 So I sold a total of 2,997 tickets in 2021. That's a pretty good number, but that turns into sale of... What's up, guys? Welcome back. My name is Trez. Here on Thumbs Up, we're going to be talking about buying tickets, selling tickets, making sure that you have all fun with your tickets. We're going to be talking about my 2021 year in terms of how many tickets I actually sold and how much money I actually made. I used to just leave little tidbits here and there in different videos talking about specific events, how they did, specific teams, maybe how I've done with them in the past. But I've never talked about how much I've actually made in a full year, but I've tallied it all up for you guys, so I figured this would be the time to do so. Really, I'm just trying to be transparent about everything I do. It's not because I want to brag about how well I've done or anything like that. It's really more just to kind of give you insight into how the economics actually work for a small-time ticket buyer, and then also to kind of inspire you to see, you know, is this something that you might actually want to consider doing yourself? I do want to make it clear, though, that, again, this has taken me many, many years to get to this point. I started way back in 2013 selling my first pair of tickets, and then it's kind of grown since that point all the way until now. So it's been over seven years of me growing my ticket base year after year, so that's kind of where we're getting to at this point. There's definitely a lot of hard work involved. There's definitely some luck involved. But if you put in the time and effort, there's definitely a possibility to go ahead and make similar-style numbers. Though that being said, though, I do want to lay out a couple of ground rules. One, I'm going to be listing everything in USD. I personally am in Canada, so I will be reporting on my taxes in Canadian dollars, but for the purpose of this video, a lot of my viewers are in the U.S., so it kind of makes it a bit easier to make it, you know, understandable across the board. And number two, I'm going to break it out monthly. So each month, you're going to see how much I made in terms of ticket sales, how much those tickets cost, and how much I actually spent on buying new tickets that month. Enough of the rambling. Let's talk numbers. So in January, it was an amazing month. I sold a total of two tickets. I sold two tickets, total revenue on that $2,412. Now, there is one thing to mention. I actually spent a total of $2,200 on those tickets, but I made a little error. I made a mistake. What happened was I sold some tickets to the College Football National Championship and I had a pack of four seats, but I sold them as a pair of two and two. Unfortunately, I couldn't sell them that way because there were social distancing rules in place. So had I sold those two seats together and then sold the other two seats together, I would have run into a big problem where one or both of the buyers could have come back saying, hey, these seats were not socially distanced. I want my money back. And they would be completely in the right. So what I ended up doing, I ended up selling the pair of seats. I ended up not selling the other two tickets, so I just ate that cost. But in the end, we still made a total of $212 net. So not too shabby. In the month as well, I bought a total of four tickets and they were those same ones. Spent a total of $2,200. Now February was even more exciting than January. I sold a total of zero tickets. Bought zero tickets, sold zero tickets, nothing happened. There is no activity whatsoever. I will mention the Super Bowl did occur in February, but I unfortunately do not own any Super Bowl seats. But I unfortunately had to stay on the sidelines. Now March is where things start to get a little more exciting. So let's start off on the ticket purchase site. How much did I actually buy in the month? So in March, I bought a total of 76 tickets where I paid $1,804. That's how much it cost me to buy all those seats. Most of them were MLB related. MLB at this point had decided that they would be opening up their venues back to getting some people in the stands and it would be socially distanced and limited seat capacity. So quite a few restrictions in place for those who could attend. But for the ones who could attend, they were able to actually start going to go and see some sports. So people were excited to say the least. At this time, I didn't quite know what to expect in terms of who was going to be going, how many people would be going, what kind of prices things would be selling for. So I was a little hesitant at the start. And even Toronto Blue Jays, they still weren't going to be playing at home. They were still playing out in Dunedin. So there was quite a bit of fear in the marketplace. So I committed a little bit in terms of buying some MLB seats, but I didn't go too hard. However, that was a mistake on my part. I sold them a total of 52 tickets in March for a grand total of $7,003. That's how much I made in sales. Ticket cost on those seats $1,236. Net of $5,767 in that month alone. Yes, you get the bump for home openers and baseball every year, but the amount of demand that there was for these seats, it was just mind-boggling off the charts. I've never seen anything like it before and likely will never see anything like that ever again. So had I committed even more, that number could have been much higher. But just seeing that kind of gave me an idea of like, okay, maybe people are really ready to get back in action. And I knew that next month I wasn't going to make the same mistake again. So now we're getting to Q2, April. April, we sold 118 tickets for a grand total of $10,318 in ticket sales. Those tickets came to a cost of $3,808, netting $6,510 for that month. Bulkers, absolutely bulkers. So in that month as well I bought another 230 tickets for a total of $14,106. So I was committing to buying more and more tickets. Of those 230 tickets though, I only bought one pair to the biggest actor that month, Bad Bunny. There was some crazy demand for once tickets actually started going on sale and they hit the resale market. Those $40, $50, $60 seats were going for anywhere from $150 to $350 or more and even higher as you got onto the floor. It was madness. I didn't know who he was. I don't know any about his type of music. So it was a completely new learning experience for me and I completely, completely, completely missed out on a huge opportunity. But overall month still went very, very well. Moving on into May, we sold another 203 tickets for a total of $38,457. Those tickets came at a cost of $20,036, netting $18,421 for the month. In that month again, ticket purchases were up. I bought another 548 seats for a total of $40,842 spent on new inventory. Now May had a lot of exciting things going on. Garth Brooks went back on sale, Billy Eilish went back on sale NFL schedule was released that month. Toronto Blue Jays, they were going up to Salem Field in Buffalo. So those tickets were going on sale. That was another monster event when those were announced. All crazy things were going on this month. So I was just buying, buying, buying, buying, buying, non-stop because there was just too much action to catch on to. The other thing I started noticing more in May was the seating of its vaccinated and non-vaccinated seating. So vaccinated seating, they had no social distancing whatsoever and the non-vaccinated seating, those were still socially distanced. As the months were going on, you kind of gained the idea that hey, maybe they're going to be starting to enforce more of these vaccination rules in the future, but at this time it was still, you know, you had the option because again, getting vaccines at that point was still a little difficult. But with all that was going on in May, there was still one event that was by far 100% the best event of the entire month and maybe even the entire year. NHL Playoffs. Toronto Maple Leafs. Montreal Canadiens. They got matched up first round. They hadn't played each other in many, many years and this game, game six, Montreal decided, hey, we're going to allow 2,500 people into the stands to go and see that game. Up to this point, no NHL games have been played in Canada at all at this point, so this was going to be huge. We're talking about playoffs, we're talking about, you know, moving on to the second round implications. We're talking about two Canadian rivalries, madness. And back in December 2020, I ended up just getting through the waiting list so I was able to actually get some seeds for round one for the Montreal Canadiens. How much did I make for them? Got away to the end to see that total. But let me tell you, it was huge. Moving on into June, I sold another 110 tickets for a total of $13,847. Those tickets cost me $7,284 netting $6,562 for the month. Also in that month, I bought another 116 tickets. Total cost $12,862. This was another awesome month. Bruce Springsteen announced a whole bunch of new dates I was able to capitalize on. Montreal Canadian Playoff Tickets, that was still in run because they somehow managed to win in the first round and the second round and the third round. Wildness. Honestly, completely unexpected. Then we continue on to Toronto Blue Jays and Buffalo continued their amazing success in terms of ticket sales. Everything together is just insane. And also though, another change that we started seeing MLB teams were moving to adding more capacity, higher attendance. Slowly we all started seeing the move towards more vaccinated seats, so a lot of changes were taking place. End of Q2, we're moving into Q3. Started in July. In July, I sold a total of 200 tickets for a total of $20,319. Those tickets cost me $13,338 for a net of $6,981 for that month. July also spent quite a bit, a bunch of new tickets, $334 to be exact, for $24,362. Both the NHL and NBA were having their finals this month so those both wrapped up. I was able to get some Stanley Cup finals tickets. I was able to get some NBA finals tickets. The Rolling Stones also announced a bunch of tours that month. Metallica announced a bunch of new dates and the Toronto Blue Jays were finally coming back to Toronto. Home opener was there. You can go check out the video where I actually went back to that first home opener, first game in almost 600 bajillion days or whatever it was. It was not quite what I was expecting. They only had 15,000 people in the stands, but it was still still one. They won, which is always awesome. And two, it was the return of something that we hadn't seen in basically two full years. So it looked like things were in moving in the right direction and we're going to start seeing more and more events getting announced, going on sale, and making a ton of money for the rest of that year. So in August, things were still rolling on. I sold another 319 tickets for a total of $30,754. Those tickets cost $18,442 for a net of $12,312 in this month. That's a lot, a lot of money, a lot, a lot of money. I bought another 509 tickets for a total of $30,292. In this month, I actually identified an event that might have potential for a three to five extra turn. So I decided to go hard at this bet and I spent over $16,000 just securing tickets for the entire run of that production. The rest of this month is just about selling tickets for the NFL, CFL, college football, MOB tickets, and then even seeing more and more new concerts going up on sale. At this point, all systems are a go. It's just a matter of trying to keep up with everything that's happening, seeing what's going on sale, buying those tickets, selling those tickets, and just trying to keep up with the demand. As we roll into September, another 208 tickets got sold for a total of $26,653. I bought another 289 tickets that month for $16,536. This month, I also had a bunch of major things going on sale. There's Tool, San Minha, Trevor Noah, Boo Fighters, it was just one after the other. Also, I was in Vancouver for a week and a half visiting some family, so I also lost a bit of time there, but I was out there still able to manage some Luke Holmes tickets for some of his Canadian dates. Also this month, I started my ticket discord group links down below. If you guys are interested, it is an opportunity for you to also buy along with me, see what I'm buying, see what I'm interested in, and getting some insight into what to buy next. Now it was a lot of work, but now we're getting into Q4, the big push for the end of the year. We're into October. October, we sold a total of 396 tickets for sales of $44,160. We're getting some really big numbers now. I bought another 668 tickets this month for a total of $45,337. This was another big month for Ontario because the government finally announced that they could open up indoor venues to 100% seating capacity. As I made NHL was back on, NBA was back on, all those great invets indoors were going to be taking place in Ontario. I was able to renew a bunch of my NHL tickets, NBA seats, also a ton of concerts were going on, cold play, red hot chili peppers, and my personal favourite, MLB playoffs. Love me some MLB playoffs. Those again, great, great buys. And there's one other thing I noticed actually is that tickets in Ontario, the demand for them was not quite the same as it was in separate markets in the US of A. Toronto Maple Leafs historically don't have many season seats come up for sale, let alone many individual seats for the regular season. So it was a surprise to me when I got an email from my account manager saying, hey, we're selling half season seats for the Toronto Maple Leafs. Are you interested? And I'm thinking I saw, yes, yes I am interested. And as I was looking, I was able to buy four seats for their blue package, four seats for their white package, every single game of the entire season. So obviously I wouldn't bought them, but I just was a little taken aback thinking to myself, you know, this is not generally a normal thing because there's too many people who want these seats, there's always so much demand for them, so what's going on? So you could see even in the resale market for Toronto Maple Leafs tickets, yes, there was that huge premium, but that premium was not quite as large as it used to be in the past, and there was even more availability than normal. There are no complaints whatsoever. I'm going to enjoy those half season seats. Oh, also, also, have you heard of this BTS? Well, they also went on sale this month, a huge worldwide phenomenon as always, and I had 0.00 tickets. I actually personally didn't even bother trying because I just know how insanely crazy it is to buy BTS tickets. I don't want to be on the wrong side of those fans, so I didn't even touch it. You could see the prices that some of these seats were going for, you bought them for 80 bucks, you sold them for $700, it's wild, okay? Last thing that happened this month is when I bought those Bruno Mars tickets, but more on that in a little bit. Now, November, this was by far the biggest month I had the entire, entire year. Total sales and tickets, $779. Total dollars in tickets sold $82,781. Ticket cost $56,547. Net of $26,234, so it was a massive, massive month. I cannot understand how massive this month was. In terms of tickets purchased, I bought another $2,204 seats for a total of $102,302. This was the first month ever in my entire life where I spent over $100,000 buying new tickets. That is a lot of inventory. So, what happened this month? Well, first off, Morgan Wallen. Oh my goodness, this was wild. Morgan Wallen was, I don't even know how to explain it. So, you know how I saw a bad buddy back in March? Well, I wasn't gonna make that same mistake again, so I went all in on Morgan Wallen. Sale after sale after sale from Morgan Wallen, it was just non-stop. You could basically buy almost anything in the building and you were gonna see some massive, massive returns almost instantly. The rest of the year was a lot of MLB renewals and I was even able to purchase some Chicago Cubs season seats. I had been waiting almost 7 years for these seats, so it was a bit of a surprise when that call finally came in. But I heard the call and I bought. Lastly, December. I sold another 538 tickets for $62,617. Those tickets cost me $42,240 for a net of $20,377. Wow. That's a big wow. Also, ticket purchases 260 new tickets for a total of $29,291. Big one for December that I do want to mention though, Adele. Adele was probably by far the wildest event of this year. See, prices start somewhere like $200, like $1,500, and then you were seeing them resold from anywhere from $1,500 to $10,000 plus. It was bonkers, wild, crazy, just absolutely nuts. People were paying anything and everything for them. And, you know, I don't know what else to say. Other events that were on the sales month, Iron Maiden, John Mulaney, Dave Chappelle had a bunch of shows. So those were a lot of the things that kind of kept me busy buying this month. Unfortunately though, this was also the month where I went to Las Vegas for Bruno Mars and where I lost over $1,600. If you guys are curious about that video, go ahead, take a look in the description. I left a link there. You can kind of go see it all. Get sad with me. It's, it's a depressing story, but it happened. So what to do? All in all, though, this was a monumental year in many ways. One, the way it started off, it could have easily gone the way in 2020 where I actually lost money in the year. But in the end, it ended up actually being one of my best years ever. The way social distancing worked at the beginning, all the demand that was there for events going on, and then just the volume, the sheer volume of amount of events that went on sale to be sold, there was a lot of opportunity to make a ton of money this year. So I'm very grateful for how it all kind of turned out in that regard. Now, I do put an asterisk on this month specifically and even going back a couple of months with the new variant. It is causing cancellations and postponements across all these different leagues and concerts and venues. So it is becoming a problem in terms of whether those events will actually take place. I try my beliefs out of Senators, Toronto Raptors. They've already announced that a bunch of their events have either been postponed or cancelled. So a lot of sales that took place for those events are going to have to get refunded unfortunately because they're just not going to take place. So with the full year totals, let's summarize, shall we? So I sold a total of $2,997 tickets in 2021. That's a pretty good number. But that turns into sale of $339,321. That's a lot of money. That's very, very good year. I was really surprised to be honest. It turned out the way it did. In the year I bought $5,238 tickets for a total of $319,934 spent. So a couple of things I want to mention as well. One, this was an anomaly type of situation this year. I don't think it will ever be replicated ever again quite with these type of situations and circumstances so I was able to capitalize on what occurred in the year. So that's the first thing. So don't expect these ever to continue every single year. Number two, like I mentioned already, cancellations were not taken into account with the totals at hand. As events are canceled, some of these sales will have to get refunded. So some of these numbers may not actually be the final true total. So it might get reduced a little bit as well. Number three, the other main one is that I did not factor any of my expenses with purchasing these tickets. Yes, I have the ticket costs themselves. I also factored in the sales commissions that are associated with these sales. But it doesn't pick up any of the costs associated with fan clubs, with travel, subscription costs, processing fees, anything like that. There are quite a few expenses that I do have to operate this business. So none of that is factored in. Give this video a like or comment down below. Let me know if that's all you guys are interested in. And lastly, number four, I do need to pay taxes on this number. So again, this number will be brought down even further once all that is filed and paid. Now, another thing, what was the absolute best one-off event that you had in the entire season where you made the most amount of money? As you might have already guessed, it was the Toronto Maple Leafs versus the Montreal Canadiens Game 6 at home in Montreal. I had four tickets available. Total of those four tickets combined, net me a profit of $2,995. Think about that. Four tickets turned into a profit of basically $3,000. That's $750 per ticket on average. That is wow. Restricted events, great rivalry, haven't seen hockey in a year and a half. Everything was working for it, so in the end it ended up being a very, very profitable event for the entire year. On the flip side, worst event of the year, unfortunately as you may have already guessed, Bruno Mars. Need I say more? $1,600 loss. Yeah, that is. I'm not going to talk about anymore. You can go ahead and see that video and learn all about it. It's too depressing for me to talk about again. You guys can check it out for yourself. Biggest surprise of the year, I would say, was just the speed of which people started to flock back to events. When the MLB announced that they would be doing limited attendance and socially distanced seating, I didn't think too much of it at that time. So when things did end up going on sale again, I didn't know what to expect, honestly. And the amount of demand that was there to go back to see those games was, again, mind boggling. Absolutely blew me out of the water. Did not expect that whatsoever. Definitely the biggest surprise of the entire year. In terms of missed opportunities, I would say it was a lot of those verified fan seats. Obviously, you have the BTS and the Adele's and the Olivia Rodrigues and there's so many that go on all the time. Hard to catch every single one and get verified every single time. So if you are able to get through on those verified fan pre-sales, generally you'll do very, very, very well. But on the other hand, if you miss out, it's not the end of the world. There's always going to be another one down the road. But there's a lot in terms of missed opportunities if you don't get through some of those verified sales because you just can't get tickets any other way. Well, I mean, you can buy them on the resale market, but besides the point. Definitely have a comment down below if you guys saw some tickets this year as well. Let me know what your best events were, what your worst events were and something new that you learned. I'm always curious to hear what you guys have to say, so definitely let me know down below. So with that being said, be sure to hit like button down below. Also be sure to subscribe. Have an already great new content every single week. See you guys next time.