Does It Pay to Wait? The Paths of Posted Prices and Ticket Composition for the Final Four and Super Bowl

A couple of weeks before the 2012 Super Bowl, Andrew Lehren of The New York Times advised fans wanting tickets to be “patient,†because prices in secondary ticket markets tend to fall “precipitously†as the time to kickoff nears. Using data compiled from SeatGeek.com on more than 46,000 ticket postings in the two weeks prior to the 2013 Super Bowl and more than 18,000 ticket postings prior to the 2012 NCAA Final Four, we find that average prices decreased in the last few days prior to these events, reaching their lowest levels on the mornings before kickoff and first tipoff. This evidence seems to support Lehren's recommendation that savvy fans should wait until the last minute to buy their tickets. But, we also show that savvy fans can often find similar or better bargains much earlier in the week by searching the available inventory. The greater variation in posted prices earlier in the week implies that fans can often find better bargains by searching than by being patient, especially for super-premium seats. We discuss how changes in technology have made it easier to search for bargains, while also insuring against being left ticketless if fans decide to patiently wait until the day of the game. Both strategies—patiently waiting until close to game time versus searching early and often—can produce bargains, although we suspect that changes in technology have increased the relative rewards to searching.