Beating Ticketmaster! – How to be successful at scoring concert tickets!

By Kayla Harper

Attending concerts is an exciting way for music lovers to connect with other people who enjoy the same music, get closer to the artists they love, and express their love for music, all while having a great time.  However, attending concerts has become increasingly difficult due to demand, expenses, etc.  But the most difficult part for many is securing tickets in the first place.

Today, event tickets are most commonly sold online through sites such as Tickpick, Stubhub, Seat Geek and most popularly, Ticketmaster.  For many events, especially popular ones, fans will get the opportunity to purchase tickets prior to the onsale dates, in presales.  for many of these presales fans are given specific codes to access it.  This whole process can be quite stressful and anxiety inducing for many when it comes to waiting in online queues of up to 20 000+ people, constant system errors, glitches, buffering, etc.

As someone who has the worst luck, but has seen many of my favourite artists live and many currently popular, high demand artists live (Taylor Swift, Noah Kahan, Sabrina Carpenter, etc.) I will be explaining my best tips and tricks when it comes to securing tickets to these high-demand events.  By doing these steps you cannot guarantee tickets, but they have worked for me many times in the past.

1. Presale

When an artist announces a tour, whether high in demand or not, I always recommend signing up for presale for multiple dates if possible.  Even if you are not certain you will attend, it is better to have the code the day of the presale than not.  Especially for the high demand concerts, as for many of these, presale is the only way to get tickets.

2. Account Information

Before buying tickets for an event, or participating in an event presale, make sure your current Ticketmaster account is up to date, including your financial information.  Many people lose out on tickets while in the process of buying them due to an error with their payments or account.  It is best to ensure all of this information is up to date prior to the sale, and to upload your payment information preemptively so you do not need to panic during checkout.

3. Know The Venue

Prior to ticket sales research the stage layout and the type of venue the concert will be held in.  This way you can grasp an idea for where your desired seats are.  However, make sure you have a plan B…and a plan C as presale can get quite chaotic and you don’t always get your first choice, or second, or third.  Sometimes it gets to a point where you cannot be picky about seats and just take what you can get within your desired budget.

4. Budget

Plan out and know your budget for what you are willing to spend on tickets before the sale and expect to go over.  Oftentimes tickets end up being more expensive than what they are stated to be prior to the sale due to fees and dynamic pricing.  Dynamic Pricing is a feature that raises the price of the tickets due to the demand.  As you can probably imagine, during presales, there are thousands of fans with specialized codes logging on at the same time, attempting to score tickets, therefore, dynamic pricing leads to the prices to increase.  Additionally, there is usually processing fees, venue fees, etc.  added on to the price of the tickets.  If you are an avid concert goer like myself, I recommend having a concert savings plan.  For example, my sister and I put any extra change, cash, etc. towards our concert savings, whether it’s a tip, birthday money, bottle money, etc.

5. The Queue

Waiting in the queue is probably the most stressful part of buying tickets because it is a different experience every time and despite how early you enter the waiting room, your position in the queue always seems to be random.  Sometimes it is smooth, as you are within the first 1000 people, other times, you may be behind 20 000+ people and wait for hours before you actually get to buy tickets.

However, even in those instances you should always stay in the queue and DO NOT refresh the page as this will cause you to lose your position entirely and start over at the back of the line.  My sister and I have spent over an hour waiting in the queue before and still been successful.

Our most recent experience was buying tickets for Sabrina Carpenter, who we saw just over a year ago for $50 and third row, this time it was a lot more difficult.  Even though we entered the waiting room 30 minutes prior to the presale, we ended up being 19000+ in the queue and waiting for over an hour before we could buy tickets.  Once we got through, all the tickets were sold out and prices were inflated as a result of dynamic pricing.  However, we were still successful and secured tickets in the end!

If once through the queue tickets are sold out don’t give up just yet.  During presales, Ticketmaster does spontaneous drops.  Many times even after an event is presumed sold out, limited tickets will spontaneously drop in random sections. However, these go very quick so it’s not wise to be picky about seats, if it’s within your budget or even slightly over, grab them while you can!

6. Still Unlucky?  Don’t Give Up Yet

If you still find yourself unlucky, even after presale, don’t lose hope yet.  I don’t recommend succumbing to resellers and scalper prices.  However, every once in a while you may find a good deal, but it’s important to know how to legitimize these purchases to avoid being scammed.

My best piece of advice is to be patient and continue watching ticketmaster, especially in the weeks leading up to the show because there are often many tickets reserved still that they will drop.  This is how my sister and I scored tickets to Noah Kahan’s sold out show the day of.

The modern day ticket-buying process can be intimidating, stressful and frustrating.  However, there are ways to make the process smoother that have been successful for me in the past.  I hope you can apply these methods and find they work for you too!