How to price ticket flips

Introduction

Lately, I’ve had lots of questions from people asking me how to price ticket flips since they are newer to the game.  My answer so far has been – “It’s an art.”  Let’s face it; if we were doing this for major profits, we’d write a bot that tracked every ticket sold and when.  That way, I’d know that Pink’s tour in 2015 yielded a 200% profit and the best location was Houston, Texas.  I would also know that the current 2017 tour has been doing 25% better than 2015’s.  I’d also know that the football stadium yields 20% profit than an arena in a given city.  With all those data points, I’d be confident of a price to list at without worrying about leaving money on the table.  However, in the absence of that data, I just tell people, “Pick a price you want and lower it as time goes along.”  With that said, a few other things that’ll  help you.

View sold tickets

I can’t find the link or help info, but Stubhub allows you to view recently sold seats, but you’ve had to have sold 5 tickets in the last year I believe.  This is CRUCIAL information.  If you can’t see tha information, you can just view the current active listings.  I usually have to do this if I’m posting my seats super early.  I don’t price mine at the lowest; I price mine maybe 3rd or 4th lowest.  It depends on how you think they’ll do.  Once again, it’s an art.

Early bird gets the worm

When I flipped Garth, I made sure to list ASAP and I got rewarded for it.  For Pink Seattle, I did the same.  Now I can’t pull up Garth anymore on SH since the concert has passed, but let’s look at what similar seats for Pink Seattle are yielding now.  By the way this is a TERRIBLE EXAMPLE because Pink Seattle has been APPRECIATING IN VALUE like a fine red wine.  However, let’s look anyway at the sales of section 210 ranked by latest sale result at top.  If you look at the 2 ticket listings, you can see the first pair sold for $129.  Then $129.  Then $125.  Then after that, it drops to $94-$110.  So if you were quick to the draw, you could have made an extra $40-$50 for the pair.

Price vs Time

There is a chart in this link that you should bookmark.  It essentially says that the best time to sell tickets are 30 days out of the event.  Once again, it depends.  It’s like the iPhone X.  There are people who want the tickets/items FAST and so they will pay whatever.  After that, price sensitivity kicks in.  I’ve had it go both ways – some tickets I sold too fast (Pink) and some I waited too long.  It just depends.  Just know that if you wait a long time, you’ll have to float that money.

Back to Pink

Now I’ve sold probably over a dozen shows this  year already.  While I haven’t looked back at any past sales, kinda like moving on from an ex, for this post, I looked back at Pink Seattle tickets and what I saw shocked me.  People were paying $475 for nosebleeds seats!  These Pink tickets are like a fine wine – only going up in price as time goes on.  This is the FIRST time I’ve seen prices go up this high for a flip.  Congrats to Pink.

Lessons Learned

Like I said, pricing tickets is an art form.  If you don’t know what to price out, look at the recent sold listings or look at active listings near your seats and price it in the same ballpark.  As time moves on, you can either adjust the prices up or down, based on demand and supply.