Even if you do your best to buy your gig ticket before the crowds, it’s inevitable that there will be a time that you are away when your favourite band’s tickets go on sale, or end up forgetting until it’s too late. Fortunately, the lovely invention called the internet has a few tricks to help you get your hands on those tickets. Unfortunately, it is unlikely that you will get a last minute ticket at less than face value; it will quite often end up costing a lot more.
eBay, of course, is a great place to find sold-out gig tickets. The only rules that they have about ticket sales are that you cannot sell tickets to free events, you cannot sell any Eurostar tickets or tickets to England and Wales rugby matches (as it’s illegal), and that if the ticket is not being sold at face value, you must state the face value in the ad. It is worth being wary of any sellers that have multiple listings for the same event as they may be touting. You may end up paying a bit more for a ticket from eBay, especially if it is an auction, but if you sort by “Time Ending Soonest” (especially at quiet times like the middle of the night, mid-afternoon and first thing in the morning) you may find a listing that no-one else has found. Another trick with eBay that is a longshot but works surprisingly often is to use sites such a fatfingers.com, which search for listings that have been spelt wrong. For example you may be looking for tickets for a ‘Killers’ gig, but someone may have listed there ticket as ‘Kilelrs’ by mistake. Therefore it does not appear in eBay’s search results and you grab yourself a bargain!
Another great site for tickets is Gumtree.com. The same rules apply as eBay about selling tickets, but the price must be fixed as there is no auction. Often tickets sold on Gumtree need to be collected in person, but they may send them to you if you ask nicely. Gumtree also has a Swap Shop section and a Freebies section, so if you’re really lucky you may even find yourself a free gig ticket! The swap shop is often used by people that want to swap standing tickets for seated or vice versa, which can be useful if you did not end up with the ticket you wanted.
Scarlet Mist describes itself as an “Ethical Ticket Exchange”. It is basically a site where people who cannot attend a gig for whatever reason can find buyers, and people looking for last minute tickets can find sellers. As this is supposedly all genuine sellers, you should find that the ticket prices are lower as people just want to get rid of them rather than ticket touts using the site to make money, as they might on eBay.
Lastminute.com is also worth a try, although gig tickets do not work in the same way as holidays so they do not tend to be cheap last minute deals. For theatre tickets it is always a good bet though as they have some good deals.
If all else fails, your choices are a) hope that a local radio station puts on a competition to win sold out tickets (only if you have the time to sit by the phone for a while, b) make some contacts in the music industry and scrounge free tickets from them, or c) try and sneak past the security guards on the door (not recommended).
