Anyone who has bought tickets on Ticketmaster.com has seen the ticket limits listed for most events. Many concerts, games, or other events have max ticket limits of 2, 4, 6, or 8 tickets which are intended to prevent ticket brokers and other buyers from purchasing large blocks of tickets, thus theoretically allowing more fans to buy tickets to hot events. Fortunately for ticket sellers, Ticketmaster’s ticket limits can easily be exceeded.

The standard Ticketmaster warning is as follows:

“Please adhere to published ticket limits. Persons who exceed the ticket limit may have any or all of their orders and tickets cancelled without notice by Ticketmaster in its discretion. This includes orders associated with the same name, e-mail address, billing address, credit card number or other information.”

Despite these warnings, in reality Ticketmaster only checks against the following two pieces of information:

1. Credit card number(s)
2. Address(es)

The following scenarios explain situations where Ticketmaster WILL cancel your order:

Say the ticket limit for an event is 4 tickets. If you buy 4 tickets in two separate orders (total of 8 tickets) and place the orders on the same credit card, the second order that you placed will be cancelled. Ticketmaster says they reserve the right to cancel all orders, but it has never happened to me or any other broker that I know.

Same thing for the address. If you buy 4 tickets in two separate orders (total of 8 tickets) using two different credit cards with the same billing address, the second order will be cancelled.

So how do I get around this?

1. Sign-up for multiple credit cards. I had 5 credit cards when I was an active broker, but 2 or 3 should be fine. Debit cards are fine too.

2. Set the billing address for each card as a unique address. The address can be any secure place that you can receive mail (the tickets and billing statements will be shipped there). A few ideas of addresses to use are your home address, work address, addresses of trustworthy friends/relatives, your school address, a P.O. box, etc.

3. Go into your Ticketmaster.com account and enter each credit card and corresponding billing address. You would think that Ticketmaster would check for multiple orders exceeding the ticket limit within a single Ticketmaster account, but don’t worry, they don’t. Again, I had 5 credit cards listed under a single Ticketmaster account for years, ordered thousands of tickets (many exceeding the limits) and never had a problem.

4. When you place multiple orders for an event on Ticketmaster.com, just select the different credit cards on the billing page during each purchase and you’re all set.

It’s easy to be intimidated by the posted warnings about how Ticketmaster will cancel your order, but if you follow the steps listed above, you’ll be fine. This little trick helped make me thousands more dollars than I would have without knowing; hopefully it helps you.