Ticket Broker

A ticket broker is someone whose business is tickets. That's it. They use the demand for tickets as currency to make money. What a ticket broker does is buys a large number of tickets to events. The more popular the event, the more tickets a ticket broker will buy. For example, ticket brokers try to get as many tickets as they can for the Super Bowl, because there are a lot of people that want to go. The ticket broker then charges a premium on those tickets, depending on demand. They charge more than the face value of the ticket. This works great if the event sells out in a short amount of time…the demand then increases obviously. There are pros and cons to the existence of the ticket broker. Obviously a ticket broker is good if someone is looking for a ticket to a sold out event, and couldn't get tickets. Of course, the ticket broker also charges more than the face value of the ticket. The process of buying large numbers of tickets to events is also a negative to a lot of people, because it is limiting the number of tickets to an event even more, simply for the profit of the ticket broker. Musicians especially

do not like this practice and many have taken measures to prevent ticket brokers from doing this. But ticket brokers can also offer package deals and bundle tickets with airline fares and hotel reservations to make things easier. Going back to the Super Bowl example - a ticket broker can create a package of Super Bowl tickets, hotel reservations and plane tickets to sell people. Of course they will charge a fee greater than the sum of everything in the package, but a lot of people are willing to pay a little more for the convenience of someone else doing all the work. In that sense a ticket broker can be a good thing. The debate continues on about the pros and cons of ticket brokers.