Ticketmaster Tickets No Resell Nor Transfer: How to Sell?

Here’s how to use Ticketmaster tickets that you can’t resell or transfer:

In some cases, you can sell the tickets on StubHub, but typically, this won’t work for non-transferable tickets.

You can sell these tickets on Vivid Seats and other marketplaces, although they might be less reliable.

You can also sell to friends or family by forwarding them the confirmation email.

So if you want to learn all about what to do with tickets not eligible for resale or transfer, then this article is for you.

Keep reading!

Ticketmaster Tickets No Resale Nor Transfer: What to Do?

What Is Ticketmaster?

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If you aren’t already familiar with Ticketmaster, we can take a few minutes to learn about how it works.

That will help inform the situation, why some tickets are harder to resell than others, and what you can do about it.

As a starting point, Ticketmaster is a digital company that specializes in selling tickets for events.

Concerts, comedy shows, 4th of July celebrations, and just about anything else that would want to sell tickets for attendance can use Ticketmaster.

Ticketmaster handles the process of making ticket purchases available online and all of the digital merchant stuff needed.

So, if you want to host an event, but you don’t want to learn about digital merchanting and financial security, you could partner with Ticketmaster.

They handle the technical stuff, and you run the event.

Because of this, Ticketmaster is widely used, and it’s easy to find online.

You can purchase tickets at the Ticketmaster site, and the event site, and on associated apps. 

How Do Ticketmaster Tickets Work?

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Knowing that you can buy tickets from Ticketmaster is one thing, but we also have to talk about how the tickets work.

When you make a purchase via Ticketmaster, you get a digital confirmation.

This is usually in the form of an email that is sent to whatever email address you provided to Ticketmaster.

The email includes the event details (like the time, date, and location) along with a verification of your purchase. 

The email also has a barcode and/or a QR code that you will need to get into most events.

Typically, when you attend the event, there will be people there to scan codes to confirm that tickets are real.

Depending on the type of the event, your email might also have seating details, parking information, and anything else you need to know.

It’s also worth noting that this information is sometimes split up into multiple emails.

But for all that we just discussed, emails are only part of the equation.

Ticketmaster keeps track of the digital tickets they sell internally.

In fact, you can have a Ticketmaster account, and it’s even possible to transfer, refund, or resell your tickets.

This all depends on the event itself and type of tickets (not all tickets are eligible for refund, resell, and/or transfer).

What’s interesting about this internal tracking feature is that it can automate the process of selling or transferring one of your tickets.

Let’s say you have a ticket to a concert, but something comes up so you can no longer attend.

You can give your ticket to a friend by using the digital transfer method available with Ticketmaster.

It’s quick and clean, and you don’t have to share your email with the friend to make it all work.

How Do You Sell Ticketmaster Tickets?

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If that sounds interesting or promising, then we can dig a little deeper into how it works.

To sell your ticket on Ticketmaster, you need to first log into your account.

You can look up your tickets on “My Events.”

In that section, you can browse for the specific ticket (or group of tickets) that you want to sell.

Once you find the ticket, you can click on the “Sell” button right next to it.

This will launch a process that allows you to resell the ticket via Ticketmaster.

It’s all pretty easy, and when the ticket is purchased, Ticketmaster will automatically handle the transfer.

When the ticket is sold, Ticketmaster will transfer the funds to you via the payment method you chose when you went through the prompts.

It’s all very simple, and we’re going through this process for one specific reason.

I’m showing you how the process normally works.

From here on out, we’re going to be looking at cases where you can’t do things this way.

We’re talking about tickets that are not eligible for resale in this way.

Why Can’t You Resell or Transfer Certain Ticketmaster Tickets?

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This leads to an obvious question.

Why are some tickets limited?

There are a lot of different justifications.

Some events want a little more certainty in how many seats are sold and how to manage the crowd.

Some shows are extremely wary of refunds and cancellations, so they take those options away.

In other cases, the event runners are trying to prevent people from buying all of the tickets online and then reselling them at a higher price.

The resale and transfer exclusions make it harder (but not impossible) to scalp tickets.

Some event runners do this as a way to try to keep things affordable and accessible for the fans who will attend.

It’s the same reason that many events limit how many tickets any one person can purchase.

If you can’t buy up a bunch of tickets to resell them, then the whole profit model of the scheme falls apart.

What Can You Do if You Can’t Use Your Ticketmaster Tickets? (4 Options)

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Despite all of the limitations that might be attached to your tickets, there are times when you can’t use them, and you want options.

Especially if they’re expensive tickets, you probably want to get some money back.

Reselling them sounds pretty nice, but there are exclusions that are supposed to make that impossible.

Not to worry, you still have options, and I’m going to show you the easiest and most reliable among them.

#1 StubHub

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StubHub is an online resource that is built specifically for reselling tickets.

Technically, it’s called a marketplace.

People use the site and/or app all the time to try to sell tickets they can’t use.

Plenty of people scalp tickets on the platform too.

You can actually use StubHub to sell Ticketmaster tickets that are not available for reselling.

The StubHub software makes it pretty easy.

You post the tickets at your desired price.

Someone then makes the purchase via StubHub.

You then transfer the tickets to them via Ticketmaster.

Let me make two notes really quickly:

  1. You are not selling the tickets via Ticketmaster, only transferring. As far as Ticketmaster knows, you’re giving away the tickets for free. That’s how you get around the resale limitation.
  2. I’m only discussing how this works with Ticketmaster tickets. There are other methods for tickets from other sources.

There’s a catch to this method, though.

StubHub won’t accept your tickets for resale if they are non-transferable.

Not eligible for resale and non-transferable are two separate categories, and StubHub does not have an automated way to overcome non-transferable tickets.

#2 Vivid Seats

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StubHub is probably the most popular marketplace to resell tickets.

Vivid is probably the second most popular.

The gist is the same as StubHub, but Vivid Seats is a little less regulated.

Because of that, there are ways to sell non-transferable tickets on Vivid Seats.

Basically, you’re going to use Vivid to handle the exchange of money.

Once it’s all done, you have to share the ticket information in your Ticketmaster email.

The email with your barcode and/or QR code has the key information.

As long as you provide that to the person who buys your tickets, it all works out.

Understanding this, Vivid requires you to upload that information in order to complete the sale.

The risk here is that people could lie and upload the wrong QR code.

It’s difficult for automated software to catch the simple ruse, and sometimes people get scammed.

But, you’re the seller, so it’s easy for you to upload the correct information and sell your tickets.

#3 Other Marketplaces

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There are other marketplaces besides Vivid and StubHub, but I’m not going to recommend any of them by name.

There’s an issue with going down this rabbit hole.

Other marketplaces provide different pros and cons, but as you get further away from the mainstream options, the risks associated with fraud and scams go up.

So, if you’re hurting for a way to unload some tickets, you can explore those extra options as you see fit.

#4 Friends and Family

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There’s also an option to sell your tickets the old-fashioned way: to someone you already know.

You can skip all of the online marketplaces from the start (or after other plans fail to work).

When you sell to someone you already know, you overcome a few trust issues from the start.

They can give you cash (or however you want to do the payment) for the tickets.

You can then forward them the confirmation email.

There is no digital middleman involved.

You’re trusting them to pay.

They’re trusting you to deliver.

Everything is a lot simpler, but there is one clear downside.

No matter how big your family or how popular you might be, the number of friends and family you have available to buy your tickets pales in comparison to the potential buyers on the digital marketplaces.

That’s why this is the last resort rather than the first recommendation.

But, when all other things fail, selling to a friend or family member is pretty easy.

Author

  • Theresa McDonough

    Tech entrepreneur and founder of Tech Medic, who has become a prominent advocate for the Right to Repair movement. She has testified before the US Federal Trade Commission and been featured on CBS Sunday Morning, helping influence change within the tech industry.