Trying to get tickets to a sold out concert or sporting event can be extremely frustrating. You keep refreshing the ticket seller’s website hoping more seats will become available, only to come up empty handed when the dreaded “sold out” notice appears. However, sites like StubHub seem to magically have tickets available even after shows have sold out. So how does StubHub get their hands on tickets for sold out events? Here’s an in-depth look at where these tickets come from and how resellers like StubHub are able to sell them.
Tickets Held Back by the Venue
When a concert or game is announced, the venue will typically hold back a certain number of tickets rather than releasing them all for sale at once. This serves multiple purposes:
- It allows them to release more tickets later to generate another boost in sales.
- It provides seats to fulfill VIP packages or special promotions.
- It reserves tickets for the performer’s family/friends or the team’s season ticket holders.
These held back tickets can account for 10-20% of the total seats in the venue. Once the event has “sold out”, any remaining tickets held in reserve get released gradually leading up to the event date. This provides a constant supply of “new” tickets entering the market that resellers can snatch up.
Season Ticket Holders
For sporting events, a major source of tickets comes from season ticket holders looking to sell some of their games. Most season ticket packages contain a mix of marquee matchups and lower demand games. Season ticket holders will look to recoup some of the overall cost by selling high demand games at a markup.
Sites like StubHub make this easy by allowing season ticket holders to electronically transfer tickets directly to a buyer. This provides a large pool of sports tickets that can be listed on secondary markets even after a game is labeled “sold out”.
Speculative Purchases
As soon as tickets go on sale, brokers and resellers flock to purchase the best available seats in bulk. They are betting that demand for the event will increase as it gets closer, allowing them to resell those tickets at a higher price. This could involve buying hundreds of tickets all at once.
For extremely popular shows, resellers might purchase tickets months in advance not even knowing where the seats are located. The rush to buy up inventory helps create the rapid “sell out”.
Corporate Ticket Holdings
Companies often buy large blocks of tickets for client entertainment or employee perks. As the event date approaches, they may realize they don’t need as many tickets as originally purchased. The unused tickets get offloaded to brokers or listed on secondary markets.
Similarly, businesses running ticket promotions may overestimate demand and be stuck with extras that find their way to StubHub.
Fake Listings
While most sites actively monitor for fraudulent posts, fake tickets still show up from time to time. A reseller may create a bogus listing for an event knowing it will sell based on demand. By the time the buyer realizes the tickets aren’t real, the seller has their money and disappeared.
StubHub does provide buyer guarantees to refund the purchase amount, but fake tickets remain an issue to watch out for on secondary marketplaces.
Cancelled Orders
As sales open to the general public, tickets start flying off the virtual shelves. Inevitably though, some portion of those initial orders get cancelled or have payment issues. When this happens, the venue releases the tickets back into the pool rather than holding them indefinitely.
Resellers can benefit in these cases by scooping up tickets when the cancelled orders get freed up right after the onsale.
Paperless Ticketing
Paperless or “mobile only” ticketing aims to cut down on fraud by eliminating physical tickets that can be duplicated or resold. While this seems like it would prevent any secondary market, loopholes still exist.
With paperless tickets, customers must show ID matching the name on the original order at the venue entrance. This means you can’t readily transfer or resell them. However, nothing prevents the original buyer from attending the event with you and accompanying you inside. The tickets can also be changed to a different name if the event is non-transferable.
These workarounds let paperless tickets migrate to secondary markets, though the process is more cumbersome. Sites like StubHub employ “ticket concierges” to facilitate paperless ticket transfers to maintain inventory.
Ticket Industry Contacts
Having connections in the industry provides access to prime tickets before they go on sale. Venues, promoters, and ticketing platforms all have allotments available for VIPs or industry insiders before the general public.
By tapping into these sources, major resellers gain early access to the best seats even on “sold out” shows. A promoter may steer seats to a specific broker that they regularly do business with.
Tour and Band Allotments
Venues allocate blocks of seats to an artist’s management team and their tour sponsors. These allotments get held back from the initial public onsales. Any unused tickets from the touring party go back into market circulation closer to the show. Band fan clubs also get ticket pre-sales that can provide resellers inventory.
Upgrades and Exchanges
When a tour goes on sale, ticketing platforms usually allow ticket transfers, upgrades, or exchanges. As people swap their initial purchases for better seats, the vacated seats become available to move into secondary markets. Savvy resellers stalk venues and fan forums to identify seats becoming available through upgrades.
VIP Packages
VIP or premium ticket packages offered directly by the artist or promoter contain perks like meet-and-greets, exclusive merchandise, and early venue access. The bundled extras let them charge many times the base ticket price. These scarce packages sell out instantly, even when regular tickets remain.
If a VIP buyer decides later to resell just the event ticket and recoup the high package cost, it ends up on secondary markets detached from the other benefits.
Conclusion
In summary, there are numerous avenues providing tickets to secondary resellers like StubHub for in-demand events. Understanding where the inventory comes from helps explain how sold out shows mysteriously have tickets pop up for resale. With patience and persistence, scoring seats even to the hottest events is possible!