In days past, ticket scalping was done face to face on sidewalks or alleyways. Currently it’s a lot harder to tell if you’re buying straight from the venue or from a scalper (also known as resale). Entire companies exist solely for the purpose of allowing people to resale tickets. Some examples are Vividseats and Seatgeek. People who list tickets on those sites usually offer them at a very inflated price.
If we charge $75 to see a concert, we’ll often see it on a resale site for as much as $700! A $10 ticket on our site might be $100 on a resale one.
Unfortunately, since these ticket sites make so much money, they also have large marketing budgets. When you search for a local concert on Google, chances are a resale site will be the top result that comes up. This leads many people to believe they are purchasing tickets straight from the venue.
Even worse, sometimes websites sell tickets that are not legitimate. If someone purchases a non-valid ticket there is nothing the actual venue can do, except encourage the victim to report their interaction to the better business bureau and legislators.
Follow these two tips to NEVER overpay for a concert ticket again. We’ll teach you how to be sure you’re paying face value.
- Purchase directly from the presenting venue
In our case, that means only purchase from www.davisarts.org. Our upcoming events page https://www.davisarts.org/upcoming-events/ has all of our available tickets linked. Look at the web address you’re on- if the url does not contain davisarts.org, you’re in the wrong spot.
If you purchase tickets from any other site, we cannot guarantee that it is valid. You will also likely be paying a lot more for the ticket.
- Call us before you buy if you are unsure
If you are not positive you’re purchasing tickets from the right spot, call us at 801.546.8575. A quick chat with us will be worth it, especially if it can save you hundreds of dollars!
If you have been the victim of unexpectedly paying overprice for a ticket, please take the time to report it to your state legislators. We have been told that this is the most impactful way to get change. You can find your reps here: https://le.utah.gov/gis/finddistrict.jsp.
We are also gathering information about our patrons experiences with overpaying for tickets on the form below. We will pass this info on to our legislative representatives. We hope that in coming years legislation will help regulate ticket resales.