On Finding Sold out and Front Row Tickets
August 12th, 2009
Unless you’ve plenty of time, getting hold of a concert or sports ticket before it sells out is not easy. For Instance, the entire Manic Street Preachers tour of the UK in 2007 sold out in under and hour. So how on earth can someone who’s in full time employment get their hands on a ticket if they sell out so quick?
They have to purchase one second-hand.
In the dismal days before the internet, you had to buy your second-hand ticket through a dodgy tout at the actual event. This inevitably meant paying over the odds, or even perhaps given fake tickets which would likely be recognized as such as you entered the event - meaning you miss the sports event or music gig while wasting your dosh by being defrauded.
Nevertheless, matters have improved for music and sports devotees. With much thanks to the internet, the ticket resale niche has cleaned up its act in the last 10 years. Now there is so much competition to resell tickets online, the market has become self-regulating. You’re selling the ticket for HOW much?! I’ll look elsewhere! And so many ticket sellers offer very cheap insurance if the sports event / music gig is called off. And with tough competition online, secondary tickets have dropped in price to the point that it can sometimes be you’re not spending much more than the actual original value of the ticket.
Today you can buy tickets for many kinds of concerts and sporting events. From soccer to basketball matches to cricket, to getting your mitts on front row seats for your favourite band; resale tickets provide a 2nd chance to attend the gig you want to see. So what to expect online? Simply use a search engine and type in your keyphrase like Green Day tickets, and you will find a huge array of secondary ticket brokers who can sell that very ticket to you.
Not everyone is content with resale tickets though. For example, Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails calls secondary ticket agents “parasites”, and he’d like to see an end to the resale of event tickets. However, he’s missing the point of resold tickets : people simply do not have the time to queue up for tickets. They’re more likely working when the tickets are on sale, and physically cannot be in the right place at the right time to get hold of the ticket they want in that precious 60 or so minutes it takes for an entire tour to sell out.
While there is strong competition between secondary ticket agents, we believe this is a much needed service for true fans who were unable to buy the tickets the first time around.
Entry Filed under: House Of Music