Kacey Musgraves was doing a show in St. Augustine, Florida this past September 2019. I thought it was a normal show for her, but it turned out to be a charity concert. Why does that matter? Because sometimes Stubhub likes to pretend they have morals and won’t sell charity shows. On the other hand, Vivid Seats DGAF and is usually okay with charity shows. It’s rare when Vivid doesn’t list charity shows, but on this one occasion, they didn’t list the show either.
I had bought the tickets back in March; GA PIT tix were about $67 all in per ticket and seated tickets were about $57 all in, which were pretty cheap. I waited a few months before I finally listed the tickets on July 7th – she was still touring and her tickets were getting hot. I sold my first pair on 7/9 for a 67% ROI on Stubhub. Then I sold my first pair on Vivid on 7/9 as well for another 49% ROI. A few days later, I got a 102% ROI sale. Things were going great until a few weeks later; I don’t know the exact date but they were pulled from both sites.
The only big name site that I could list them on was Tickpick. I listed them on there on 8/5 and got my first sale on 8/6 at only a 53% ROI. Then I didn’t have another sale until 8/29 and then 9/13 (the show was on 9/21 remember.) I had also tried Ticketsnow, which has the usability of MS-DOS. I was always the lowest priced too on both sites, but those sites just didn’t generate enough traffic to convert into sales. I wound up eating a lot of tix and wound up with a -20% ROI on the whole event. To make matters worse, Tickpick waited until after the show was over before they paid me (yes, floating my money the whole time.) Needless to say, I won’t be using either of those sites again. Lesson learned – try to stay away from charity tickets if you can. Or if you do gamble, sell them quick before SH and Vivid decides to pull the show.