A 30 minute walk for $37: Beating the Ticketmaster Surcharge

So my wife and I along with a few of my professor buddies decided we want to see a concert Saturday night. OK GO is playing in downtown Towson. Tickets are listed at $16, but when I go to order them of course there is a $7.40 ticket master surcharge, or about 40% of the ticket price.

So instead of buying the tickets online, I walk down to the concert hall about 30minute roundtrip to save the $37. On the walk I had 3 thoughts about the ticketmaster charge.

1.)It is worrisome that ticketmaster has a monopoly on ticket distribution this could be in part to blame for the high surcharge prices.
2.)Maybe the surcharge is a way to separate the bargain hunters who will go to the box office, from the less bargain hunters.
3.)You also have to wonder about the endowment effect, you don’t get told about the surcharge until the last second. My guess is more people would buy $16 tickets with a $7.40 surcharge, then $23.40, even though it is isn’t rational.

But not to worry, I’ll be seeing OK GO on Saturday! If you need to get warmed up for the show here’s their most well known song with an awesome video.

Demand For Sports Tickets

On Friday I went to a Wizards (NBA) game with my old PhD advisor. The Wizards are terrible this year with their star player out with an injury. So I had heard tickets were easy to come by and could be purchased below face value from ticket resellers on the street.

When I got downtown though, the area around the arena was buzzing. It turns out I wasn't the only one in town who wanted to go a game, but our President also wanted to see his home team the Chicago Bulls.

I don't know what it says about the Wizards that I still paid less than 60% of face value for the ticket with Obama in the audience.

Besides Presidents, many things can impact the demand for tickets. Team quality, opponent quality, the economy, even fireworks and the weather can impact the demand for tickets.