Crafty brokers have been able to get their hands on one of Broadway’s hottest tickets, thanks in part to American Express.
Variety is reporting that some brokers bought choice tickets to the highly anticipated musical through an American Express-sponsored presale in July, two months before the box office began selling them. The presale had a ticket limit of eight “per order.”
In the case of “YF,” that actually meant eight tickets per performance.
If you make your living reselling tickets on eBay and other auction sites, you can get eight tickets to as many performances as you can afford. And if you have an American Express card you can get them before anyone else.
Sometimes the card of choice is Visa Signature, and other times you have to have promotional codes. For those, there are Internet message boards that list such codes, with subscription fees as high as $70 a month for access. But, one broker says, “There’s always a presale.”
The ticket resale market is growing. New York recently deregulated the secondary ticket market, and eBay and its affiliate StubHub! auction plain-old Saturday orchestra seats for about double their face value. Fans and some producers bemoan the escalated prices for resold tickets, but brokers insist they’re just meeting a market demand.
