To give you an idea of how far the world has come when it comes to obtaining tickets to events, I'm going to tell you about getting tickets for my first Rush concert.

 

Since the days of the Internet, sleeping out for tickets has become a forgotten pastime, but when I was in high school it was pretty common. Any hot acts that came to the Philadelphia Spectrum were going to inspire a group of fans to head to a Ticketron (it wasn't yet Ticketmaster then, but Ticketron was every bit as bad) vendor the night before tickets went on sale, in hopes of snaring great seats for the upcoming show.

 

My good friend Mike Lucas and I got up at 3AM and rode our bikes in the cold for the three miles to the Rickels hardware store in Edgewater, hoping to grab tickets for the Grace Under Pressure tour. In that strip mall there was a video store that doubled as the local Ticketron.

 

We sat on concrete for the next seven hours--and that is one long damn time to sit on concrete--waiting for the ticket buying to begin.

 

And because some jerk decided to make a list of the order of the line, people who signed the list the night before showed up the next morning and got in their place in line, making the line a useless, jumbled mess. I expect this probably happened everywhere that seats were sold. We ended up with about the worst seats available.

 

So, no, it isn't a fond memory. And I'm glad that I have a little money now and can simply outbid jackwagons who cut in line for the better seats.

 

When I checked out SeatGeek, I marveled at how much better this ticket buying business has gotten. Yes, tickets are more expensive--that Rush ticket cost me $11.50--but today, 26 years later, anytime before the event, you can scour the entire venue and pay what you think is acceptable, all while lounging in your underwear.

 

SeatGeek is merely a search engine for tickets. It searches all of the major secondary ticket brokers - TicketsNow, RazorGator, Ticket Network, and of course StubHub and eBay among others. Now you don't have to go from site to site and compare...SeatGeek does it for you.

 

Best of all, SeatGeek even informs you whether the tickets being sold are a good or bad deal, if it's known. On the seating chart, a green dot means the ticket is a great deal, a red one means a bad deal, and a yellow is somewhere in the middle. And SeatGeek will even let you know how much the broker's fee is, and it works that into the price, so there are no surprises--and don't those surprise fees tick you off?

 

I looked at the October 1 game between the Yankees and Red Sox at Fenway Park, obviously an extremely tough ticket. There is a green dot deal in Section 120, Row KK, which are Loge Box seats between home and first. The tickets are $175 apiece. (And yes, that is a great deal.) Similarly, just three sections closer to home plate, are tickets going for $226 apiece. SeatGeek calls this a bad deal.

 

As if all of this info weren't enough, the SeatGeek folks (boy, are these guys geeks) have even developed an algorithm to let you know where the price of tickets is trending, and indicate when the best time for you to buy would be.

 

SeatGeek makes clear that they do not buy or sell the tickets, they only search. But they do have a buy button on tickets that you click on, which takes you directly to the site offering the tickets.

 

Sites like SeatGeek, I believe, are great for sharpening the free market and determining exactly how much value tickets have. I don't know who is the best of the brokers, and I reluctantly endorsed StubHub in the past. Now I don't have to know. One blogger wrote about SeatGeek, "Never use Ticketmaster or Craigslist again".

 

And I still remember a sore butt from sitting on concrete that would appreciate that.

 

Everything from parking to peanuts at the ballgame...check out www.BallparkEGuides.com
 


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