Introduction
I had bought these tickets last November and December. I believe they were verified fan sales. I had never flipped U2 before, but I remember my coworker going to their Seattle concert a few years before, who paid ~$100 per ticket and they were going for ~$300 on the aftermarket. She decided to still attend. With that one data point (and the fact they are pretty well known,) I decided to buy them to flip.
Los Angeles
For LA, I only bought the first night (I forgot why) and wound up with seats in section 136 for $200 all in for the pair. I sold these for $531 (164% ROI) within 5 days. Some friends got GA seats and those yielded between 70-127% ROI. One friend bought in section 123 and I’m not sure why, but those seats cost $776 and I sold those for $342, yes a loss of $433 and a -56% ROI. I had some in section 122 that went for about ~20% ROI. One friend had section 102 for $200 all in and sold them for $630 (214%.) The only other money loser was section 116 that went for -20%, but that was because the tickets were sold last week. All in all, LA was a money winner except for that section 123, which I want to say were “premium” seats (row 9) because I don’t know why those behind stage tickets would cost that much.
San Jose 1st night
I was able to score GA seats. These were great because each ticket was $100 all in (super cheap), so $200 for the pair and I sold them for $538 (170% ROI) within 2 weeks. However, there were a lot of stinkers in here. I chose to go with the lowest priced seats and thus they were behind the stage. I also sold them way too late (a lot within the last week.) Most of those I lost between 50-70%. One pair even went to waste. If I had estimated the time better, I would have given those away on Twitter; I had priced them for $25 buyer price each and they still didn’t move in the last few hours.
San Jose 2nd night
My memory is a bit hazy, but I don’t think they had the 2nd show planned in advance since I bought these tickets on 12/7. Usually 2nd shows aren’t great and my point was proven – these GA seats took about 3-4 months to sell and only yielded a ~40% ROI.
Lessons Learned
The main lesson learned here is #1 – don’t get cute and buy BEHIND STAGE tickets. Secondly, the first show (esp when the 2nd show hasn’t been announced yet) seem to always do better. Third, don’t buy premium tickets.