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Yeah, you got it. It's not just presales, there isn't a big difference between buying in a presale and a regular sale. Presale just gives you two shots at it.
by rms 18y ago
Yeah, you got it. It's not just presales, there isn't a big difference between buying in a presale and a regular sale. Presale just gives you two shots at it.
The tickets are first come first served so whoever completes the CAPTCHA fastest gets the best tickets. However, some will always be released when people don't actually complete the transaction. So you can keep trying again and again for 15 minutes or so. Whatever you do, do not try to buy different tickets at the same time on the same computer. You cannot buy tickets for two cities at once, you will lose all your tickets. You need a VPN or your cell phone internet if you want to start playing that game.
The best way to decide on a show is to look at the listings on Stubhub for a show by that artist that is already on sale. Assume that to sell a ticket you need to beat the lowest price on Stubhub. This isn't always possible and that's where your intuition comes into play. If you're in doubt about whether or not to purchase, feel free to email me and ask. For now, Leonard Cohen is a really good one to start with. The presale passwords are easy to find on google. Phish will also be announcing more shows soon and they are just about the hottest ticket this summer.
In a small theater, any seat is good enough. In a pavillion, only the front sections or the front of the rear sections are ok. The back of the rear sections in pavilions are a trap. Lawn tickets usually don't have very good margins. In an arena, anything that isn't behind the stage is usually ok. This is because in a pavilion the rear seats are usually the same price as the front seats, but in an arena the upper seats are significantly cheaper.
I haven't had a show yet where I have lost money, but I make my picks carefully. 200% profit isn't very common though. 50% profit is probably a realistic average. I may end up getting rid of Billy Joel/Elton John tickets soon at just a little over cost.
- anewaccountname 18y agoWhy would anyone want to do this? It is completely zero sum. You aren't creating any wealth, even if you are making money.
- ggrot 18y agoYou are essentially performing arbitrage. For the person who has a little more money, but not enough patience or planning to login to the ticket website at 10am, actors like the commenter are creating wealth for this person.
- nostrademons 18y agoBut if the ticket scalper hadn't been scraping the ticket website at 10am in the first place, the ticket would still be on sale. (Okay, it likely would've gone to someone else who got there after 10 but before the customer. But now you're cheating that person out of the ticket they otherwise would've had. Still zero-sum.)
- davidmathers 18y agoInsert Inigo Montoya quote here.
- swombat 18y agoWhy would anyone want to do this? For the money, obviously.
- falsestprophet 18y agoThis seems like a pretty interesting scheme. How quickly are you able to turn tickets around? Do you usually buy a large number of tickets at a time or do you minimize risk by only buying a pair?
- rms 18y agoMost of the tickets are on sale 3-4 months ahead of time. You can turn them around very quickly if you're willing to go for the lowest price on Stubhub which may or may not be the optimal strategy. My fastest turnaround was 4 Jimmy Buffett lawn tickets in California that I got for $40 each and sold on Stubhub for $80 each an hour late. Generally I buy a pair at a time because you are more likely to get 2 good seats together than 4 seats together. Then go back and immediately buy two more. Sometimes I buy 4. It mostly depends on available funds and mood, it's not something I have mathematically optimized.
- alain94040 18y agoSo at best you can make $100 profit per day? Doesn't sound like a winning combination to me. I don't think that's what the original poster had in mind. He may have been looking for a high-paying consulting gig, you know, the kind that pays $1,000/day.
- AndyAndy 18y agoHow do you get around the restrictions that will be placed on Cohen tickets, will call only and must have id and credit card that tickets were reserved with?
- villageidiot 18y agoWhat kind of volume can you do with this? Very interesting.
- rms 18y agoThere are certainly any number of ticket brokers out there that are making six figure incomes. Right now I'm limited by capital. Volume could scale higher once you start automating the processes as much as possible and using VPNs to get multiple shots, but I'm not quite there yet. One advantage of doing it at low volume is that you can cherry pick only the best shows, like the upcoming Leonard Cohen show. Unfortunately all my free capital is tied up in tickets already so I miss out on Leonard Cohen. I know it's unlikely, but if anyone wants to loan me money I can comfortably offer you interest rates higher that beat anything you can get on the market right now.
- motoko 18y agoI can vouch for Kevin. Nobody I know works so hard to invest small amounts of money to make moderately larger amounts of money simply to avoid work explicitly labeled as "work."