Concert tickets
The BBC has a fascinating article on the “economics of ticket touting” where they talk to Princeton University’s Professor Alan Krueger about the topic. It says at one point:
“The reason why people are going to the secondary market is that they want to get a better seat than what’s available and I think that is an indication that they were not priced properly in the first place,” he says.“In the secondary market, the tickets average 50% more than their list prices, and some go for a lot more than that. The very best seats go for double or triple the list prices.”
I was told by a serious concert go-er that paying up to 3x the face value of a ticket was OK so long as the ticket was for a great seat in an otherwise sold-out show. His advice to me was to shoot for anything up to 50% over face value simply as “the norm”.
Floor seats in a great location (as opposed to up in the ‘nose bleeds’) to see The Police on July 2nd in St Louis, at 35% above face value was a steal. I figure on it being a simple matter that Ticketmaster doesn’t give me any choice over the location where I would be sitting, so the 35% over-face value is the cost of choice and well worth it.