StubHub

So you’re in the United States, and that concert or Broadway show you’ve always wanted to go to is sold out yet again and you can’t even get tickets for a baseball game in the city you’re visiting. Getting hold of tickets to events can be tricky, which is why StubHub was created. Owners of tickets who can’t, or don’t want, to attend an event can put them up for sale online at a price they feel it’s worth and buyers who want those seats can choose to pay (or not to pay) for them.

We put StubHub to the test while in San Francisco while the MLB team, the Giants, were in the middle of one of their most successful seasons in terms of crowd attendances. In 2010 the San Francisco Giants won the World Series and in 2011 season ticket sales, as expected, went ballistic and we were trying to get to a game against their arch rivals the Los Angeles Dodgers.

The booking process:

Through the official Giants website there were no decent seats available, just a couple of thousand in the “nosebleed” stands from about $75 each which was about triple the cost of similar seats the previous season.

We were advised to try StubHub.com and immediately found good seats on sale by season ticket holders, some at a ridiculous price and some at a reasonable price. Fortunately we’d been to AT&T Park before and had a good idea of what was worth the money and what wasn’t.

Navigating their site is relatively easy and it’s basically divided into three categories for purchasing tickets: Sports, Concerts and Theater & Arts. Click on Sports, MLB and San Francisco Giants and all games were listed, with a “price from” amount which lets you know the minimum price and how many tickets are available.

When you click through, you get a list of all tickets available from lowest price to highest price along with the number of tickets available for sale. Some are just single tickets and occasionally there are blocks of 8-10. Row and seat numbers are also listed so you can work out exactly where you’re sitting.

Then comes probably the toughest part - picking a seat at a good price. For the Giants-Dodgers game we were aiming for the premium seats, but they were just too much money.  I love a ball game but $300 each is a little too much. We opted for Arcade 148, row 2 which is out in right field but has a great view of the whole stadium and the bay behind.

The cost:

Price per ticket was $77.50, a bit cheaper than the official price for the same seats. The service fee was $15.50 (which is StubHub’s cut) and an e-Delivery fee of $5.20. The total bill was $175.70.

The downloading process:

After paying online with a credit card, we received a confirmation order within minutes.  Our actual tickets were available to download four hours later and the printed version is accepted at the ground.

The end result:

We picked up a couple of pretty good seats on a day when the Giants recorded their 75th straight sell out stadium of around 42,000. And we had two “splash down” home runs hit over us by the Giants.

The verdict:

For purchasers, it means that tickets are nearly always available but you have to be a little savvy on how much you’re spending on a certain seat. It is a market so you need to look through the listings fairly carefully. I noticed that for sporting event where there is not the heavy demand like key MLB and NFL games, there were some unbelievable bargains with top of the line seats for $15 at some baseball grounds. For sellers, it means they can offload their tickets at a price they want (StubHub takes a cut here as well) and if they charge too much, the tickets simply won’t sell.