By Alex Szczesny, Marketing Director

Many people are surprised to find out that in addition to buying premium event tickets, VIP Seats can also help you sell your extra seats and earn a little bit of cash! Listing your seats in a worldwide marketplace can be intimidating and we understand that you may have some questions.  Let us put our nearly 20 years of experience to work for you!!!

To get started, click “Sell Tickets” in the upper right hand corner of the page, or call one of our ticket specialists right away at 1-800-371-6323.  You will of course want to get the most back for your extra seats, but it’s sometimes tough to know what to list them for.  This is where the personal touch of VIP Seats comes in handy!  You can either do your homework on our very own site, or speak to us in person/over the phone and we’ll give you a rundown of the market and honest opinions about how to ensure a quick, easy sale.

When listing your seats with VIP Seats you get MAXIMUM EXPOSURE! Instead of fiddling with one or a few websites, VIP Seats cannot only manage your listing (in terms of pricing) but we use our resources to get you on nearly every Ticket Website or Exchange in the World! With tons of exposure and a great list price, we can usually come through for our clients in a timely manner.

A full list of specific questions can be found here, or to get started, call our offices or fill out our form online.  We are confident VIP Seats can take the stress out of selling your tickets and with our quick payments; you’ll want to use us again and again!

By Ethan Brooks
Taken from Ticket News Tues 3/27/12

Twitter is a growing news source for people who are on the go. Customizable, portable, and to the point, users can stay up-to-date by "following" their favorite friends, celebrities, and companies, whose updates — limited to 140 characters — are delivered directly to a user's phone. Keeping up with friends is important, but Twitter can be leveraged as a work-horse too. In this case, to make sure you never miss a concert again. Whether you are a long-time concert lover, or are just getting into the music scene, use these tips to make sure you don't miss out on your favorite bands coming to town.

With more than a hundred-million users it's difficult to decide whom to follow. Too few people, and you risk missing important information, too many, and you can't possibly see it all. The key lies in finding the fewest, most important accounts, and becoming a loyal reader.

Follow Your Favorite Venues

Start with the basics: your local venues. Forget the places you swore you'd never go to again, and anywhere you wouldn't drive to on a half-hour's notice. Worried about missing your favorite artist's performance that's happening in the next state over? We'll get to that later. For now, choose just a few accounts, so that you can hear who is coming to town, receive reminders of when tickets go on sale, and get notified of cancellations and/or date changes.

Follow Your Favorite Radio Stations

Follow the station, not the individual shows. Station accounts will announce opportunities across the board, tweeting ticket sales, contests, and events that all of their radio personalities are hosting. On the other hand, individual show accounts usually only focus on fan interaction, and will clutter your newsfeed with anecdotes about that day's segments.

Follow Your Favorite Bands

Don't follow every artist on your iPod, just the ones you'd drive 3+ hours to see. For these, you qualify as a die-hard fan, so you'll appreciate the bonus info, like back-stage pictures, stories from the road, and television appearance announcements. Of course, your favorite artists' feeds also keep you posted on new tour dates and locations, so you'll know just when to fuel up the fan-van.

While you're at it, follow us @VIPSeats as well!

By Alex Szczesny, Marketing Director

Part of what makes the NCAA Tournament so special is the fact that anything can happen.  Any plucky underdog has a chance to knock off a top seed and make waves across the sporting world.  This is something unique to college sports, more so, the NCAA Basketball Tournament.  Part of the mystique is lost in professional sports when one team of millionaires “upsets” another group of millionaires.  In the off season, pro athletes can jump ship to other teams and with little to no loyalty, as men become glorified mercenaries.

Last weekend was a perfect example of “March Madness” as millions of Americans tore up their brackets and ended up cursing names they’ve never even spoke a week before like “Lehigh” and “Norfolk State.”  Should we really be surprised that top teams went down? Each spring a few 3 or 4-seeds go down as the “bracket busters” like George Mason or VCU come from nowhere.  With advances in coaching and training, there aren’t many differences between and national powerhouse and a mid-major school.  In fact with plenty of chances to see top teams on television each week, the smaller schools have an edge on scouting their tournament opponents. 

As we approach another weekend of upsets, favorites, and buzzer-beaters take a moment to reflect on the tournament as a whole.  Isn’t this what makes sports great?  Doesn’t everyone love the Cinderella story?  Aren’t we usually cheering for David to beat Goliath?

For as much as we cheer for the little guy, the big guy always wins in the end.  Ohio and Cincinnati (to a lesser extent) make a great early story but in the end we are talking about a team like Kentucky or Ohio State.  Tournament aside, the passion and emotion of the players are what make NCAA sports great.  When watching this weekend, keep in mind most of these kids are playing for the love of the game and very few will move on to the pros.  It’s that passion at the end of the season that makes it all worthwhile for them. 

By Alex Szczesny, Marketing Director

When Terry Pegula took over the Buffalo Sabres last February, he made an immediate impact both on and off the ice.  Pegula spared no expensie on improving his team, their facilities and even his fans relationship with the club. 

Within weeks of the purchase, new Sabres President Ted Black announced the “Sabres Suggestion Box,” which was an online forum where fans were allowed to make suggestions on everything related to the Blue & Gold.  Fans shared their input on everything from game experience, arena improvements and even what food items they wanted to see at the concession stands.

As the Sabres climbed the standings, the good feelings in Western New York reached a peak with “Fan Appreciation Night” as the team celebrated by inviting every alumnus from the past 40 seasons to make an appearance.  Both Pegula and Black stressed that they wanted to involve alumni more with the fans in the future.  I was lucky enough to have such an experience last night. 

The Sabres have been reaching out to fans more with social media this season.  The Sabres run fan photo contests on Facebook and even accept song requests through Twitter.  Prior to the 3/12 contest vs Montreal, the Sabres offered fans the chance to meet former player and TSN analyst Brad May.  I sent a tweet and didn’t expect much in return.  Imagine my surprise when I received a message back informing me to meet by account services one hour before the game.

Meeting Brad May meant a lot to me personally as I was a fan of his growing up.  As a little kid, his “May Day” goal made huge a huge impression on me as much as his aggressive attitude and crazy fights.  My first year of hockey, I even chose #27 because of Brad May.  After being escorted through the bowels of First Niagara Center, a group of about 30 of us were corralled into an open area near the visitor’s locker room.  We saw up-and-coming defenseman PK Subban of Montreal warming up just  prior to May’s arrival.

I can’t say enough about Brad May’s interaction with the fans.  May accommodated everyone’s request for autographs and pictures while making small talk and hearing everyone’s stories.  You can just tell when people are being genuine and he could not have been happier to be there.  I relayed my story of picking #27 and how I tried kissing my stick for luck (as May did before his goal) to no avail.  Brad May laughed and told me that he signed my hat with #27 especially for me because of my story.  I got a picture with him and I thought that was the end of my VIP Sabres experience.

Anybody that knows me and my love of the Buffalo Sabres is aware that I believe Doug Allen is the best anthem singer in the league.  He has a great voice, gets through the anthems quick and I cannot get enough of “The Point” after he’s done.  I was in disbelief when before being led up the elevator back to the 100 level, who should walk in the side entrance but Mr. Doug Allen!  Beside myself with excitement, I was able to nab a picture and even an autograph qucikly.  Again, I can’t say enough about how nice Doug Allen was to everyone.  Here is a regular guy just doing his job, and he seemed taken aback that many people love him and what he does.

I want to thank the Sabres for going above and beyond with their fans and allowing people like myself the chance to meet someone they watched growing up.  I love the interaction from the organization and its players with their fan base this year.  It says a lot about how much this community embraces the team and how the team is going out of its way to embrace us back.  I attended my first Sabres game before I was even a year old and my whole life has been interwoven with Sabres hockey.  Now with most of my Sabres bucket list crossed off, the only things to do now are to throw a cap onto the ice for a hat trick, meet Terry Pegula and celebrate a Stanley Cup win!!!

by Nick Giammusso

Once upon a time in the mid 80's I helped run a ticket office inside the lobby of the old Buffalo Memorial Auditorium.  Pate Ticket Ageny took over empty space across the hall from the Buffalo Sabres.  The Buffalo Braves and Stallions once used the space as their box office back in the day.  I quickly realized why a box office was called a box office.  Our new digs offered cramped space with no windows to the outside world.  

In those early days, buying and selling tickets was primitive.  There were no computers that kept track of inventory.  Tickets were all pre-printed from a local printer, organized in racks, and when sold, the seats were pulled and filled one by one.

Our ticket office ran as efficiently as it could without the use of today's technology of course.   The business model back then was sell the tickets and ship them out the door.  We were not able to provide great customer service like we can today.  God forbid a client walked up to the window with tickets they couldn't use.