Sold Out? No Way! 8 Places to Find and Buy Tickets

Editor's Note: We published an updated version of this post on Oct. 14. 2014. Check out the newer version here. Up until this century, busy signals and long lines were something avid concertgoers and sports fans became accustomed to. There was simply no other way to secure tickets to popular events. Unless of course you wanted to line your pockets with cash and roll the dice negotiating with some shady sidewalk scalper! Thanks to the Internet, "sold out" is a phrase that no longer stands in the way of you and your favorite shows. Here are ticket search sites that can hook you up, from the front row to the nose bleeds. TicketFeeder Boasting access to the world's largest online inventory of secondary market tickets, registered sellers on TicketFeeder range from season ticket holders who are unable to attend an event to average consumers who are looking to sell. Choose between sports, concerts or theater tickets. Hot events are listed on homepage and upcoming events, based on your location (determined by IP address), are displayed. The site offers a 100% guarantee and screen all sellers before they post tickets. Live chat and a toll-free telephone number round out the customer service experience. FanSnap Fansnap allows you to find live event tickets. The search engine pools ticket results from dozens of ticket providers so you can get results from all over the Web in one place. A series of FanSnap filters help you narrow down your search. Just tell the system who you want to see and how much you want to spend, and you will see available seats on the FanSnap Map. Tell your friends about tix via social network or email. If there are no tickets available for a specific show, you can enter your email address and be alerted if things change. eBay You already know that you can find great tickets on eBay. Prices vary depending on an events popularity, so it is possible to save a lot of money or overpay. Craigslist With no real protection against fraud, Craigslist presents the greatest risks when purchasing tickets. However, it could also save you the most money. I have found the site to be a great hotspot for last-minute deals. If you're willing to transact in person and take a leap of faith, you can get some seriously good deals. Viagogo Viagogo puts an emphasis on the security of every transaction, offering ticket tracking, managed logistics and live customer service support. Tickets are guaranteed to arrive before an event or you are eligible for a full refund. Sellers can rest easy because Viagogo collects money after a purchase is complete to ensure payment. The site's founder was once behind another little ticket site. The name of that one? StubHub. StubHub Perhaps the most well known third-party ticket facilitator, StubHub is rapidly approaching its 10-year anniversary. All transactions are processed and delivered by StubHub and backed by the company's FanProtect Guaranteeâ„¢. The company is now owned by eBay. An attractive affiliate program lets Web site owners make money every time someone buys tickets using your links. Over 60 professional sports teams and dozens of high-profile artists have partnered with the site to offer exclusive ticket deals. Ticketmaster At one time the only game in town, Ticketmaster turned off millions of fans and artists after displaying monopolistic intentions towards the end of the last decade. Thanks to some new and formidable competition, the site seems to be more receptive to fan feedback. Love them or hate 'em, there's still a good chance that you will have to go through the site and eat a convenience charge. LiveNation By producing over 16,000 concerts for 1,500 artists in 57 countries, LiveNation has taken a 45 million concert ticket bite out of Ticketmasters business. The publicly traded company has helped transform the concert business by expanding its concert platform into ticketing and building the industry's first artist-to-fan vertically integrated concert platform. There are plenty of sites that engage in virtual scalping, but we'll save those sites for a future post. Where do you find tickets to your favorite shows?

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Sold Out? No Way! 8 Places to Find and Buy Tickets

Andrew G.R.

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