Continuing on with the “What the F were you thinking” series in ticket flips… so who is HAIM? The only reason I know this girl group is that they were BFF’s with Taylor Swift like 2-3 years ago. I thought they were some indie up and coming band then and maybe their popularity has soared since. They were playing a small venue in Portland, so I thought this was at least a 3.5 on the risk/reward scale. I was wrong.
I had bought 6 tickets back in January (look, I hadn’t learned my lesson of not going all in yet.) I had gotten balcony side seats but FIRST ROW. Thought it was a slam dunk. The 6 tickets cost me $501 all in, so $83.50 a ticket.
Selling the tickets
I listed them immediately and that’s when they sat…and sat….and sat. I kept lowering my prices; I was pretty much always the cheapest balcony tickets. Anyway, I got the 7 day Stubhub warning last week and I went even deeper (like a 50% cut.) And they continued to sit. I was so mad that they still hadn’t sold and it was the day of! This would be synonymous with going all-in with like 10% of your chips left even when you know you’ve already lost. I was playing chicken at this point and was so mad I was willing to let them go unused.
Eventually, at 3:30PM on the day of, 4 of the 6 sold for a whopping take home price of $126 TOTAL. As I’m typing this, there’s 15 minutes left and the other 2 seats are about to go bad and I’m willing to let them just burn. Hold on, let me go check on them again.
7:50pm – Okay I just got back. Orchestra D guy and I are playing race to the bottom. I’m going to eat dinner and let this one ride out.
8:05PM – My 2 tickets went up in flames. Orchestra D row F guy went up in flames. Oddly the Orchesta D $27.75 guys sold (at least the Q row.) Total loss – $375 (ROI -75%)
Lessons Learned
Never try to flip HAIM. Secondly, don’t buy 6 like I did. Lastly, this is what happens when you stop hanging out with Taytay. Am I at the point that I stop getting cute with these risky plays? Maybe.
I bought tickets for both Taylor Swift @ Rose Bowl and Justin Timberlake @ The forum. I made 64% profit on Taylor, and 40% on Justin Timberlake.
The Taylor Swift concert surprises me as there are still tickets on TM at reasonable prices. I was only able to make a profit on TSwizzle because i bought the cheapest tickets available ($130 all in for a pair, sold for $213). Anybody who bought at the higher price tiers are struggling to break even.
The JT tickets i believe suffered from a disappointing album release (i personally didn’t like Man of the woods, but loved his previous albums). The resale market seems to be picking up a little as the tour has actually started. I’ve seen the floor seats at the Forum rise about $20-25 on average in the last couple of weeks. As for me, i bought 3 floor tickets at $394 all in and sold all 3 for $550.
TM and AXS are getting hip to the game. They’re raising prices to chase away flippers like us. Not only that, but if you haven’t noticed, after 1-2 hours of the sale start time, they raise prices again another $10-20 dollars, as to chase off the stragglers. I saw this happen for Taylor Swift, JT, and Bruno Mars (i.e. raising $80 tickets to $95 after an hour or so of the sale start time)
Thanks for posting the good with the bad when it comes to reselling. I love reading these. I just sold some Justin Timberlake floor seats at a significant loss and want to forget about the entire experience. Can’t imagine how much more angry I would get writing about it.
Coincidentally, I just unloaded my Haim tickets for cost today. They added a second show in Chicago which basically killed any resale value. In fact, I actually want to attend the show but am gambling on being able to buy cheaper on StubHub day of based on current trends. If not, I’ll just buy on Ticketmaster for the second date.
On one hand, Haim toured late last year and I profited so I don’t think it was the worst assumption to buy. On the other hand though, I’ve done this with other artist where I immediately think no brainer as I profited last time only to buy again and not have the same outcome. I think my lesson learned is stop with certain artists while your ahead. Popularity will either dwindle or they will start to playing large enough venues. Specifically with this Haim scenario, I think what did us in was they toured less than a year ago and are playing venues 2x the capacity of the previous sold out tour. Also, interesting to hear Portland cost was $83.50 and Chicago was only $60.
Interesting you made money on them, so congrats. I thought they were a slam dunk since they were playing a 2700 capacity venue. I wonder why Chicago is better; are they from there? Bigger fan base? Smaller venue? Was that Chicago $60 all in cost? Sounds like a smaller venue then.
I sold 10 tickets and profited when they where playing 2500 person venues last year vs. breaking even this year playing 5000 person venues for two nights (1st night did sell out). I’m just happy to break even this time and get rid of them. The adding of the second date was the biggest downfall for me. Very surprising they weren’t in demand for a 2700 person venue. Obviously different market but still that’s not many seats. Maybe the $80 ticket price was a deterrent (Chicago was $60 all in). I guess we can speculate all day on this. I’m even more surprised PIT tickets remained at $25 based on the image above.
Sidenote: They are from California. I think they are still friends with Taylor as well. They where photographed at the London Reputation Secret Sessions. As a fellow Swiftie, would love to hear your thoughts on this era. I’m kinda ehh. The album still good (I mean it’s no 1989) but Taylor seems off. I guess I’m just not used to the lack of promo, interaction with fans, etc.