $75-150 each a couple weeks before. I had to be at school and my dad was busy at work. We had no chance of buying tickets at those prices. Had the Cardinals originally sold them for $400-500 each, we would have certainly been able to snag 2, because the primary market wouldn't have sold out until the day of the game when the demand reached this fever pitch.

If the Twins release some more $11 face value tickets for the Twins-White Sox game tonight (cheapest on Stubhub now is $70 each), I am going to buy as many as I can possibly get my hands on to resell. I really hope they do (I've gotten a release like this for almost every game this year). If I buy 20, and sell them on Stubhub tomorrow for $60 each and make $800...Is that fair? of course not.

Let's assume I don't get lucky and 20 different Twins fans catch the release and go to the game for $11 each. Is that more fair? At first glance it seems much more fair. However, these 20 fans are essentially paying $50 each by using the tickets and choosing not to resell. At the game there will be dozens of people with their fingers in the air willing and ready to pay $50-$60 each. Even though these lucky fans only shelled out $11 cash, they are choosing to go to the game instead of taking the $50. Seems more or less fair to me.

Do I provide a service? Absolutely. And I say that with a totally straight face.

Back in 2003-2005, I was a member of basically every fan club I had ever heard of. There were some bands I had never heard of until they announced an upcoming tour, and I'd buy 5-6 memberships on different credit cards just for the presales.

Now, fan club presales are 95%+ junk. The best presale seats are in the AMEX gold card or CitiCards presales. Taylor Swift is notorious for this. On her last tour I never saw a ticket in the first 20 rows for a single fan club presale. During the AMEX presale many of the front floors were available.

This is never publicized or written about, but this is a major way that acts scalp their own tickets. Taylor Swift and Miley Cyrus could never have $200 lower level tix, imagine the PR. But of course they know their tickets are worth more than face value and recently promoters have begun aggressively going after that $$. The result is VIP packages (which usually just include the ticket and a tshirt or laminate) as well as AMEX/Citi presales. AMEX pays a ton of $$ for exclusive access to prime seats. Why would Swift put 4th row center floor in the fan club for some girl who paid for a $25 membership when she can effectively get double or triple that fee from AMEX so a rich exec's daughter can get that seat?

Here's a FANTASTIC reporting piece on Taylor Swift's tour. Be sure to click the pdf that shows the ticket holds by AMEX and other sponsors.
http://www.newschannel5.com/Global/story.asp?S=11481431

"Taylor's team says it was a deal they struck to help keep the top price of their tickets at $49.50."

The best place to find tix at wholesale (the price individual ticket holders are looking to net, whether they be fans or brokers) is on Craigslist. For hot events you have to refresh craigslist and email brand new postings to insure you are the first contact. If the deal is really good, after 5 minutes people like me have already emailed them (and there are many people like me in every single market in the country.

The last place you should look is Stubhub or ticketnetwork.com. These are retail brokers who are charging you fees above wholesale, and in the case of Stubhub, the tickets are already marked up from wholesale! Stubhub makes 25% on every purchase (that's ignoring how much the ticket-holder is making!!)

For most events the internet onsale is your best bet. I realize from reading this thread it might sound like every single event that goes onsale is an instant sell out with brokers bombarding the onsale, but that's REALLY far from the case. Less than 5% of events are going to be instant sell outs. I sell about 25% of my events under face value. Especially in this economy, combined with the fact that concert ticket face value prices have shot up recently, you should have a decent chance at most events.

I'm not going to talk more about automated programs. I've made it pretty clear that those don't really work anymore since the sites have gotten more sophisticated. My advantage comes from my experience navigating an onsale, and the fact that I might have 10-15 people trying to pull tix for me as well.

Hey, cool thread. So my Dad has season tickets to the Denver Broncos, good seats, first level around the 15 yard line. As I'm sure you know, these season tickets are hard to get, with a 10 year (or something ridiculous) waiting list. However, he doesn't really go to the games anymore, he pretty much holds on to them so he can give me some tickets and sell the rest. I live in another state now though, so he's considering giving them up because he doesn't want to deal with the hassle of selling all of them. The problem is that since the Broncos kind of suck now, it will be hard for him to break even if he sold all the tickets, especially when you consider the full price preseason tickets they make you buy. If the Broncos ever get good again though, those tickets will be worth quite a bit, and I know he'll regret giving them up.

So, I guess my question is, do you think it's worth it for him to hold on to the tickets now, even if he is probably going to be losing money for the time being, on the chance that they will go way up in value at some point? Also, are there any brokers that would buy the whole season from him all at once, preferably for what he bought them for? He doesn't want to deal with selling them one at a time on craigslist or whatever.

Thanks!