Ticket Resale - Purchase and Re-sale Methods

Purchase and Re-sale Methods

Ticket resellers use several different means to secure premium and previously sold-out ticket inventories (often in large quantities) for events such as concerts or sporting events. Established resellers often operate within vast networks of ticket contacts, including season ticket holders, individual ticket resellers and ticket brokers. They make a business out of getting customers hard-to-find and previously sold-out tickets that are no longer available through the official box office; recently, obtaining tickets through special presales has become more common. These presales often use unique codes specific to an artists fan club or venue. The advent of presales has allowed more individuals to participate in reselling tickets outside of a brokers office.

Ticket scalpers (or Ticket touts in British English) work outside events, often showing up with unsold tickets from brokers' offices on a consignment basis or showing up with no tickets at all and buying extra tickets from fans at, or below face value with their own money on a speculative basis hoping to resell them at a profit. There are many full-time scalpers who are regulars at particular venues and even have a pool of loyal buyers. These full-time scalpers are often sought out by fans hoping for a last minute deal and are comfortable buying from a familiar face, expecting that they are less likely to be ripped off (i.e. with counterfeit or stolen tickets) than they would be by a stranger. However, there are plenty of scam artists that sometimes follow a concert tour from city to city selling fake tickets to unsuspecting buyers for whatever they can get. Another common practice is that scalpers would sell tickets that have already been scanned at the venue gate since entry is typically allowed only when a ticket is scanned for the first time. Since the tickets were authentic, buyers would have no way of telling if a ticket had been used or not.

Often, scalpers will wait for a specific time to begin selling the tickets, to maximize the profits associated with supply and demand. When scalpers wait until the final days before an event to resell tickets, it is sometimes called a scalp seeding.

Ticket brokers operate out of offices, and use the internet and phone call centers to conduct their business. They are different from scalpers in that they offer a consumer a storefront to return to if there is any problem with their transaction. The majority of transactions that occur are via credit card over the phone or internet. Some brokers host their own websites and interact directly with customers. These brokers are often able to offer additional services such as hotel accommodation and airfare to events. Other brokers partner with online providers that run independent e-commerce sites. These sites act as portals that allow users to purchase tickets from a large network of brokers. They also serve to validate the identity of individual brokers and provide additional service guarantees about the authenticity of tickets purchased through their networks.