Michael Violi is a Self Employed Ticket Broker. With the advent of the Internet the whole world of the secondary ticket market was turned upside down. Now, if you needed tickets to a sold out event, then you did not have to buy them from a street scalper. If you had tickets for an event that you could not attend, then you could now sell them on this amazing new site called eBay. On the floor, in the pit. I bought a pair and was fired up for the show.

I was in Grad School and I realized I was about 12 months away from having to find a real job. All throughout college I tried to get internships with various sports teams and I even worked for ABC Sports for a few years, but nothing fit. My ultimate career goal in life was to have my own businees but not have the type of business in which I had to work hours a week. My first ticket purchase for resell was four tickets to a show for the Eagles in Hershey, Pennsylvania. I had no idea why I picked this event to resell, and I had no idea what I was doing.

Next, I bought some tickets tickets for U2 in Detroit, thinking that any seats anywhere would make money because it was U2! I never thought I could lose money on a U2 concert, but that day I learned how important market size, day of the week, number of shows, supply of tickets, etc.

The last tickets I had to sell were Dave Chappelle in NYC. I started buying and selling everything in site. Somehow I made this work, and I was literally doing this credit card dance for years with a higher credit limit.

There were plenty of times that I bought tickets that were barely worth the paper they were printed on, but that is how I learned the business.

Through trial and error. Over time I just made less errors. When I moved back to Texas after Grad School my parents were absolutely hounding me about getting a full time job.

I would not be getting any K nor would I have any health insurance…they were not pleased to say the least. So I began the slow grind of making a living from selling tickets on the internet. For years my only purchases were concert tickets , and there is no secret to getting concert tickets even though many people think that all ticket brokers have some kind of inside connection.

To get good concert ticket you would have to figure out the event onsale time, and ideally the first presale time and buy the tickets the second they went onsale. I became an expert on how to buy tickets online for all sorts of concerts.

The only problem with this is that you had to be near a computer at a specific time nearly everyday to buy these tickets, and I did not feel great about competing for tickets with the common fan and then marking them up and selling them to them 10 minutes after the Ticketmaster sale.

Sell Tickets | Vivid Seats

I felt there had to be a better way to make a living from being a ticket broker and that is when I stumbled upon the world of sports tickets , and oh what a glorious world. Slowly I started acquiring tickets from various teams through mini plans and season tickets. What I learned is try to make a little money on the regular season and then pray, and I mean pray that the team makes a deep playoff run.

After years, and a much larger bank roll, I was able to learn the art of profiting from sports tickets.

I have been a broker for about 8 years now and the financial freedom and flexibility it gives me is amazing. Overall, I can say I am happy with my career choice and plan on being involved with tickets in some sort of capacity the rest of my life.

Ticket resale - Wikipedia

You can now sell tickets right on SeatGeek! TBA is a live events blog powered by SeatGeek, the web's largest search engine for sports and concert tickets.

Learn more and try SeatGeek for free. The beauty of sports tickets are many Prices can greatly fluctuate depending on the performance of teams, promotions, opponent, etc, and if you were a sports nut you had a huge advantage in predicting the market over the non sports enthusiast. I was just taking on risk, and if you know the market that risk is minimal.