What experienced ticket brokers do during slow periods to gain an edge

Many ticket brokers talk about there being slow days or slow periods in the industry, with minimal buying opportunities. Like the holiday lull we are in right now. They ask “How am I supposed to make money if there aren’t many shows going onsale?” Or the most common one we hear is, “tickets are DEAD!”. Do these sound familiar to you?

Even during slow buying periods, there is constantly a lot of valuable work you could be doing to continue building your business. It’s an opportunity to focus on other aspects of your business that get neglected when things are very busy. And for an experienced ticket broker, there is always work to be done and tickets to buy – there really is no such thing as a slow day. We will share a few tips that experienced ticket brokers utilize especially during slower buying periods to keep busy and continue growing their business.

1. Find new ways to make money

There are literally an unlimited number of different ways to make money in this industry, yet the majority of ticket brokers focus on buying tickets from primary markets only. Expanding into other areas will help you learn new ways to acquire inventory and find opportunities to profit. Here are a few examples:

• Buying undervalued inventory on broker-to-broker marketplaces with minimal or no fees, like on TEVO (Ticket Evolution), TickPick, Mercury, and so on, and then flipping for profit down the line. These types of opportunities often present themselves during presales/public sales for a given show or tour, but also throughout the year as well.

  One great example that comes to mind is from last year when Harry Styles announced his tour playing 15 shows in NYC, 15 in LA, and 5 in Austin/Chicago. A lot of brokers were spooked by how many shows he announced – after all, who else out there is playing 15 shows in a row in one arena? Prices started very low on the secondary market as many brokers tried to dump their inventory quickly. For those more in tune with the market dynamics, it was clear that demand was sky high, that 15 shows was not too many, and consequently prices doubled, tripled, and even quadrupled over the coming months for these shows. Savvy brokers buying off these secondary marketplaces were able to flip those purchases for big profit.

  We personally made more money buying off of the secondary market for these shows than the primary, which required winning verified fan codes and beating other buyers for tickets. On the secondary market it was free pickings of tickets with no rush.

  See one example below – we bought 6 tickets off TickPick for $115 each which was incredibly cheap, and then sold a few weeks later on Seatgeek for $1,600.

Experienced ticket brokers are buying undervalued inventory like this on a daily basis from other sellers that are pricing too low or trying to sell too quickly. 

Summary: Flipping undervalued tickets from broker-to-broker marketplaces for profit is a lucrative way to expand your business. It will also help build your understanding of secondary market trends and tour/show trends, which will then in turn allow you to seek out more undervalued inventory to buy.

• Building up “passive income” through season tickets for top leagues such as the NBA, MLB, NHL, NFL, MLS, and college sports. For those that have minimal sports in their inventory, it’s a good time to think about how to break into or grow your season ticket business. 

  To do this right, you need to do TONS of research. For newer brokers, we recommend focusing on your own local markets as a starting point and learning everything you can. Spend months or a year following the team’s tickets and watch secondary markets for their games. Do prices typically go up or down closer to an event? Learn about the different price points and price breaks that the team offers, the freebies they give you, the ability to access concert inventory at the venue, discounts, etc., and after you have all this information, you can then start to consider what tickets to invest in or whether it’s worth investing in at all. 

  The benefits of being a season ticket holder are preferential pricing for tickets, access to playoff tickets (which is where a lot of money can be made on a deep playoff run), access to other events at the venue, for you and family/friends to attend the game if you like, and other freebies and exclusive offers the team might give you access to.

  Summary: Grow your business by researching and investing in season tickets for sports. There is a lot of money to be made but it requires a lot of research to find the teams and price points that sell best.

• Focus on buying drops to hot events. What are drops? In short, after public sales have ended, tickets are often released at random points in time up until the event date, in what are called “drops”. This is true of both fully sold out events, or events with tickets still available. 

  How do you know when drops happen? You can subscribe to a service like ours which has a drop checker tool that automatically finds when these drops occur, and notify you immediately so you can buy tickets that had previously been sold out. Check out the below video to see how it wors.

Keeping with the Harry Styles NYC example, here is a screenshot of a drop alert we received in the Broker Buds Slack from our drop checker tool on July 28th last summer. We were then able to buy 50+ standard pricing GA Floor, prime lower bowl, and cheap tickets which we then sold for large profit.

Summary: Take advantage of drops from a drop checking tool, and buy/sell tickets you otherwise would not have been able to find. Check out our other blog on broker tools to learn how to use a drop checker effectively.

2. Optimize current operations

In addition to finding new ways for your business to make money, slower buying periods also help you focus on optimizing your operations.

• Focus on pricing your inventory and understanding market dynamics: Slower buying periods gives us a chance to review our inventory’s pricing. For bigger brokers with a large volume of inventory, being on top of pricing is a difficult task and this is a prime time to look through your pricing and adjust as needed. What is happening to supply counts? Are tickets selling at a reasonable pace? Monitoring secondary trends and updating pricing based on all available information is critical to improving profit margins and growing as a broker. 

  A common decision that needs to be made by all brokers is pricing inventory manually vs. using an automated tool. We feel it’s EXTREMELY important, especially as a newer broker, to be pricing manually because that is by far the best way to learn pricing and market dynamics, how pricing for shows change over time, and only then can you really get a deep and nuanced understanding of pricing dynamics. The learning will be super valuable. We feel even for experienced brokers that manually pricing can be really important for your business.

  Summary: It’s critical to monitor your events and update pricing regularly. You will learn a lot and your profit margins will improve.

• Don’t FOMO buy: We know it can be tempting to roll the dice on some below average events during a slow period – brokers get bored quick and are addicted to buying. So not buying for a period of time is difficult. But this is usually when a broker makes his/her worst buying decisions. A lot of brokers have a tendency to buy into bad shows because they're bored, haven't bought in a while, and are itching to buy something to feel productive. And what typically happens is these shows aren’t great to begin with, and then a lot of brokers buy into them which makes them even worse. 

  In this industry, it’s key to limit your losses and buying into events just because it’s slow is a trap and recipe for disaster. Anything even borderline when things are slow is pretty risky and you really need to rethink if it’s a good buy or a FOMO buy. Save your capital for events you feel the most confident in, let your cash accumulate for when things pick up, and spend your downtime doing something more productive (like executing on new ways to grow your business or pricing your inventory).

  Summary: Don’t fall into traps and buy into borderline events during slow periods. Save your capital for better opportunities.

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

A slower buying period can be a blessing in disguise if you take advantage of it and learn new ways to make money in the business. Best of luck to everyone!

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This article is from Broker Buds