You will find that certain games are far more special than others. There are the obvious choices here: the World Series, the Super Bowl, the NBA Championships, and the Stanley Cup. These are some of the biggest events in all of sports, and tickets to these games are far more popular (and expensive!) than any other game you will go to. The prices are high for a reason, though. These are the best players on the best teams competing against each other for the championship title of their respective sport. You might need to pay a few hundred dollars for a ticket just to get the worst seat possible. And you’ll still have the time of your life while you’re there, especially if you have a winning bet on your favorite team.
Before, tickets to championship games were typically based on a lottery system. Season ticket holders would get first dibs, and then it was completely based on random chance if you could even get your tickets. Thanks to ticket sites, getting tickets to the big games is far easier. Many people get tickets to these games, and then are not able to go to them. Rather than give them away or just hold onto them, they can now legally sell them online, creating all sorts of opportunities for other people to now go to those games.
You will find that ticket prices will fluctuate a bit depending on when you look at tickets, and for what section. For example, let’s say that someone buys four tickets to Game 6 of the NBA Championships, and finds out that morning that no one they were going to bring can go. If those tickets cost $500 each, they might list them at $600 each and hope to make a profit. But if tickets are listed at $600 each, they are not as likely to sell as tickets listed for $475 apiece, the price that someone who just wants to get rid of their tickets and not lose a ton of money on them might list them at. It’s all about timing and supply and demand. If you look really hard, there’s a good chance that you can get tickets for less than face value.
Many sites will manipulate prices, too. This is to keep up with supply and demand as well, and it makes the playing field a lot more even when it comes to purchasing tickets. For example, if you have two tickets to the Super Bowl that you bought at $1,000 each, and you list them at $800 each to just get rid of them, the site you use might tack on extra fees so that they don’t lose too much money off of the discount that you gave. The sites keep 10% usually for themselves, but they also have the right to add or take away fees to level out prices. So in this case, you might see a $150 handling or service charge added to the price per ticket. You will still get your 90% commission, but the site makes more thanks to their ability to control the market. That’s going to make it so that there is less price competition in the market, and ensure that you pay a fair price, regardless of what the original seller was trying to do. However, once in a while you will find that you can save a few bucks here and there, and these are the moments where your searching pays off. This is why it’s so important that you are diligent with your search, and why you check more than one or two sites when it is time to get ready for the big game.