Understand the Demand of a Concert Ticket

As a ticket broker, you need to understand the demand for tickets is always highest at the initial onsale. This is because there is a lot of marketing money and effort put into the announcement of tickets going on sale. There are gig posters, social media announcements, promo videos, and fans are engaged.

As little as a couple days after the initial onsale/presale, interest starts to decline. People have moved on to the next big thing in life. Fans who bought tickets already have their tickets. Fans who tried to get tickets, but couldn’t, have either given up hope, or already looked at secondary market prices and either bought them or thought prices were too high and moved on.

They’ll talk to their friends and other people will hear who’s coming to town soon so interest picks back up. But this time it’s a little different. Fans are expecting a deal at this point.

Interest starts to pick up again a couple of weeks before the event. The event starts to show up in event listings and things to do around town calendars. Fans who have their tickets are getting excited because the night is almost here, and they start encouraging their friends to get tickets. But even though people are starting to hear about the show again, the relative price of the ticket has gone down.

People are looking for a deal at this point because ticket holders or brokers who are looking to sell their tickets are running out of time to sell their tickets and fans know it.

The concert ticket has a limited shelf life. Fans know that if they wait patiently, literally right up until the event is set to start, brokers will need to get rid of their tickets or risk eating the entire cost all together. So they wait.

Sometimes events can take a while to sell out. If that’s the case, you need to monitor the ticket availability and keep track of prices on the market. Once the show sells out your ticket value will go up. The goal is to pick shows that will sell out right away, but those are also the hardest tickets to get. Make sure you are always priced to sell – comparative to other tickets in the market.

The invisible hand determines the market value for your tickets and it balances the marketplace. It’s what moves the free market. If tickets are priced too high – no one will buy, sellers will drop their price until tickets start selling.

If tickets are priced too low, sellers will take a loss, or people will buy them to resell them at a higher price until the sweet spot is found where sellers are making money and there is enough demand from buyers who are willing to pay the asking price.