OneTime,

i really want to go to the linkin park show at nokia theater in nyc on 9/14, they already had the presale for those that preordered the album. face is $50, they are going for 140 right now.

whats my best play? wait for another release? when do you think that would happen? or scoop them now?

thanks for the thread

How much volume do you have to do threw stubhub to get the 10% seller rate and free buys?

Do you get first dibs on concert tickets with any of your season tickets?

I want to buy superbowl tickets this year, what is the best place to do that at, and what is the best time (will the prices keep going up so I should buy as soon as possible or is there some optimal time?).

Best strategy for getting Masters tickets?

I am willing to fly there without having bought tickets yet if it means getting the best deal.

have you ever bought and resold tickets for events outside of the usa? specifically interested in if you have dealt with tickets for the fifa world cup?

Grunch: what's the best way to tell if tickets are real or fake? Is there even a good way?

make sure printed on paper and not crackers.

What are your thoughts on the Miami Heat this year and how their tickets will sell on the road? Do you think it is worth investing the time and money to get some assuming they will have a pretty large following this year even on the road.

whats the deal with courtside tickets at nba games?

best place to get them? fair market price, etc

miami heat home game courtside?

One of the most interesting threads I've read on 2+2.

I got lucky and won the Reds NLDS ticket lottery. I have the right to buy up to 6 seats now for each of the home games in that series. Right now my plan is to go with 2-3 friends (who I'll give them to at face value) and sell the extras for as much as possible. What kind of seats should I be looking to purchase to get the highest premium over face value? I'm probably not going to get the best available just because I don't want to price my friends out, but any info you could give me re: profit margins on different quality of seats for MLB games (especially playoffs) would be great. I'm anticipating really high demand considering we haven't been in the playoffs in so many years. Based on the little homework I've done it looks like tons of people got shut out in the lottery.

Everyone,

I am sorry for my very extended absence in this thread. I became pretty frustrated with the semi-derailment of "scalping is evil vs scalping is a noble profession" debate, and took some time off from the thread. To be honest I sort of forgot about it until now, but I have gotten a lot of PMs asking to continue it so I will try to continue and answer the questions I've missed....

Mazel Tov on the win. I entered about 30 emails and only won 2 entries.

Here is what you need to know to maximize your EV:

Sale starts at 9am est. The link is in your "congrats" email.

Click that at like 8:25-8:30 and you will be at the Reds page which will contain a link to get to the purchase page. The link will probably be clickable by 8:40. This will take you to a blank which refreshed at exactly 9:00:01, will be where you should PASTE your password (CTRL C the pw at 8:30).

Here is what you need to do:

Paste pw, hit enter
Immediately click the "t" link next to NLDS HG 1
Enter "6" in quantity. Here is your first choice. I am going to hit the $70 Infield Boxes for game 1, and the $35 Kroger Bleachers for HG 2 and 3.

Enter captcha, when you pull your tix, immediately hit "continue" and then "add another game", and go to HG2 then HG3.

HG2 won't have very good resale values at all, HG1 should be decent, and HG3 should be very good. If you have limited funds, go for the $35 seats for all 3 games.

As for best profit margins on Reds NLDS, it's tough to say. The best $$ will be in the $70.00 red sections because there won't be a ton of those on the market (brokers don't own a lot of season tix for Reds, and season-tix holders will probably want to go to the first nlds game).

Best profit margin will be on the $35 bleachers because those are the cheapest seats. For any big sellout, especially playoff games, the highest demand will be for the cheapest seats because so many people are going to be priced out.

I will definitely buy all my 6-seat allotments for game 1 and 3, but if it's "too easy" to pull tickets indicating a non-instant sellout, I'm not even going to buy for HG2 for CIN


Don't get your hopes too high. The NLDS is usually pretty weak on the secondary market. Prices will be under face in Atlanta, Tex, tampa, usually around face for the good seats in NYY and better for cheap seats. Minnesota and PHI will be very hard to pick up seats for and will be great markets.

NLCS typically you want to pick up any seats you can get except for Tampa, Atlanta, maybe Texas.

I know it's obv too late for this specific instance, but as a rule for all non-sellouts and even "borderline sellouts" (IE: events that failed to sell out instantly), 95% of the time you want to dump tix as early as possible. If it wasn't an instant sellout, prices will FALL closer to the event unless for some reason demand is really going to heat up (playoff race changes significantly, a great promotion is announced, a player dies and the memorial will be during the 3rd inning, etc).

For instance, this year I've sold many Cardinals tix for random garbage weekday games for $10 a seat 3 weeks before....and $2 a seat the day before or day of the game. Take a look at Stubhub for a random Tigers, Cardinals, Astros game...easy to find tix for 2 bucks a piece. Back in May nobody was asking that low.

Selling on the street is fascinating because you get to deal with such a wide variety of customers.

There's the guy with a hot date who wants the best seats, brought $350 in his wallet and is determined to spend it all.

There's the guy with his 2 kids who is content with standing on the same corner for over 2 hours, have his kids miss the first inning so he can bargain land the tix for $15 cheaper.

My favorite is the guy who shows up to a Saturday night game in July vs a big team and balks at paying over face..."Last time I got a ticket for 5 bucks!" <--- I swear I've heard this at every big game I've sold tix at.

Basically the reason there's profit for me and other ticket brokers is this: the initial allocation of tickets is flawed and inefficient. This inefficiency is very exploitable and I profit from that.

If Ticketmaster priced every event in an auction format, and tickets were sold at market prices or very-near market prices, I wouldn't be able to make any money buying/selling them.

Thanks a ton for all the pointers. I'm in class from 8-9:15 tomorrow but wasn't planning on gearing up til 8:55 so your heads up is big. I've got enough $ to buy whatever seats for all the games..right now I think I'm going to get all 6 for all 3 games. Some friends (and acquaintances obv) that know I have tickets are already beating down my door trying to get some, so based on what you said I'll probably lean towards making the 2nd game tickets readily available and only take a couple close friends to the first one so I can make some cash on this whole deal.

edit: If they are available what do you think about resale prospects of tickets better than the infield box (diamond seats, scout, etc) for the 3rd home game? I know you said it would be very good but I just wanted to make sure that would be the case even for those premium tickets. I think I'd go infield box game 1, bleachers game 2, and then the best I can possibly get for the 3rd home game. I was a baby during the 1990 WS and my parents had to leave our family party where everyone was watching the game to take me to the hospital bc I was choking on toothpaste. It'd be pretty cool to repay my parents for the missed game by taking them if it went to game 5 and sitting in some real nice seats.

Here's the thing: The system will only allow you to have one reservation per game. So you definitely want to go for 6 per game. If you only ask for 2, then try to get 4 more, it won't let you.

With that said, there's no way you'll get anything better than infield box for 6 together. If you want, go for like 2 best available for HG3 and you might get a really good pair. If you're a big Reds fan sitting in great seats for a clinching game will be WELL worth it (I'm lucky growing up as a Cardinals fan and being on the Rams bandwagon...big-time playoff games you will never forget)

The face value on courtside nba tickets are a joke, often thousands per seat. Nobody pays retail. The celebs are comped. Corporations own the other seats and get a sweet deal on multiple games to give to VIPs and clients. This is 100% the case in the small markets. In the larger markets like staples, msg, miami, etc there are actually whales who own season tickets in these seats (balllin). Your best bet to sitting courtside is to check stubhub or ticketnetwork.com for a really crappy game. For a hot game courtside seats often never make it to the market because there are always "important" people willing to sit in them.


Story: I was in NYC last December and got my gf and I 3rd row floor seats behind the basket for Celtics@Lakers (kg hit gamewinning shot)...we were about 25 feet from Spike, and first row at midcourt were Brooke Shields, Mark Wahlberg, and Will Ferrill acting ridiculous. We found out later that they were filming a scene for "The Other Guys". In the movie there is about a 0.5 second pan of our section and I'm pretty sure we're in the movie for an instant...will have to wait for DVD to be sure.


Edit: if you really want to sit courtside for a specific game PM me..I will be able to see who the holding broker of the seats that you are looking at on Stubhub and Ticketnetwork and can save you the 10-15% fees.

I've always wanted to, but have never been involved with an international event.

I've spent a lot of time in Israel. Was there in 05 and saw France-Israel WCQ and in 09 saw Greece-Israel WCQ (both draws, both years Israel painfully missed qualification).

In 05 the France game was a sell out... I made about a hundred bucks buying and selling tix just for fun using my completely-broken Hebrew in the parking lot until a police officer tapped me on the shoulder and told me to cut it out.

In 09 the Greece game was a near sellout and I didn't see a single transaction take place on the street.

In 2001 I was in 8th grade and my family was vacationing in Madrid. We went to a ticket broker's office and bought tix for Real Madrid Champions league vs Galatasaray and sat in great seats for a bunch of bull-fights.

similarly enough, a huge % of my clients are tourists who are in town for a weekend and want to sit in great seats. They are in town for business, would like to catch a game and not sit in nosebleeds. Without brokers these guys either wouldn't have the opportunity, or the market for great seats would be so tight it would either be too expensive or too complicated to try.

These days, no. The outlets are just a port to the TM.com website. This is the only way kids or people without CCs can pay cash for tickets.

In the old days (before i got into the biz) outlets notoriously opened a few minutes earlier than the phones for a kickback. I've even heard of a scam in the 80s in New York, a ticket broker literally bought 3 video-rental stores just to control the TM outlet. They got caught because they never sold any videos, and kept really weird hours.

I've got some pretty good stories, I will try to put a few down in the next cpl days if the thread takes off again. I have enjoyed reading the responses and getting PMs.

Stories would be awesome.

Here is something I've been wondering about in terms of selling season tickets to a scalper or whoever. Two years ago I bought a single ticket to PSU @ OSU which was apparently reported stolen and therefore void (awesome surprise when I used it at the gate). What is to stop some student from selling his season ticket to a scalper, then reporting it stolen and receiving a new ticket, therefore voiding the old tickets? There are no names on OSU tickets, so nothing to trace it back. I'm shocked there hasn't been a rash of these incidents, although maybe there have been because apparently >100 tickets for that game were reported stolen and voided.

Have you had any experiences like that?