Friday, February 8, 2008

Where do you buy your tickets?

October 14, 2007: Walter from Denver, CO
Hi Hans,
Really cool site, man! You’ve inspired me to start my own Quest for 31. So far I’ve been to three stadiums Denver, Baltimore, and Arizona, so I have a long ways to go.
Where do you get your tickets to go to all of these games?

Walter,
I get my tickets from a variety of sources. I usually select the game I want to attend several weeks in advance. During the weeks leading up to the game, I keep an eye on E-bay to see if I can get a good price on a pair of cheap NFL tickets that no one is bidding on. In many cases, the E-bay community pays way too much for NFL tickets, so I also monitor StubHub and TicketsNow. On each of the team pages on my website, I have Team NFL Ticket links from a few online ticket sellers so I can easily compare prices. I’ve found that Craigs list is full of spammers, so these days I don’t even bother looking there. When all else fails I go to the stadium without tickets. I’ve found that sometimes you can go over to the stadium ticket office on gameday to buy tickets. This is also a good place to try to locate fans who are looking to sell their extra tickets. Scalpers are another way to go. In my experience, even when no one online is selling tickets to a game and it’s the hottest ticket in town, there are always scalpers with tickets at the game ready to sell. You have to go in knowing what the face value is for each section and the idea is to pit the scalpers against each other to get their best price closest to face value. Decide what you’d like to spend and be firm. I separate money into different pockets so I can quickly grab the exact negotiated price by reaching into two of my pockets. Don’t tip your hand as the scalpers will always try to get an extra twenty or thirty dollars out of you before handing over the tickets. Carrying lots of $5 bills helps out quite a bit too.