My gal Lindsey Stirling made me great money in Seattle a year ago, so when I saw she was going to New York, I had put this as a 3.5 – 4 [out of 5] on the risk/reward scale. I figure that while the venue was bigger than Seattle, the bigger city would easily make up for it. Anyway, the tickets were even tough to buy. I only wound up with 2 pairs of balcony tickets for about $100 all in per pair.
I then listed the tickets on Stubhub and that’s where they sat for a while. Eventually, I found out that TM allowed you to resell them, so I pulled them from Stubhub and listed them on TM. And that’s where they sat for a long time. Eventually, a week out, I dropped it to the lowest price possible, which was like $40 a ticket. And that’s where they sat until the day of the concert. At this point, prices on Stubhub had dropped to $6 a ticket!!! I then pulled them from TM and put them back on SH, but it was too late. The 4 tickets went up in flames.
Lessons Learned
I don’t regret buying the tickets since I felt strongly about them. Where I went wrong was that I wasn’t watching the tickets closely enough. You see, some concerts go up in value over time (like Ariana) that you can hold for a while to maximize value. Then there are duds like this concert or HAIM where prices never really go up. When you see that happening, you want to get out FAST because it’s only going to go down even more. The last lesson – just because an artist does well in one city, it may not translate to other cities.