If I had a dollar for every time someone told me “I was on Ticketmaster right when the show went on sale at [insert any time], but it was already sold out!” I’d be a very rich man.  The problem is, you thought you were on Ticketmaster right when the event went on sale, but you were probably actually there a couple minutes later. 

One of the most common mistakes of amateur ticket pullers is that they assume the time on their phone, clock, watch, computer, etc are all the same time as Ticketmaster’s on sale system.  This obviously can’t be the case because nearly everyone’s time pieces are slightly different, and over time, they almost always lose track of the accurate time (even if you set it just a few weeks ago).  The best way to time exactly when Ticketmaster releases tickets during an event on sale is to follow the steps listed below. 

1. About 5 or 10 minutes before your desired event goes on sale, go to Ticketmaster.com, search for your event, and navigate to the event on sale page.  Before the event goes on sale, it will display the following message: “Tickets are currently not available online for one of the following reasons. Please check back for availability.”

• Note: On sale times listed on Ticketmaster always reflect the time zone where the event is taking place.  For example, if a concert is taking place in New York and the on sale time is listed as 10:00 AM EDT but you are located in California, you need to realize that 10:00 AM EDT is 7:00 AM PDT in California and that the event goes on sale for you at 7:00 AM. 

2. Open a new internet browser tab or window and navigate to www.time.gov which lists the official U.S. time. This is the time that Ticketmaster’s system uses to set the on sale times for events.  Click on the U.S. map to select the appropriate time zone for the event that you’re buying tickets for.  The site will now show you the official time.

3. Three to five seconds before the official time that the event goes on sale, switch back to the Ticketmaster event on sale page and refresh the page (you can click the refresh button on your browser, or a faster method is to either hit the ‘f5’ button on your keyboard, or hit ‘ctrl + r’ to refresh the page).  Continue to refresh the page every two seconds until the page changes from the “Tickets are currently not available…” page, to the page that allows you to select the number of tickets you want and the seat locations.  Once that page comes up, quickly make your selection and click on the ‘Find Tickets” button.

• Note: Do not refresh the page more than every two seconds.  If you do, Ticketmaster will think that you’re an automated program trying to cheat their system and they will block you from the on sale.  Be calm, refresh the browser, and if the event isn’t yet showing as on sale, count “one one thousand, two one thousand” and refresh the page again.  Don’t freak out if the tickets don’t show as available until a few seconds after the official time – occasionally it takes Ticketmaster a few seconds to push the on sale changes out to all of their servers.

This is a pretty basic tactic, but one that the average ticket buyer often overlooks.  Now go get your tickets!