What is the best way to buy tickets for popular shows?
At 10:00 last Saturday I was furiously searching Ticketmaster’s website for tickets to U2 in Boston this spring. After the site went down for five minutes I was finally able to search, without returning ANYTHING, even one ticket any seat, many many times. Thanks to Ticketmaster’s recording I was informed 2 hours later that no more tickets were available.
So where did they go? I’m sure plenty of scalpers dug into them as evidenced by the online auctions and ticket sites. Were there only so many allocated for online purchase and perhaps I would have been better off purchasing tickets someway else? Waiting in front of the box office wasn’t an option this time but it could be in the future.
So given a quickly sold-out show, what are the best ways for an ordinary guy to get reasonable tickets at face value in this day and age?
Last month I headed down to the local venue to get tickets for this Thursday’s Alison Krauss concert. I was seventh in line (having gotten there about an hour before the box office opened). The Ticketbastard site would not start selling tickets until 10am (the same time the box office opened).
When I got in, I ended up 4th in line to get my tickets (two for me and 3 for my friend and his wife and daughter). Only ten minutes after ticket sales started, the first nine rows (about 300 tickets) were gone. I got five tickets in the tenth row (which is actually better than closer seats due to the height of the stage).
Three hours later, tickets were on eBay for anywhere from $150-300 per pair.
Ticketmaster usually has a bunch of ‘local’ phone numbers for various locations throughout the country, but that any number you call can book tickets for any of their shows. I’ve found that it’s sometimes helpful to call a local number for somewhere that’s out of your area, that doesn’t have a big event going on sale at the same moment.
For example, say I’m looking for tickets to the Flaming Donkey Lips show at Target Center in Minneapolis. I’ll call the local ticketmaster number for Des Moines as soon as the tickets go on sale. You’ll generally get through almost immediately (everyone and their dog is trying the Minneapolis number), and you can get your tickets.
I’m not sure why this works (I would’ve thought all of ticketmaster’s numbers would be sent to a central call center), but it worked for me last time I was buying concert tickets.
Sometimes grocery stores and the like will be ticketmaster outlets as well, that might be worth a shot. Hell, keep the Ticketmaster number programmed into your cell phone and start calling as soon as the line opens. You might get through to the operator before you get to the head of the line.
I heard getting U2 tickets for this upcoming tour was a major problem thanks to scalpers, and a LOT of regular, everyday fans couldn’t get tickets to it. I’ve seen them for as much as $300 on eBay. Apparently the U2 fan community (the really outspoken ones in the fan clubs) is up in arms about the way the tickets were made available.
I buy tickets online at lots of sites in Australia - Ticketek, Ticketmaster7 and the Sydney Opera House. I have accounts set up and make sure that for popular shows I am logged in to my account when tickets go on sale. I am then, come 9am, competing with the first person in line at Ticketek who queued overnight and end up right up the front.
Sometimes companies like Visa buy blocks of seats before they go on sale for their “Preferred Seating” program. Sometimes Ticketek send me offers to buy tickets before they go on public sale .
What the U2 fans are really upset about is that a pre-sale of tickets to registered fan club members was bollixed by TicketMaster, so that they either got worse seats than later “walk-ups,” or couldn’t get seats at all.
My friend was explaining that to me. She said the backlash from U2 fans has been huge, and some popular fan-run websites are even being taken offline. She says the band’s management is going to try to put things right as best they can, though.
As for me, I’m just disappointed U2 isn’t stopping in Florida on their tour!
Another trick I’ve heard (but have not been courageous enough to try) is to wait until about 2-3 days before the show and try again then. Something about tickets that were previously reserved for the venue, press, or whatever that are no longer needed, so they are filtered back into the pool. Someone at work who has terrible, terrible taste in music ( ) did that for the sold-out American Idol concert here in Chicago and got front row seats day-of.
I used to work at a record store that sold Ticketmaster tickets. Basically, all the tickets are available to all the computers at the same time and you have hundreds of people trying to get them all at once and with the advent of online buying, the number of possible outlets has increased exponentially. There’s really not good way to guarantee a good seat.
When I worked at the store, we’d do our lottery to determine your place in-line (we didn’t allow camping out so we held a lottery an hour or so before the tickets went on sale). Then I’d write down what tickets the first ten people in line wanted and as soon as the tickets and as soon as the tickets were released, I’d bang out all ten orders ASAP. To disuade employees from hogging the first couple of pulls (common practice with Ticketmasters predecessor), Ticketmaster lets store employees “reserve” tickets prior to sale. They’re never the best tickets but they were usually decent. This was pre-internet and even in those days, the last set of those first ten orders wouldn’t be all that great. Nowdays, it’s even more vital to be the first one in there.
What I do now, is get on-line with a fast connection, have everything figured out as far as where I need to be and what I need to do and just start hammering a minute or two before the tickets drop. Don’t always get great seat that way either, it’s really just luck.
What really screws things up are the tickets held for press, etc. Ticketmaster swears that they don’t reserve tickets but it’s always highly suspicious how big chunks of tickets can be found scalped for just about any show. interface2x is right, you can often get decent tickets the day before the show. Usually, these are tickets that were held back because they might have been blocked by the stage. If they’re not, they’re released for sale. They’re often close, but kinda at the periphery of the stage.
Thanks everyone for the replies! I especially like ** jweb’s** idea of calling other local numbers, it probably could have helped me out as I kept calling the box office suggested number and getting “all our circuits are busy…”. Much of this problem is caused by U2 shifting their Hartford and Albany shows until the Fall, so everyone in New England was looking at the Boston shows.
The upside is I’ve heard that U2 releases tickets just before the show to break scalper’s hold on the market. Hopeful they will do the same with all the commotion and I can try what ** interface2x** suggested!
Does the box office (usually) reserve any for its walkups or do they just have a Ticketmaster terminal like everyone else (in that case I’d be just as well off going to a local record store as the B.O)?
) did that for the sold-out American Idol concert here in Chicago and got front row seats day-of.