StubHub! Review: Fantastic Legalized Scalping

If you are a frequent reader of this blog, you probably know that I enjoy Giants baseball and

When shopping for tickets, there are two quite obvious goals. First, I want the best seats and second I want to pay at market for the tickets. Because I believe in free markets, I don't want to pay what the team decides all tickets should be worth, but rather where supply meets demand.

Before StubHub! there were scalpers. You can identify them because they are people who both say they need tickets and simultaneously have an extra ticket at sporting events. One of my favorite images of going to a ballgame is watching one guy with a "Need Tickets" sign stand next to someone holding a fan of tickets. One of the great ironies in organized public events.


I love "free market ticket reselling" because of the great technique involved in bartering down the price. If you wait for the game to begin, there is no scenario where you shouldn't get a ticket for face. Even at the Rose Bowl, you could get a ticket for 30-40 bucks. As a buyer time is on your side and you need to wait as long as possible to get your ticket. Also, never show them how much cash you have on hand and don't be afraid to walk away.

Scalping is great, except for the fact that it is illegal. I'm convinced that this is one of those laws that was created to because of a lot of lobbying from teams and if I were a political fanatic, I'd like to get this overturned.

This year, the Giants partnered with StubHub! to become their legalized scalper. The Giants previously had their own home brewed "Double play ticket window" where you could buy seats that were priced over face. Now with StubHub!, the prices of tickets are free to rise and fall with demand.

The interface is great, you select a game, click on a section and then see a listing of tickets for that section along with their prices. I was able to pick up two $27 bleacher seats in the second row for $10 each when the Reds were in town. Giants ticket prices went up, but the quality of the team declined, so naturally the supply/demand intersection point is getting lower.

The biggest drawback to StubHub! is the cost of shipping is about $20 because all shipping is FedEx overnight. They have a new electronic transfer feature that is priced under $10, but it is not available on all tickets.

The tickets were shipped quickly to me with no issues. I know of a friend who had problems getting his tickets shipped, but StubHub! has a guarantee you'll get a seat as good or better than the one you bought, so after the tickets didn't show up, they shipped him a better pair of tickets. I see this as a nice feature to get around the unreliable nature of ticket sellers.

So that's my summary of ticket buying and my review of the market leading online ticket reseller. Here's to legalized scalping!