Glossary: 30 Ticket Resale Terms Explained Simply

Reselling has its own vocabulary, and most of it is never explained — it is just used, in forum posts and payout statements, as though everyone already knows. Here are the thirty terms that come up most, grouped by where you meet them.

The market

Primary market — Where tickets are sold for the first time, by the organiser or their official ticketing agent. Prices here are set by the seller, not by supply and demand between fans.

Secondary market — Where tickets are resold by whoever bought them first. viagogo, StubHub and Gigsberg are the large European examples.

Onsale — The moment tickets go on general sale on the primary market. Usually a fixed date and time, usually with a queue.

Presale — Early access to tickets before the general onsale, granted to fan-club members, cardholders, venue subscribers or newsletter recipients. Normally requires a code.

Drop — A batch of tickets released after the original onsale: held-back stock, production seats, returns. Often unannounced, and one of the most overlooked sources of face-value inventory.

Listing depth — How many tickets are currently listed for an event on the secondary market. Read against venue capacity: 200 listings mean something different for a 1.500-capacity club than for a 60.000-seat stadium.

Get-in price — The cheapest available ticket for an event. The number quoted when people say “it’s trading at €90” — and the one your listing is measured against, whatever the seat quality.

Comp — Short for comparable: a listing or completed sale for a similar seat at a similar event, used as the reference point for what yours is worth.

Money and fees

Face value — The printed price set by the organiser, before any fees. In several countries it must be disclosed on resale listings.

All-in price — What the buyer actually pays, including the platform’s buyer fee. Frequently 20–40% above the asking price, which is why a listing that looks competitive to you may not to a buyer.

Seller commission — The percentage the marketplace deducts from your sale before paying you. Varies by platform, country and category.

Buyer fee — The percentage added on top of your asking price and paid by the buyer. It does not cost you anything directly, but it suppresses what buyers will pay you.

Payout — The money that reaches your account after commission. Marketplaces generally release it only after the event has taken place.

Break-even — The sale price at which you get your money back after commission. Always higher than what you paid, and the number most beginners fail to calculate before listing.

Dynamic pricing — Primary-market pricing that rises with demand during the onsale. It removes most of the gap that resellers rely on, and it means you may be buying at the top of the demand curve.

Sell-through — The share of listed tickets for an event that actually sell. Low sell-through with high listing depth is the classic profile of an event that will disappoint everyone holding it.

Tickets and delivery

E-ticket — A PDF you control and can send directly. The simplest thing to resell.

Mobile transfer — Delivery through the primary seller’s app or account system. You send the buyer a transfer; they need an account to accept it. Transfer is often only enabled shortly before the event.

Barcode — The scannable code that grants entry. A barcode alone is not proof of validity: it can be reissued, which is why buyers on reputable marketplaces are covered by a guarantee rather than trusting the image.

Personalised ticket — A ticket carrying the buyer’s name, sometimes checked against ID at the door. Usually requires a formal name change and often cannot be resold at all.

Hard ticket — A physical ticket, posted or collected. Rare now, and slow enough that late sales become difficult.

Will call / box office collection — Tickets collected at the venue, typically with ID matching the original purchaser. Effectively impossible to resell cleanly.

GA — General admission: standing or unreserved seating. No seat numbers, so all GA tickets for an area are interchangeable — which makes them easier to price and harder to differentiate.

Restricted view — Seats with the stage partly obscured. Must be disclosed; priced well below equivalent unrestricted seats.

Split — How a multi-ticket listing may be broken up. “No singles” prevents a sale that leaves you with one unsellable seat in the middle of a row.

Buying, selling and risk

Speculative listing — Listing tickets you do not yet own, expecting to source them later. Prohibited by most marketplaces, and the fastest route to a non-delivery penalty.

Undercutting — Repricing just below the current cheapest listing to take the next sale. Effective once; corrosive when everyone does it, because it drags the whole event’s price down.

Delisting — Removing a listing, usually because the tickets sold elsewhere. If you list across several marketplaces, doing this reliably and quickly is the whole job.

Non-delivery penalty — What a marketplace charges when you cannot supply tickets you sold: the cost of replacing them for the buyer, plus a penalty on top. Routinely larger than the value of the sale.

DAC7 — The EU reporting rules under which online marketplaces pass seller data to tax authorities once you exceed fairly low thresholds. Relevant the moment reselling becomes regular rather than occasional.

Where to go next

Terms are the easy part. What to do with them is covered in the complete beginner’s guide, the selection decision in seven criteria for finding events worth reselling, and the numbers in an honest calculation of what reselling returns.

If you want to see listing depth, get-in prices and sell-through for your own events rather than looking them up one at a time, that is what TickSights does across viagogo, StubHub and Gigsberg.

General information, not legal or tax advice. Platform terminology varies slightly between marketplaces.