How to get good seats at a concert?

[TheCaddy]

I’ve tried my best on ticketmaster and the like. I’ve bought cds to get early release tickets but always fail to get a good seat.

As an example, last Thursday was a Take That. Bought the cd to get early tickets at £70 each. Ended up about 8 rows from the very back
with a great view of the rigging rather than the screens or them. When they came over to the second stage we couldn’t see them at all.

So those who end up in the good seats, how do you do it?

Fan club membership/vip tickets/queuing for hours for standing gigs. Better off going to smaller gigs rather than the arenas. I've been front row many times, sometimes it's luck, the odd time it's been buying tickets released on the day - unsold vips or similar.

Op, one of Take That's 2019 concert's is being shown live around the country in various cinemas. The tickets will be a fraction of what you'd pay at the actual concert and you'll see far more on the screen.

Superfast broadband.

Have a seating plan of the venue/venues you want to go to.

Have accounts with all the ticket agencies not just ticketmaster - they all get different allocations.

On the day tickets go on sale be online early. Have multiple windows open and logged on to your accounts.

Make yourself familiar with all the screens you have to go through to buy tickets. Do a dummy run for tickets for someone else the day before so that you know what you are doing. On the day - you need to be literally clicking on the link to buy the instant it appears and type fast. We are talking nano seconds here. Have your bank card already registered to you account so you don't accidentally put in the wrong number and loose your seat

And never panic buy a rubbish seat. You really need to be familiar with the seating plan. Know where you want to sit and how the seat rows run. It's no use being near the front if you are on the end seat and you can't see a thing. If the seats are bad - let them go and try again. Better seats will almost certainly magically appear after the rubbish ones have sold. There is no knowing when the best seats are going to be released for sale - you just have to keep looking. Even if it says sold out.

Presales seats are often not the best ones. Sometimes the best seats come available a day or two before the concerts. Sometimes whole front rows appear literally days before the concert. You really do have to keep checking all the ticket sites several times a day.

Oh and enter lots of competititons
Good luck!

Don’t get the seats through the exclusive fan pre-sale! They only put certain areas for sale in these times which actually limits the choice and I’ve always ended up with worse seats through these.

So, ready to join the queue on every device you have before the general release time, hit the Buy button as the clock ticks over. Preload your card details into Ticketmaster before hand so you don’t panic about getting these in whilst the timer is ticking. If you get allocated a bad seat, don’t be afraid to drop them and select others a few times.

Also sounds like you need to go up a price bad, only the cheapest seats will mean you lose sight of the band for some of the show; in arenas like the o2 you need to go for tier 1. This is not flat on the floor, it’s the first set of tiered seats. Have sat all around this level and never been disappointed with the view.

I have been buying tickets for 30 odd gigs a year for many years and have seen some really in demand artists; Take That x 9, Queen x 5, CarFest, Taylor Swift etc.