Ticket Agencies

[tripdad]

Can someone explain how a ticket agency in Texas can get front row tickets...at least 12 of them to a show in Cleveland, Ohio? They are currently up on eBay. How do they get these tickets when the majority of us have to go VIP route and not know for months where we are sitting?

 

Maybe a rhetorical question, but this really baffles me.

 

 

 

[dtpoet]

I dont know for sure but can only speculate -

 

(a) they know someone at the arena or main ticket company either personally or professionally,

they purchase the VIPs and just sell the tickets

 

Keep in mind, they may not be a real ticket agency but like to play one on eBay.

 

I always wondered about this. For HYF, Presto, and RTB tours, I sat out all night on a real line in Ohio. Twice at a ticket agency and once at the old Richfield Coloseium. All night and Presto was in November - froze my butt off. Anyway, my seats were better than average but as good as I thought they be for having sat out all night for them.

 

So yeah, I always wo feted how people got the best seats.

Edited September 20, 2012 by dtpoet

[Prattster]

They hire people to buy tickets and/or scout tickets and buy them from other resellers. When you get into that "super-secret for Rush fans only" pre-sale, you're in there with people whose job it is to snatch up those tickets for the brokers. And there are more of them then there are of you.

[canadianice]

It's the old saying "it's not who you know"

[rocketom]

Get rid of Presales. No ticket should be allowed to be purchased until the time they go on sale to the general public.

[gangsterfurious]

QUOTE (rocketom @ Sep 20 2012, 06:53 AM)

Get rid of Presales. No ticket should be allowed to be purchased until the time they go on sale to the general public.

It's a big bummer that sometimes only people with a certain credit card or a membership can have access to passes first.

 

At least with Rush Backstage Club you only have to give them your e-mail. However when San Diego was announced they failed to notify me and I was lucky enough to be here at the forum at the time.

 

But this B.S. of only offering tickets to people with certain credit cards first is lame.

 

Also. I've heard that record companies and the venues get a certain amount of tickets to give to their VIP people. Where I live there are rows dedicated to people who have been donors to the concert hall. It sucks though, knowing that somebody who may not be a big fan of the band you're seeing is out there in front of you because of who they know.

[USB Connector]

Most major venues are affiliated with agencies under the table. They give them various desirable seats in exchange for a cut of the profit. Any unsold tickets from the brokers are normally taken back by the venue on opening night for sale to the general public. Top that off with the brokers hiring people to buy tickets at presales, connections to the people with access to tickets, etc. It's more than one thing, but front row is usually connections with the venue in some form.

[jasonw2112]

The presale is the best thing to ever happen to their ticket sales! When they first started them around the VP tour, you actually have to answer a fan question. It wasn't perfect (and still isn't). But other than not knowing where in the first 15th rows you may be, I consider it much easier to get a floor level seat, without using a scalper.

I know there are many here who will pay the money to scalpers (why people call them brokers, I don't know!), and that's fine. But if fans would stop buying from them, they would go under. I know it will never happen, but I refuse to buy from scalpers! I've managed to get 25th row, center stage, for tonight's show, at regular ticket ptice. I can live with that!

Edited September 20, 2012 by jasonw2112

[stevefoote]

QUOTE (canadianice @ Sep 20 2012, 09:09 AM)

It's the old saying "it's not who you know"

I think you meant it's not what you know,but who you know.

[presto123]

QUOTE (dtpoet @ Sep 20 2012, 08:40 AM)

I dont know for sure but can only speculate - (a) they know someone at the arena or main ticket company either personally or professionally, they purchase the VIPs and just sell the tickets Keep in mind, they may not be a real ticket agency but like to play one on eBay. I always wondered about this. For HYF, Presto, and RTB tours, I sat out all night on a real line in Ohio. Twice at a ticket agency and once at the old Richfield Coloseium. All night and Presto was in November - froze my butt off. Anyway, my seats were better than average but as good as I thought they be for having sat out all night for them. So yeah, I always wo feted how people got the best seats.

I have an opposite side of the story for you. I waited outside all night in the winter(probably single digit temps) for the Power Windows tour and ended up with 2 front row seats. Still my best Rush experience. Geddy even winked at me at one point because I had an Expos hat on. Made that cold terrible night of waiting for tickets all worth it:)

[GotRush]

Answer:

Some venue's have Season ticket holders seats, these can be owned by brokers/scalpers

Venue's have blocks of seat reserved for VIP / Promoters ect

Venue also have blocks of seats ( The Best ) set aside for Scalpers /brokers

TM / Venue's / fee's all SUCK

--------------------------------------------------

Get this, these scalper's make FAR more MONEY than the BANDS !

 

Example :

 

100.00 OTD ( 84.00 seat + conv chg + serv fee + other fee ) Ticket for 3rd row

Let say that ticket sold for 300.00 from a Scalper

so

the

breakdown might go like this

( 100.00 )

> 25.00 to Venue pocket

> 25.00 to promoter

> 20.00 actual expence's/costs

> 30.00 to the preformer/band

 

> 200.00 Go's to the SCALPER

[Apollo]

It has always seemed absurd to me that the farthest away seat on the floor has the same ticket face value as a front row seat. A much more fair system would be to have any seat in the first 15 rows sell for a premium like the VIP system kind of does, although it shouldn't be random, you should always know exactly what seat you are getting when you pay money for it. The vast disparity between the face value and what people will pay for seats in the first 15 rows is where the scalpers are making obscene amounts of money, I'm guessing they must be giving a lot of kickbacks to Ticketmaster or it would not continue because Ticketmaster is missing out on a lot of money otherwise.

[briremo]

 

this thread brings up memories from 'back in the day' when we used to camp out over night for every big show. What a party that used to be!

 

But back to scalpers...they used to have in wait in line just like us. They would pay a couple of bums, uh, homeless, uh disadvantaged citizens to wait in line all over town and buy hand fulls of tickets.

 

Sometimes the brokers would show up at 5 minutes to 10 hand the guys a six pack and a $20 bill. But man we had the fastest Ticketmaster outlet in town! Always get awesome seats!

[professornutbudder]

My wife used to work for an outfit known as select-a-seat. Part of her job was liaison to local arenas and also local ticket brokers. She handled paying people to order tickets over the phone and also camp for tickets. They actually used a fairly large number of people to do this. This was all before the internet as we know it, so I'm sure it's all done online these days. It always amazed me that the company selling the tickets made sure the brokers got tickets. But the mighty dollar greases many wheels. Of course her company got paid by the brokers, along with getting paid for the tickets. Hell of a good racket!

[mazyyz]

QUOTE (rocketom @ Sep 20 2012, 10:53 AM)

Get rid of Presales. No ticket should be allowed to be purchased until the time they go on sale to the general public.

Pre-sales is the biggest scam

[jjgittes]

QUOTE

Pre-sales is the biggest scam

 

So true. Pre-sales, at least in my case, scored me the worst seats for the R30 tour. And when my daughter wanted to see No Doubt some time back, that pre-sale got her nothing but off to the side with a limited view.

 

And I am not generally a conspiracy theorist but there is some talk that one of the reasons Ticketmaster is allowed to be a total thief is that they have Congressional people in their back pocket. Granted Congress should worry about other things but a few years back some lobbyist was on the radio talking about her fight for a law that would restrict brokers to charging no more than 20% above face value. She mentioned how tickets were exchanged between promoters, the venue, and ticketmaster and might eventually find their way to Congressmen so no laws will ever be enacted. Here in Los Angeles recently, the mayor had to kick back money for free tickets he took to certain events illegally and a bunch of city council members saw Bruce Springsteen for free from a corporate box. Her overall point was that all the best tickets may never go the general public.

 

Bottom line, like health care system in this country, ticket sales are simply money grabs that operate without any laws. The new organized crime is legal these days.

Edited September 21, 2012 by jjgittes