Scalping Tickets

[Running Turtles]

Has anyone here tried ticket scalping as a source of income? A fwb was telling me how she was trying to go to a local concert, but there were no more tickets left officially and on eBay the tickets were going for 4x-5x the original price.

As long as the venue doesn't print names or require ID to match the ticket, this should work fine, right? Often there are early-bird discounts and limited number of tickets in order to not crowd the place.

eBay seems to be ideal for this, since you can list the ticket as an auction that ends ~6 hours before the event starts. That way the bids should be going up and reach a peak since more and more people are becoming desperate.

The Rolling stones are having a concert in my city this year and tickets are already ~€400... Imagine what a die-hard fan would pay last minute on eBay.

My question is simply if anyone here has experience with it and if they are willing to drop some knowledge.

 

[Clint Barton]

Lots of experience and knowledge needed of the acts, venues, and timing of when to dump the tickets. Lots of capital involved too since tickets sell months before the actual concert. Fees will eat you up both ways(10-20% buying and selling). I would only do it if you really know the performer would sell out and you had the option of just going to the concert in case you couldn't sell the tix at the price you wanted.

 

[realologist]

Very tough to get a read on it. Like what Clint said only do it for guaranteed sell outs. I've done it before with random sports tickets I had left over when we had a big group and not everyone showed up. I sold them for about double what they cost to get them but luckily the game was sold out.

 

[General Stalin]

I know people who do this all the time, but merely as a way to get some extra cash here and there not exactly as a regular income strategy. You just need to know what acts are in high demand and when to re-sell. I know dudes who bought Bieber and Taylor Swift tickets and was able to turn them around for like a 200% profit so rich parents could take their kids to see them. I could see it being a real pain in the ass strategy if it were something you relied on as a legitimate regular source of income though.

 

[Kona]

A good friend of mine one college made his living as a scalper in St. Louis MO. People there love the Cardinals and Blues. He started just standing around outside the games, because that was all you could do in those days.

After a season, he got an office and was putting ads in papers. He bought season tickets and got group rates and he figured out you could get playoff and world series type ticket vouchers that lasted many years. He paid way below face value for everything.

Once the internet came around he slowed down, but his office and all of the future tickets he had got bought up by Stubhub. He works for them now.

If you are just doing the buying and selling outside stadiums like he did, nowadays I bet you really gotta watch out for counterfeiting.

Aloha!

 

[Hypno]

Another angle is volume. In my city, I see guys who buy and sell at the venue (or a few hundred yards a way). Often times people have a few extra, and they are very good at buying them low and reselling high. I have occassionally seen these guys when I try to resell an extra pair. They are tough looking dudes and they are all working together as part of some sort of syndicate. If you tell them this guy over there offered me a better price, they know you are bullshitting because they are all working together.

When you are selling tickets, you are competing against them. I've only sold a pair at a time. If I had a stack of tickets like they did, they would probably beat my ass or worse.

 

[Armogan]

I used to do this, was pretty successful with college basketball a few years back. But the fees have become ridiculous. Stubhub destroys a lot of your profit margins, and that is by far the easiest way to sell tickets. A lot of people are comfortable buying on Stubhub now too, a random guy outside the venue, not so much.

Also, you need to really understand what is going to sell. Beyonce pit at the Rose Bowl, unfuckingbelievable. Goes for thousands. Taylor Swift floor. Wow. I always got the events wrong, because I thought Eric Prydz at the Palladium would be an amazing event, easily double my money. But then he releases 4 more shows and suddenly the supply has quadrupled. Not worth the hassle in my opinion anymore.

 

[_Cicero]

Anyone do this? What's the best website to sell scalped tickets?

 

[Chetthebaker]

I have a friend that did this a bunch of times back to make a little extra cash while he was teaching for relatively shitty money. He was into going to these kinds of shows, and realized that he could get 500-1k or more for U2 tickets he bought. Sold em on Craigslist. Being perpetually short of cash the lightbulb went off, and he rinsed and repeated maybe 10-15 more times in the next few years before changing from teaching to something better suited to him wher he made more money.

You can still pull this off, but it's not easy to get a regular business from it without getting burned quite a bit. And as technology gets more sophisticated it becomes tougher. Artists don't like this shit, so they're often doing what they can to stamp it out.
My gf was trying to buy tickets a couple weeks ago, I think for Radiohead, and apparently they're doing something where the tickets don't get released physically or electronically till some very short timeframe before the show.

LCD Soundsystem did that thing a few years ago for their "final show" at MSG where after the show sold out to massive scalping they stuck it to the scampers and added five more shows at a smaller venue.

 

[TheBMan]

I used to do this 10-15 years ago as a way to make some side cash but it seems like its gotten tougher. The spread between what you used to be able to get the tickets for and the secondary market value has gotten much smaller. Good seats for a good artist used to be like $100, and could fetch a multiple of that - now they go for several hundred dollars, and when you tack on fees to sell the margins make it much harder to profit from it.

 

[ShapeShifter]

I used to do this 10-15 years ago as a way to make some side cash but it seems like its gotten tougher. The spread between what you used to be able to get the tickets for and the secondary market value has gotten much smaller. Good seats for a good artist used to be like $100, and could fetch a multiple of that - now they go for several hundred dollars, and when you tack on fees to sell the margins make it much harder to profit from it.

Yes, ticket scalping isn't what it used to be. Ticket prices for good and even bad seats are so much more expensive now for face value. Lower level seats for many acts are frequently $175 or $350 or even more for face. Even for sold out shows, the margins on resale typically are not worth the hassle since the prices are already so high and it's not uncommon for many to ultimately resell for under face.

This isn't even considering how the top of the secondary market is affected by bands selling VIP or "Platinum Seats" (on Ticketmaster, Platinum Seats are essentially the band scalping their own tickets) for even higher premiums. You also have Ticketmaster and the NFL among others owning their own "official" resale sites.

I think the rise of electronic and print at home tickets contributes too, causing more of the secondary market to concentrate on official sites and those like Stubhub that actually guarantee your ticket. Do you really want to just buy a piece of paper some dude printed at home outside of a venue or have him text you a screenshot of a QR code? Of course, these sites will take a big fee from you as a flipper further cutting your margins.

I flip tickets like this a few times a year here and there just to get a little extra cash. I go to a lot of concerts and games, it’s nice when you can pay for your tickets by flipping a pair but it’s not really that easy. Stubhub and Craigslist will be your best bets. Unless you really know what you're doing you will probably lose money.

 

[_Cicero]

^ ^^ -- this is all probably spot-on advice.

I was thinking of doing this with World cup tickets, and with Champion's League Final tickets. With WC, it really depends on which match. The top matches to the group stages will go for multiples of face value, but you could easily lose a chunk of your money on the lesser popular matches.