When tickets went on sale last year, I picked up 2 tickets in the nosebleeds with the plan of going to Toronto and binging on hockey with my buddy who lives there. Well, I never got the time off work, but I figured no problem I will just sell the tickets on stubhub for a profit. I've done it before. Long story short... I paid $3100 CDN for 2 nosebleed tickets in the purples for all 16 games and I sold those 16 games for $1800 CDN after conversion. And I got lucky with a few of them, selling right before value dropped. So I lost $1300. If it goes to a 17th game (if Europe manages to win one) then I pay another $200 and might make $200 more maybe. Not going to help much. Now you'd think I'd be upset, but I totally am not. First of all, $1300 is not a huge deal and I've won and lost more money than that many times over. In actuality, I am grateful and here is the real climax of this thread...........
Today I was talking to my brother in law who lives in Ottawa and he said that he knew a guy who had taken out a HELOC (line of credit on his house) in Ottawa that he works with and bought 100 tickets to the world cup in various sections for almost $300,000. He said that when this guy did it, he was bragging to everyone that he was going to sell the tickets for 2x the price and managed to convince a lot of other people in the office to buy tickets. Apparently almost everyone in the office bought 2 or 4 tickets based on this guy saying it was guaranteed money (my BIL didn't buy any, lucky...) The guy's justification was that it was "Toronto" and ticket prices would be "insane" and inventory extremely limited. He apparently thought he could double his money to $600,000 and pay back the HELOC and walk away with a cool $300k.
I asked my BIL how the guy feels now, and he said no one has heard from him and he called in sick all of last week. The week before that he was telling people that no worries, the final games would go for $1000 each and he would make back his money. Knowing what I know about the market, he will be lucky to get 50% of his money back because higher end seats are selling worse. So he lost probably $150,000. I wonder how many more people there are like him?
I guess the NHL is probably laughing all the way to the bank though, so I hope they made enough money
Today I was talking to my brother in law who lives in Ottawa and he said that he knew a guy who had taken out a HELOC (line of credit on his house) in Ottawa that he works with and bought 100 tickets to the world cup in various sections for almost $300,000. He said that when this guy did it, he was bragging to everyone that he was going to sell the tickets for 2x the price and managed to convince a lot of other people in the office to buy tickets. Apparently almost everyone in the office bought 2 or 4 tickets based on this guy saying it was guaranteed money (my BIL didn't buy any, lucky...) The guy's justification was that it was "Toronto" and ticket prices would be "insane" and inventory extremely limited. He apparently thought he could double his money to $600,000 and pay back the HELOC and walk away with a cool $300k.
I asked my BIL how the guy feels now, and he said no one has heard from him and he called in sick all of last week. The week before that he was telling people that no worries, the final games would go for $1000 each and he would make back his money. Knowing what I know about the market, he will be lucky to get 50% of his money back because higher end seats are selling worse. So he lost probably $150,000. I wonder how many more people there are like him?
I guess the NHL is probably laughing all the way to the bank though, so I hope they made enough money
