Ticket Brokers?

May 11, 2005 12:50 PM

Any ticket brokers here? After paying through the nose for some sold out shows, and spending a number of Saturdays hitting refresh on Ticketmaster's site, I got to thinking...

There are a few sites on the net selling 'get rich quick' ebooks, but first I'd like to know if any MeFiers have gotten into the resale game, if any of the ebooks are worth it, etc. I'm mostly looking for a way to fund my own concert going habit.

I'm not really interested in hearing moral objections to the idea either.

posted by andrewzipp to media & arts (10 answers total)

I'm not sure if this is what you're asking, but a relative of mine has done quite well buying and reselling tickets to arena shows. He joins the fan club, snaps up tickets the moment they go on presale, then waits until a week before the concert and sells them on ebay, often for five to ten times face value. He buys tickets for venues in New York, Chicago, Austin, wherever. It's all done online. It's not legal, but it's certainly done a lot.
posted by bonheur at 1:27 PM on May 11, 2005

you can make money doing this if you know which shows are going to be hot, but you'll be roundly hated (or loved, depending on how much they want to see the show).

i doubt you'd need to buy an ebook to tell you how to scalp tickets, but hey.
posted by fishfucker at 2:23 PM on May 11, 2005

ps. most of the ticket-related reselling goes on through craigslist in towns where that site has enough draw. Also, i don't think this would be worth doing in smaller towns. Things don't sell out in sacramento, where i live now. Hell, you can get tickets for shows AT THE DOOR here (unbelievable, i know).
posted by fishfucker at 2:24 PM on May 11, 2005

For what its worth, ticket scalping is legal in many states. EBay details the laws here.
posted by drobot at 2:45 PM on May 11, 2005

An aquaintance of mine was doing this a few years back. He set up a server with a faaat pipe to hammer ticketmaster when tickets would go on sale. Later they came up with the 'Please enter the letters you see below" system to stop this kind of automation, which he promptly got around in a somewhat clever way. He set up a free porn site that could only be accessed if you entered in a letter/number combo. Normally it was just a dummy letter/number combo, but when the main server went to hammer ticketmaster's site, it would forward the letter/numbers to the porn site, so people looking for porn would do the dirty work for him.

Unfortunately, you have to have a pretty popular porn site (lots-o-hits) for this to work. And you'll burn in the 9th circle of hell for it. Other then that... have fun! FYI: the cost/benefit ratio is pretty low. You might want to think about another way to make your fortune.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 5:27 PM on May 11, 2005

huh. i always thought that the "solving captchas for porn" meme was an urban legend.
posted by joeblough at 8:07 PM on May 11, 2005

No, not a legend. The problem was that in order to really hammer Ticketmaster's server, you had to somehow guarantee that you'd have a ton of visitors at a specified time, because tickets would go on sale at (say) 9:00am, and be sold out at 9:05am. Since most tickets went on sale at the same time, he made it clear that there were new updates to the galleries every day a minute or two before the TM sale time, thus ensuring the 'regulars' would be online. He eventually shifted business plans to spam 'natural enhancers' because apparently the money was better.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 1:20 AM on May 12, 2005

I paid an online scalper $150 apiece for 3 Phish tickets (8/12/2005, last show before the Coventry finale). They cancelled my order then bumped them up $25 bucks. I came very close to buying a buncha tix on ebay and reselling them to finance the already too expensive tickets. At the last minute, Phish decided to play a last show at Hampton. Demand for Camden tickets decreased just enough to make it slightly less than nutso and bring tix back down to around $150 for lawns. I would have lost a lot of money (i was expecting tix to surpass $200). Furthermore, we went up with one extra ticket and only got $100 for it outside the venue...

Bottom line(s): 1) don't be that guy, 2) if you are, buy at face value 3) don't be that guy who sells a $35 ticket for $175.
posted by trinarian at 1:50 AM on May 12, 2005

yes, i am a time-traveller. shhhh.....
posted by trinarian at 1:54 AM on May 12, 2005

I honestly don't care if Phish fans on the other side of the internet would grumble about having to pay over face value for tickets. I mean, if you're selling tickets that are worth $175 for $35, someone is going to exploit that disparity.

I bought a twenty dollar e-book yesterday, and thought the information was way out of date.
posted by andrewzipp at 6:05 AM on May 12, 2005