Purchasing Discount Tickets Online

Posted January 6, 2011 at 5:34 pm

In the last 20 years, the price to attend concerts and sports in person has greater significantly. Concerts were once considered to be "loss leaders" by the recording industry; the record companies were happy to sell tickets for $5-$10, knowing that concert goers could likely buy the latest album by the artist after the concert. Tickets to Major League baseball games could once be had for about the price of a movie ticket.

Tickets for such events are no longer economical, however. Musical artists found that scalpers were selling tickets to sold-out concerts for several times the face valuation of the tickets, and declining revenues from music sales have led to a large boost in the cost of concert tickets. Today it is not unusual for tickets to concerts by major artists to sell for $100-$200 or more. Similarly, the advent of multimillion dollar contracts for professional athletes has driven the prices of game tickets upwards.

Fortunately, the Internet has made it possible to locate tickets at affordable prices, if you know how to look. Major concerts or games may sell out immediately, but it is rather rare for all of those tickets to immediately find their way into the hands of people who expect to attend the event. A few tickets end up in the hands of scalpers, but others end up in the hands of people who won't have the ability to attend for one reason or another. Other tickets end up in the hands of a variety of ticket selling corporations.

So how does one obtain "discount tickets"? How can you purchase tickets to sold out or hard-to-get events without paying a lot of money? There are some options readily available to you:

Craigslist - Individuals who have obtained tickets that they can't use may offer their tickets for sale on Cragislist. If you're willing to spend several hours on the Internet searching Craigslist ads, you might find the tickets you want at a price you are happy to pay. Obviously, anyone can put an ad on the web site, so you do not necessarily know who you're dealing with when you buy using this method. Are the tickets legitimate? Does the seller really have them? It can be difficult to tell.

Ebay - The internet auction web site also has a successful ticket business, and individuals and corporations that specialize in ticket sales typically offer tickets for sold-out and hard-to-get events. The same caveats apply to buying on eBay; several sellers may simply not be honest or might be selling reproductions. Be certain to look for the seller's eBay feedback to see what other buyers have had to say about them. While eBay does have a bit of buyer protection, it is not completely foolproof.

Online ticket agents - The easiest method of getting tickets to just about anything, such as sold-out events, is to purchase from one of ticket brokers on the Internet. Most of these brokers are big companies with huge inventory. You are able to elect from several shows in a variety of cities. You have a large variety of events from which to choose - NFL games, MLB games, Vegas shows, Broadway shows and more. Many of the well known brokers also have secure ordering systems so you can be sure that your personal and monetary information won't be compromised. With persistance, you can almost always find tickets to the event you want to attend and never have to spend a fortune.

Bear in mind, time is money, so while an online broker might charge somewhat more for their tickets than a seller on Craigslist or eBay, you'll save hours of time purchasing from a broker. Plus, the additional protection of knowing that your purchase is safe has value, also. There is nothing more irritating than spending hundreds of dollars for a pair of concert tickets, only to discover that the tickets you have purchased are useless fakes.

Two terrific places to buy Broadway, concert or sports tickets online are DiscountTicketsStore.com and OnlineTicketsShop.net. Both sites provide a fast, easy-to-use search interface that makes it simple to find great theater tickets in just a few seconds. Both sites are also secure and safe.