#talk about manufactured scarcity sheeeeesh

[rbbbff]

This is an informational post about my experience with the 5/24 HSLOT 22 US Amex presales. Hoping it might help someone buying during verified fan presale tomorrow or general sale weds. @cuethetommo has great ticket insights and advice on their blog that I recommend reviewing and will reblog. i know this process is extremely anxiety-inducing and truly a capitalistic minefield and my heart goes out to anyone struggling with it/the unfairness/the prices/the US-centric tour sched/all the fucked up components that make this up! and yes i agree that Louis should be scolding Harry for this ticketing horrorshow every chance he can get.

TL;DR out of 3 presale invites I secured tickets to 2 shows, mid lower bowl in Austin ($199ea) and pit for MSG last show night ($199ea). i consider this a successful outing.

More detail:

Got presale invites for 3 shows: Sept 21 (MSG), Oct 2 (Austin), Oct 13 (Chi). I think I signed up for 10-11 shows during presale registration so maybe 30% success rate there.

The Austin & Chicago show presales were at the exact same time (?? why.) Due to date and venue preference I focused on Austin. Cleared & blocked my schedule for this time, got in the waiting room 10min early as advised, and got into the queue at 658 people in front of me. I wanted to get close seated tickets (like first ~3 rows lower bowl), so when I got in I started looking at those, while also trying to add pit tickets to my cart just in case. (Note: Even after re-entering the queue and trying for ~40min, I did not get pit tickets for Austin. Maybe this is obvious but it seems like if you want pit tickets, focus on snagging those first).

Every.single.ticket pit or otherwise i tried to add to my cart for 25min straight was "snagged by another fan". maddening. Finally found 3 seats which were exactly what i wanted (yay!) first row seated! and clicked through to checkout... only to see that Those tickets were $1144 EACH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WHAT IN THE PLATINUM PRICING. Abandoned in cart.

Back into the bloodbath and ultimately checked out with 3 mid lower bowl tix @ $199ea. Sec 119: $1144, Sec 117: $199. Okayyyy.

20 minutes later i queued for MSG, prayed and refreshed, refreshed right at <1min in the waiting room, got into the queue with only 258 people ahead of me. Entered, went right for 3 pit tix, got them on first try (!!!! PURE LUCK PLUS REFRESHING TIL MY FINGERS HURT) for $199ea and checked out breathing a gigantic sigh of RELIEF and gleeee.

Final thoughts:

this was my first REAL go-round for this; all my previous harry tickets (2019-2022) have been aftermarket purchases. $199 is not cheap but it is the cheapest Harry ticket I have purchased so far. I envy the twitter stans who can get aftermarket face value tix and not get scammed tbh, couldnt be me

Even if someone had an unlimited budget this process also requires the privilege of time/flexibility of schedule and just plain old LUCK

Sorry i cant share more insights into Chicago since TM really fucked me in making that sale the exact same time as Austin??? But by the time I logged in there seemed to be an extreme few amt of tickets left, and they also seemed more expensive than the Austin tix (but less so than MSG).

Austin venue is smallest (15K) with MSG being mid (20K) and United Center largest (23K) so thats a good thing to consider in terms of how close the seats are, etc

it is insane to me that a pit ticket and a mid lower bowl ticket are the same price, and a seat BETWEEN the two is over $1K. fuck dynamic pricing.

in the same fuck-dynamic-pricing vein: the equivalent mid lower bowl ticket that i got for $199 in Austin was $900 at MSG. Ugh.

it may mean nothing but i think continuously refreshing your TM screen while in the last ~1min of the waiting room has a chance to secure you a higher spot in the queue. could be wishful thinking. also ritualistic chanting seemed to help. kidding... or is it?

#i hope this helps #SOMEONE out there #i used all the nervous energy from the process to write this post #fuck ticketmaster #ticket stuff #also LOL that exactly during this process 5 more MSG shows were added #talk about manufactured scarcity sheeeeesh