Is it cheaper to buy tickets online or at the venue?

When it comes to obtaining tickets to concerts, sports events, theatre performances, and other events, one has a choice: to get tickets in advance from an internet site or a box office at the venue. That being said, which of the two is more cost-effective? Here are some of the merits and demerits of going about it in each of the approaches mentioned above.

Buying Tickets Online

As the use of the Internet has increased in the past few years, buying tickets with the help of a range of ticketing services such as Ticketmaster, Tixbag, StubHub, Vivid Seats, etc., is quite ordinary now. There are a few key potential advantages to going this route:

Accessibility: This is perhaps the greatest attribute of online tickets because it allows one to purchase tickets at his or her convenience and without having to physically go to the actual ticket-selling point at the venue of the event. This is practical because it saves time and effort from having to go through so many different sources searching for what we need.

This timing can often be a couple of days or weeks before ticketing sites’ general public sale dates, which box offices mimic. It can be beneficial if you have the flexibility to shop early online because you can select what may be the best available seats.

More Tickets: When it comes to popular shows, ticket-selling websites source their inventory from several theaters, while a box office may only have a limited number of tickets that they release to the public.

Cheap Resale Tickets: In some cases, it is much cheaper to buy tickets from resellers on platforms such as StubHub if you do not need tickets urgently and prefer to purchase them after the first sale. These are tickets that are sold by fans for a cheaper price than the legal ticket-selling company, the box office.

Convenience Fees and Other Charges This is another area that provides for the establishment of convenience fees and other charges by the issuer, the card member's financial institution, or both, as it may deem necessary.

The tradeoff of all those benefits to purchasing tickets online is that virtually every major ticketing site charges sometimes steep fees for every order. The tradeoff of all those benefits to purchasing tickets online is that virtually every major ticketing site charges sometimes steep fees for every order.

Delivery Fees: Sometimes, you can choose to have the tickets delivered directly to your smartphone rather than receive actual tickets through the mail, but this will come at a fee ranging from $5 to $25+ for every ticket order.

Service Fees: For every ticket sold, it is customary for a certain percentage of the face value price to be collected by the ticketing company as their cut. This can range from 10–25% of ticket costs; this information is best obtained from the airlines or via an online search.

Service Charges: In addition to service charges that range between $5 and $15, you are likely to incur charges that the ticketing site incurs for processing your order, such as credit card charges. 

When combined, all these various ticketing order fees that are normally charged form a total that ranges from 25% to 40% of the basic ticket price. Fifty dollars for a ticket suddenly becomes seventy-five plus below as additional charges are added to them.

Purchasing goods and services directly at the hall

Going down to the concert hall arena stadium box of the location on event days was once the norm for purchasing tickets. As online sales dominate now, going the box office route has some advantages and drawbacks versus going online: As online sales dominate now, going the box office route has some advantages and drawbacks versus going online:

No Incidents: Box offices do not experience the numerous incidences that online selling does. A ticket for Fifty bucks is generally worth fifty bucks (before taxes) at most, without the sometimes outrageous charges that websites come with.

Rush Tickets: Some theatres produce cheaper ‘rush’ tickets for a definite show on the same day or the day of the show if the theatre knows the remaining seats. These rush seats can prove comparatively cheap.

Some concerts: Even in the cases of famous artists’ concerts, there will still be many shows selling out during online pre-sales before ever going on sale to the public. This means that a particular box office location is not always filled or has a great variety of particular favorite performers as opposed to previous online releases.

Inconvenience: It is usually convenient to buy things from the window on the night of the event, and one has to be early, possibly hours before the show, to make the purchase. Online shopping does not require the buyer to go through all these processes at all.

Which is better for your pocket?

Overall, there is no way of telling for certain if purchasing tickets via the Internet or getting them directly from the venue will prove to be the cheapest option. Just depending on the event, demand, the age of the event listing online, and many other things, prices could differ significantly on the day that you happen to check.

This way, the costs are generally the lowest, as most of the time inventory gives the highest and best choices before things go cheap as soon as highly promoted advertising starts after overhyped hot concerts, games, and other events.

But for less popular events or if standing locations or other peripheral seating is adequate for your needs, there are also large savings to be had by waiting for the secondary market ticket brokers’ websites to appear or simply showing up to the venue and buying at the door on the day of the performance.

Therefore, who comes out cheapest between online and at the venue has a lot to do with considerations of convenience or the fact that one may want to avoid other hidden costs from resellers and ticketing agencies. Shopping early, but not necessarily within the first few days, and being as flexible as possible with the timing of the event seems to be the best way for you to try and get a deal either way.

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