Reselling concert tickets is a good way to earn a little cash or meet a spending requirement on a new credit card. However, it can be risky and one bad purchase can blow all of your profit. Here are some tricks and tips I’ve picked up when buying and selling concert tickets.
Tips for Buying and Selling Concert Tickets
- Buy during the presale and flip the tickets before the general on sale. This is the best way to ensure that you’ll get your money back and make a profit. You also have a shot at better tickets. Once the general on-sale starts, demand shrinks drastically. This is a good rule of thumb if you are unsure of how the tickets will sell.
- For popular artists, you may consider buying during the general on sale, too. This sounds like it goes against my last bit of advice, but some artists are so popular you won’t have trouble selling tickets since they’re in such hot demand. One such artist is everyone’s favorite ginger…Ed Sheeran. This is something you’ll learn over time.
- If there’s something “special” about the show, tickets will be in higher demand. Examples of this include a popular artist’s last tour (e.g., Elton John’s Yellow Brick Road), two popular artists touring together, or a big artist playing a small or historic venue.
- Avoid buying tickets if a second or third show is added. Once multiple shows are added, demand goes down and prices tank. At this point, everyone that wants to see the show is able to get tickets themselves through Ticketmaster and they won’t need to turn to a third-party site like StubHub.
- If you can easily get tickets on Ticketmaster, don’t buy any. I usually have multiple browsers and my cell phone ready to search for tickets. I keep the best pair up and use the other browsers to search for additional seats to see if I can beat the first pair. If it’s particularly easy to pull up similar seats, the tickets are unlikely to sell out quickly which is a good indicator of low demand. You may resell them, but it’s a riskier buy.
- Section and row matter. You might assume floor seats are the best, but once you start getting to sections that are farther back from the stage, I’ve found that people prefer the bowl seating. This logic also applies to the row that the seats are in. People are more likely to pick rows 1-3 of a section that is one section farther from the stage versus the last row of seats in a closer section.
Final Thoughts
Buying and selling tickets is a risky business. The above tips can help guide you when deciding if tickets are a good or bad buy. Keep in mind the most important advice of all: when in doubt, don’t buy them!
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