The Best Time to Buy Resale Concert Tickets, According to Data

By Jonathan Zavaleta

Jonathan Zavaleta

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The live events industry can be notoriously volatile, with tickets to some events quickly snapped up and resold for eye-watering sums, while others drop to bargain-basement prices. It can be frustrating for music fans to splurge on tickets, only to see prices drop to a fraction of what they paid. While there’s no surefire way to prevent this, there’s a surprising amount of data behind concert and sports ticket prices.

Amid frustrations with Live Nation and Ticketmaster, many fans turn to the resale market. Two leading sites that track the resale market are Seatpick and TicketData. Both are aggregators that compare resale sites like StubHub, SeatGeek, Viagogo, and others, monitoring prices in real time.

To help concert enthusiasts shop smarter, we spoke to experts at SeatPick and TicketData to get their tips on saving money on resale concert and sports tickets. Here are some tips on shopping resale tickets smarter and what to know about the broader resale ticket market. 

Tickets Can Get Cheaper Closer to the Day of, But It’s Risky

Resellers often look to offload whatever stock they couldn’t move at the last minute. “More often than not, prices come down as an event approaches,” says Keith Pagello, TicketData’s founder. “That is the longstanding conventional wisdom, and the data supports it.”

But for the most in-demand shows and events, that’s not always the case. The World Cup is one key example. “For many matches, prices essentially doubled in the span of a week, and so those who waited until the last minute ended up paying far higher prices than they could have paid months prior to the tournament,” says Pagello. 

Seatpick found that for some of the most in-demand events, the day-of event median is as much as 99% of the peak, arguing that “day-of ‘fire sales’ are mostly a myth.” Still, they cited bottom-quartile events as the exception, where prices can dip by as much as 30%. Simply put, the most in-demand events often stay that way, even up to the day of, but other events can drop close to the start date.

So how do you know whether or not you should wait? “The best way to think about it is this: waiting often helps, but it does carry some risk,” argues Pagello. “I generally recommend that if you plan to wait, keep an eye on the prices. If prices increase as an event approaches, it usually happens over the course of a few weeks rather than overnight.”

Wednesday Is the Best Day to Buy

Even if day-of prices aren’t lower for the most in-demand events, there are still times when prices dip. Seatpick data suggests that Wednesdays are the cheapest day to buy resale tickets, with prices that are around 6% lower than on Fridays and Mondays.

Seatpick also suggested that prices tend to dip about three weeks out from the event, with the median price index falling to ~0.82 around 20 days out from showtime before climbing back up. That lines up with what TicketData’s Pagello noted about the World Cup. Prices fell “roughly 25% in the month leading up to the tournament,” he says, “but then demand surged in the final week before the tournament began.” 

Sports Prices Vary Considerably More Than Concerts 

According to Seatpick, the median resale ticket price for concerts is $148, a higher median than for sporting events ($116). But sports tend to swing more widely, meaning that cheaper seats are cheaper, but premium seats are more expensive. 

Both Seatpick and TicketData pointed to events like the World Cup and the Super Bowl as being among the most expensive of all events tracked, including concerts, with TicketData’s Pagello also citing the two Madison Square Garden NBA Finals games as being particularly pricey (Seatpick’s data was provided prior to the Finals being set). 

“In sports, prices depend heavily on the team, the fanbase, and the team’s performance,” argues Pagello. “For example, Buffalo has the highest average ticket price across the 32 NFL teams for the upcoming season, given the passionate fanbase and huge demand to see games in the brand-new stadium, even though the area’s median income is lower than many other NFL markets.”

Shoppers Are Getting Savvier

Ultimately, shoppers are using more tools to save money. “The resale ticket industry is becoming dramatically more sophisticated. Fans today are behaving less like casual buyers and more like investors, monitoring prices daily and reacting instantly to demand shifts,” says Gilad Zilberman, CEO and co-founder of Seatpick.

Pagello echoes this sentiment: “Fans seem more hesitant to blindly buy at whatever price appears during the on-sale,” he says. “I think a big part of that is that more fans are experiencing dynamic pricing firsthand. It is frustrating to sit in a queue, buy a ticket for $300, and then see similar seats in the same section available from the box office for $150 a few days before the show. People remember that. And the next time their favorite artist goes on sale, they may be more willing to wait.”