So you laid out some serious cash for good tickets to a popular event, but cannot go.
What’s the best way for you to avoid taking a loss?
You could try any number of ways to sell them - which may or may not work - and you might recover your costs, or a little more, or a little less.
If it is a really popular event, you can easily offer your tickets as a prize on a raffle pot and recover not only all of your ticket price, but possibly a pretty tidy extra bundle.
Suppose you paid $1,000 for 4 good tickets to a prime sporting event, but can’t go.
Here’s something you can do to salvage or even captalize on your situation
1. Host a raffle pot on FootbalPot.com.
For a sporting event like a football game, use a game earlier in the schedule of the same team that appears on your tickets. Usually the game immediately before your tickets’ game is a good choice as the basis of your pot. This attracts fans of that team as players and gives the winner(s) some time to make plans to attend the game. If you think you might need a month to fill all your squares, take that into consideration.
Since you have 4 tickets, set up your pot for two winners, each winner getting two tickets. Usually Hosts set up a pot for one winner on the half and one on the final. If you use a “one winner takes all” set up (final score only), you’ll want to use the “No Overtime” rule so that your players who draw tied numbers (like 6 and 6) have a fair chance to win.
If you paid $250 each for 4 tickets ($1,000 total), your squares need to go for $10 to break even. However, many players would be willing to pay $20 per square for a chance to win two tickets to a major event, which means the Host could take in $2,000 - a 100% profit!
2. Build a special list of players for your raffle pot.
Of course, you’ll want to fill all 100 squares. One good way to get plenty of help filling your squares quickly is to offer “key players” blocks of 10 squares for the price of 9.
A key player pays a lump sum for 9 squares and gets one square free. A key player can claim as many of those squares as they want, or they could sell any number of them to friends, family and coworkers. If you fill all your sqaures using key players who get 1 free sqaure out of 10, you absorb an expense of 10% of the pot’s total take for gettitng help with filling the squares – usually a very good trade!
Work with your key players to keep close track of all new players. Have your key players submit a list of emails of any new players they bring to the pot, or have key players direct new players to send you an email with a copy of the message to the key player in order to keep everything on the up&up.
Remember that every player’s email address must appear in the list of invited players to be authorized and invited to play.
NOTE: You may want to do this more than once! When you have Hosted this kind of raffle pot for prime tickets to a popular event, you have established a natural list of potential players for future events. You might even create a “club” of players who want to play regularly for a chance to get some really nice tickets to a hot sporting event or maybe a major concert.
As always, look before you leap. Check into local laws regarding this kind of pot before you proceed.