In the past I would routinely pay ticket brokers so as to have a better selection of seats, and to not have to deal with the "on sale" crush. Yes, of course I p

In the past I would routinely pay ticket brokers so as to have a better selection of seats, and to not have to deal with the "on sale" crush. Yes, of course I paid more, and I paid for the convenience, but I don't think I ever paid more than 50% of the face value. I was a dedicated concert goer back in the day, having spent a lot of time in ticket lines. By time I started, "sleeping overnight" was pretty much over with as an hour or so before the sale, the staff would come out, hand out wrist bands, and then say "#123 is the front of the line" with the 123 being some (I guess random) number from the range of wrist bands they gave out, and everyone else would line up, with #122 wrapping around and being behind whatever the highest band that went out. The premise being there was no reason to show up much more than just before the onsale time, since your arrival time was no guarantee of line position. Similarly, at one venue, they simply handed out numbers, low number wins. After we picked ours up, there was a guy on the edge willing to buy low numbers. I was once first in line, but the tickets I got were underwhelming, which made me more cynical about the buying process. Then, there was that one time, my poor wife, bought us some tickets. There was no way she could have known. There was no way anyone, really, could have known. It was a typical amphitheater layout, and she got the last row of the middle section. When you buy tickets during the mad rush of the opening sale, you just get what they give you, there's really no time to pick or choose. Amphitheaters tend to be reasonably steep, with the seat in front of you lower, by, perhaps, a foot, so as to offer mostly unhindered sight lines to the stage. But the venue, at some point added a row of seats that were directly behind the row in front of it, with no offset, essentially offering NO view of the stage. It was just awful, and there's nothing she could have done about it. In the end, I just learned to use a broker for most of the shows I saw. It was a much saner experience, I could pick seats, I could judge value, I could apply intangibles. Thankfully, the bands I see today are cheap and unpopular, and the sports tickets I just buy from the stadium.