​​Statesboro is getting ready for Cole Swindell’s GATAJam performance at Beautiful Eagle Creek Fields in Statesboro, Georgia, on Saturday, April 20, 2024.
William Bridwell, the founder of Airbound Entertainment, LLC, is offering some tips on how to avoid overpaying for secondary market tickets by purchasing your ticket through the OFFICIAL TICKET LINK for $45.99.
Bridwell says that secondary market ticket sales, or ticket scalping, is when a person or entity purchases a ticket through the proper channels, via an event or concert’s official ticket link, and then proceeds to mark up the value of the ticket (usually a minimum of 25-30%). Then they resell the tickets at a higher cost to make a hefty profit.
Although people often believe that ticket scalping occurs after an event has sold out, Bridwell says this is not the case, and that the secondary marketers often start reselling tickets when the event goes on sale.
He says that scalpers pay top dollar for advertising and search engine placement (SEO’s) to make sure that when you search for an artist’s show, their secondhand sites are the first several links at the top of the search. Bridwell says that oftentimes, the official promoter or artist ticket link won’t even be in the first five links you see.
- Example: Stubhub, Vivid Seats, SeatGeek, and TickPick are all SECONDARY ticket sellers. No events are set up directly to sell through those platforms, yet when you search for a show/event, these sites are always at the top of the search page.
- NOTE: If you search “Cole Swindell Statesboro Georgia tickets,” the official ticket link for the event via BIG TICKETS, is the 4th link on the search page (followed by Vivid Seats, StubHub, and Event Tickets Center).
Bridwell says that folks also need to be wary of “phishing profiles” that try to sell tickets by commenting on posts about the event, or even the official Facebook event post. They will often say something like “Have tickets for this event and can’t go anymore, letting go of them for cheap.”
WAYS TO MAKE SURE YOU ARE ON THE OFFICIAL TICKET LINK:
- The artist who is performing at the event will always have the official ticket link via their website. They will never promote a link that is to a secondary market / scalping site. So visit the artist’s website and go to their “tour” and find the event date that you are looking for, and get directed to the official ticket link that way.
- Go to the website of the event itself! The majority of festival style / one or multi-day events, will have a dedicated webpage for the event, where you will be able to go directly to the official ticket link for the event (or buy tickets directly through the website).
- Always go to the actual Facebook event page to find the official ticket link; one method for making sure that you are looking at the official event page (on Facebook specifically), is to click on who is “hosting” the event. 99% of the time, the official page of the Artist who is headlining the event will be a “co-host” of the Facebook event. A lot of scalpers will set up their own Facebook events to look exactly like the main event page, but will link their own ticket link to the event, as opposed to the official ticket link.
Official Event Website:
Official Facebook Event:
https://www.facebook.com/
Official Instagram Page: @gatajamfest
https://www.instagram.com/
Official Ticket Link:
https://www.bigtickets.com/e/
