How I did with those Kendrick Lamar tickets

Introduction

I first heard about Kendrick Lamar through Taylor Swift’s “Bad Blood” song. Hahaha queue face palm now.  Whatever.  He’s arguably the most famous rapper currently.  He headlined Coachella a few weekends back.  So when a reader mentioned his tour was coming up on AMEX presale, I had a good feeling about them.  However, I only wanted to focus on the 2 big cities like NY and LA since I wasn’t sure how popular he was.

Buying tickets

The presale dropped on April 25.  I was on my phone only at 10AM EST.  Refreshed.  “Tickets are not available.  Enter your phone and we’ll text you.”  Refreshed again.  Same thing.  I was confused.  I then tried to browse on mobile and the page pulled up.  This was now at 10:02.  Then TM started searching.  I then went back into the app and lo and behold, it pulled up.  I went ahead and bought the first pair at 10:07AM in section 120 for $310 all in.  I searched again and got a pair of section 206 for $193 all in.  I was a bit worried why tickets were still available at this late in the game…  I kept checking and sure enough at 10:18AM, I was able to get section 20 for $310 (better seats than section 120.)  I don’t know if those were cart drops or just random searches that came up, but it actually made me NOT want to buy the LA tickets, and so I passed on LA.

Stubhub they go

I sold my section 20 tickets later that night for $351 takehome for the pair.  The other 2 pairs didn’t sell until Friday morning, which I’m guessing is when people missed the public sale  The section 120 went for $351 takehome and the section 206 went for $243 takehome.

Total cost – $813.  Total takehome – $945.  Profit – $132.  ROI – 16%

Lessons Learned

I definitely left money on the table for selling too soon, but I don’t regret it.  The tickets still being available that late scared me.  The risk/reward just wasn’t there.  But now I know for next time.