Zigabid – A Ticket Revolution

So the show is sold out, the venue hasn’t held back any tickets, and now everybody‘s look for tickets. Now what? The first thing you need to do is bookmark the web page for the event at the primary ticket provider. Occasionally, tickets will also be held back for the artist, media, labels, or other luminaries, and if any of  those people do not want tickets, they will often be released back to the primary ticketing provider. No tickets or eight tickets might be available; there’s no certainty left at this stage of your ticket-buying process, but you don’t really have many options left, do you? If there are tickets available, grab what you need and alert other people on Craigslist or message boards who have posted wanted messages to increase your karma (and perhaps make some good ticket-buying contacts for next time).

Simultaneously, along with checking your bookmarks multiple times a day, you need to be on Craigslist, eBay, and your preferred ticket broker’s website. With these three websites at your disposal, you need to gauge the supply against the amount of bidders on eBay, amount of wanted postings on Craigslist, and the supply on the broker site of choice. Be aware that inventory may overlap between all three sales venues.

So you had another engagement or just didn’t know the show was going on sale, you dropped the ball, and now the show you want to go to is sold out. Don’t worry, you still can! Now you just have to engage the ticket-buying process in a different manner. If we’re talking about Here’s what you do if its a small or mid-size club show: try calling the club that the show is at to see if they’ve held back some tickets that can still be sold with little to no fee. If the club happens to be sold out, or hasn’t held back tickets, try to jump quickly on eBay and Craigslist before other ticket buyers realize the show might be sold out. If you can find the right person who has an extra ticket or two before everyone is hounding them for a ticket, you might still be able to pay around face value before the market is swamped with demand.

You might be asking, “Aw, homework, do we have to?” The answer is YES. Do you know how brokers and scalpers got all those tickets? They know the ticket purchasing process through buying tickets every week. They practice, practice, practice. So go and practice ticket buying as a broker would, but for personal use instead of re-sale. Open your account at the appropriate vendor website and have your credit card ready! You can lose tickets if you take too much time entering your information while purchasing them. Just because the tickets are in your cart doesn’t mean the deal is done! Go through all the purchasing steps for different shows and make sure you have an email or a printable receipt to confirm your purchase.

The price and availability of your ticket will be greatly determined by the vendor selling it, so it will pay to find out which vendor is doing the selling. This information is sometimes on the artist site, but not always. You can also try checking the website of the venue to see where to buy them. When you are directed to the ticket vendor site—whether it’s Ticketmaster, Ticketweb, or Live Nation—you will want to be sure to look for the time tickets go on sale, as well as how much they cost (and whether you can even afford them).

Hey, saving money is always a good tip, no matter what subject we’re talking about, but it’s especially good advice if you want to have enough money for the often fluctuating ticket market.  If an artist is touring, they’re probably doing so in support of a new album (which, of course, you’ll want to buy), and you want to still have enough money left over to cover the possible cushion above face value you’ll have to pay for a concert ticket. Don’t be that fan who goes to Craigslist days before the concert begging people to sell you a ticket at “face value.” They won’t do it and you won’t get your ticket.

Go to Google News and set an alert with the name of your favorite artist and “tour” as search terms. You can keep track of the latest news on your artists, and more importantly for the purposes of buying tickets, you will know where in the world or United States they are playing. If your favorite artist is not currently touring, this is also a good way to keep updated on when they might be. Tour news is often announced in dribs and drabs—with only five or ten dates at a time—but if the location near you is not mentioned, don’t despair. Your favorite artist will be coming to town, but they might not yet want to announce the date or venue. In a way, this is probably a good thing as it will give you more time to prepare to buy that ticket, which brings us to our next step.

Stay tuned for Step 3!

The first rule of buying concert tickets is to always plan ahead, and the best way to do that is to find out your favorite artists’ tour dates and when they will be playing at local venues, information that should be available on their website. While you are there, you should also sign up for any pre-sale and fan email lists so you can find out when tickets are available before they are even announced to the general public.Even though many of these fan club lists cost $20 to $40 to join, you will always be guaranteed a buying slot before the general public, as well as a much better chance for better seats than would be available when tickets are made available to the general public. In the long run, you’ll save upwards of $100 you could be spending on the secondary ticket market.

Stay tuned for for Step 2!