Looking for last minute cheap concert tickets and wondered why there are no amazing deals? The fact is last minute cheap concert tickets are a unicorn. They’re rare because ticket brokers do not like selling concert tickets for a discount. Sure apps market and sell last minute tickets. But last minute and cheap are two different things and do NOT go together for concerts. We’ll talk about why it’s hard to find cheap concert tickets. We’ll also give you tips on how to find the cheapest tickets for concerts you want to see.
Resellers, Not Old School Scalpers, Dominate Ticket Sales
The old days of your friendly neighborhood scalper disappeared over 15 years ago. Ticket brokers sell most of the tickets on reseller sites like StubHub, Vivid Seats and SeatGeek. These resellers don’t live in your hometown, they live all over the US (or even world). This means a vast majority of ticket inventory for sold out shows is sold through ticket apps; not in person sales. Yes, you can find a few of your hometown scalpers at big shows and maybe you can get a good deal from them, but don’t count on it. You’ll likely have to go through resellers.
Ticket Brokers Use Software to Maximize Profit
Most ticket brokers use specialized software, from companies like Automatiq, to help ticket brokers avoid selling for rock bottom prices. In Automatiq’s own words: “Get the leading dynamic ticket pricing and distribution platform, designed to maximize ROI and lower overhead.” They do this by:
1) watching ticket prices across all resellers to see if anybody else is selling for dirt cheap,
2) allowing the broker to set minimum prices for any ticket so they don’t sell them for a deep discount
In fact, many ticket brokers accept a percentage of “dead” tickets, tickets they don’t sell, because they are managing an overall acceptable profit from their entire inventory. And lastly, brokers have a strong incentive to avoid dropping prices. They do not want to create the perception that you just have to wait long enough as a fan and you can find that cheap ticket.
How to Find Cheapest Last Minute Tickets?
Here’s a few tips to find cheaper tickets.
- Check the venue: Some venues sell day of the show tickets. Always check the venue first.
- Some ticket resellers are cheaper than others: Our data show us TickPick and Vivid Seats are generally the cheapest of the major ticket resellers for general admission shows. Ticketmaster usually has the highest prices.
- Find “all in” prices: Avoid getting blind sided with fees. Fees raise the final price of the ticket by up to 40%. We show you here how to see the all in prices on the major ticket resellers apps.
- Use apps that track prices: At TicketJam, we built our app to compare ticket prices across major resellers like StubHub, SeatGeek and TickPick. If the official tickets are sold out, we try to find you the cheapest resale tickets.
- Go old school: You can look on craigslist. But beware, ticket brokers list there as well.