Pre Sale Event Tickets

Another question that is asked occasionally, is how to get pre sale concert and event tickets. To be honest I think pre sale is sort of like pre boarding an airplane. I'm either boarding or I'm not. But anyway, how do tickets get listed for sale online before they go on sale and are they valid tickets?

As I said in my first hub post How to buy tickets online, I'm a web designer / developer, not a broker. I have just worked with, and on, a lot of sites that are related to the travel and entertainment industry. So, I don't know all the ins and outs of getting tickets. Here are a few things that I do know.

Ticket brokers get quite a few of their tickets from the general public. Think of it as ebay for tickets. Actually, a large ticket company was bought by ebay for just this purpose. As far as I know brokers have no magical power to get tickets any easier than anyone else. In my experience most of the tickets come from a person who either can't attend the event or has decided the tickets are just worth more than going to the show.

A majority of ticket sites have a link to sell tickets to them. Of course, they will not pay as much as they will sell them for. That's just the way any business works. The bank won't give you a higher interest rate on you savings account than they will charge you for a loan. The main point is to think of it as any other business. If they don't make a profit they will go out of business.

I have heard, what I believe to be myths, about systems where brokers have a method or program that buys up all the tickets through some automated system. Personally, I have never seen this. I don't think it happens but I can only go on the business owners I've worked with.

So what does this mean to you and why do you care? Well you might not. I just wanted to reiterate the point, that as far as I know there are no secrets or magic programs that allow a company to go and buy up a show just to resell the tickets at higher prices. I know of shows that have sold out in seconds online through ticketmaster.

Now you may be asking, how do these people get tickets to sell to the brokers? I'll use NFL tickets as an example. It can work for most ongoing and popular events.

When I lived in the bay area, 49ers season ticket holders often sold the tickets to the games they could not attend. The waiting list to get season ticket passes was long. You basically had to wait for someone to die or move out of the area to get a shot at buying season tickets. I'm guessing a bit here, but if I was a season ticket holder, and couldn't attend the game, I would like to sell the ticket to someone. Since a broker already has a site and will pay a reasonable amount above face value, that's who I would sell my ticket/s to.

Many people will list the tickets on an auction site. But the search functions of these sites make it much more difficult for a user to find the tickets. A broker is set up to only sell tickets. They pay for the advertising, web site, payment processing and customer service parts of the transaction. If you listed your tickets on an Ebay you would have to take care of this yourself. Also if the tickets don't sell you just have a nice ticket stub worth nothing.

I've never done this, but I would rather just sell the tickets to a reseller and be done with it. I'm guessing that's how most people are also.

To sum it up for this example, that's how they have tickets for sale before they are even printed. A season ticket holder, pick your favorite NFL team, will sell the tickets to a broker above face value. Then the broker has to add a small fee in order to make a profit. That's why you will see tickets that are 2-3 times the face value on a ticket reseller site. As I said, like any business, ticket companies have to add some sort of fee to the tickets. If they don't they will not be in business long. To be honest, if you see a price that is too good to be true, it probably is.

There are three things to consider if you decide to buy tickets online. Have your ever bought tickets online before? Were you satisfied with the tickets, customer service, etc.? Great. I'd stick with that site.

If you have never bought event tickets online, or have had a bad experience, time to look for a ticket site that you can trust. I covered this is in another article in more detail. The two basics steps though are to check them out with the BBB and do a Google search on the company. Any business with a low BBB rating and/or has a lot of complaints stay away from. Just to make sure do a google search on the company name.

If you find a lot of complaints or issues with the site, once again, look for another online ticket site.

The last little secret is that many sites list the same tickets for different prices. So once you have found some site you trust, do some price comparisons. That’s the best way of finding tickets that are just not available from the box office or event center.

I personally know of over 100 brokers in the USA alone that you can feel safe buying from. The prices are a little higher, but you will have that peace of mind, knowing you will get the tickets you ordered on time.

For the sake of not self promoting I can't / won't tell you my favorite sites. If you follow my guidelines though, you will be able to find the tickets you want from a reputable business.