Tuesday, February 03, 2015

Boom Goes The Dynamite

Something happened at the Super Bowl this year, but I don't see anyone talking about it yet.

"Ticket brokers" make their nut at the Super Bowl. It's the most consistently profitable event of the year for reselling tickets, and people make a small fortune.

Here's how it works. There are a TON of ads offering Super Bowl ticket deals, or just tickets outright, in the weeks leading up to the game. And the way it normally works is that a ticket broker takes your money without actually having a ticket in hand. He'll charge you $2000, wait for the hysteria over the game to die down, and then buy your ticket on Friday or Saturday before the game for $1500 or less.

That's how it basically works. The ticket broker is "selling short" in effect, promising something he doesn't have in the belief that he can buy it for less than you paid him.

That's always worked, and like I said, this is a big money situation.

This year, though, prices went up from $2000--and never came down. Late Saturday, the cheapest seat available (and it was a very crappy seat) cost $9,000. There was no period of time where the prices dropped.

So ticket brokers must have had the living daylights hammered out of them, incurring massive losses. And I'm guessing some people showed up to the Super Bowl after having paid for tickets and never got them, because it would have bankrupted some brokers.

Messy.

Site Meter