Venues offer presales as a powerful tool to build a direct relationship with their most loyal local customers. By maintaining their own email and SMS lists, they create a dedicated marketing channel that is far more cost-effective than broad public advertising. It allows them to reward patrons, build community loyalty, and ensure that people who frequent their establishment get the first opportunity to buy tickets. These presales also help the venue and promoters gauge ticket demand early on and can create initial sales momentum that helps sell out the show.

This is the most critical rule of venue presales: you must be on the list before the presale is announced. When a show is confirmed, the venue's marketing team will collect their current list of subscribers to send the presale information to. If you sign up after that cutoff, you will be on the list for future shows, but you will almost certainly miss the presale for the event you're interested in.

If this has happened to you and you need a presale password today find the event in our database of todays presales WITH codes or use the search box to find what you're looking for and get going!

The best strategy is to proactively visit the websites of your favourite local venues and sign up for their newsletters and SMS alerts today so you are prepared for next time - or just use our service instead.

No, and that's the key convenience of this method. Unlike some artist-specific "Verified Fan" sales that require you to register your interest for each tour, a venue presale is based on your general subscription. Once you have joined a venue's email newsletter or SMS list, you don't need to do anything else. You are automatically eligible for all relevant presales they offer, and the codes and links will be sent to you without any further action required on your part.

This is an extremely common issue, and the culprit is usually your spam or promotions folder. Because venues often use third-party services like Ticketmaster to distribute their marketing emails, your email provider (like Gmail or Outlook) can get confused. It might see an email sent from a Ticketmaster address about a show at a local venue and flag it as promotional or even junk. Always make sure to check your spam and promotions tabs thoroughly on the morning a presale code is due. A pro tip is to add the venue's contact email and a generic address like guestservices@ticketmaster.com to your email contacts to increase the chances of it landing in your main inbox.

The easiest way is to go directly to the venue's official website. Look for links that say "Join Our Newsletter," "Sign Up for E-Updates," or "Concert Club." This is where you can enter your email address. Increasingly, venues are also offering SMS (text message) lists, which are excellent for getting instant alerts that bypass email filters. You may also be presented with an option to join the list when you are in the process of buying tickets for another show at that same venue.

Access is granted exclusively to fans who have proactively subscribed to the venue's marketing list, either through email or SMS. It is not tied to your purchase history or how "big" of a fan you are. This makes it one of the most fair and accessible presale types, as anyone who takes the initiative to sign up ahead of time has an equal opportunity to participate. It directly rewards fans who are engaged with their local music and entertainment scene.

The two primary methods are email and SMS. Most commonly, a venue will send an email to its entire subscriber list, either the day before or the morning of the presale. This email will contain the presale password (often a simple word like "VENUE," "LOCAL," or "MUSIC"), the start time, and a direct link to the ticketing page. As SMS lists become more popular, venues will also send a text message with the same information, which has the benefit of instant delivery and avoids the spam folder problem.

As one of the industry's longest-standing promotional tools, venue presales are incredibly common. They consistently rank as the 3rd or 4th most frequently used presale type, following major players like credit card companies (Amex, Citi) and large promoters (Live Nation). This means that for a vast majority of tours coming to your town—from arena concerts to theatre shows and comedy acts—the local venue will almost certainly have its own presale, making it a reliable strategy for securing tickets.

Typically, the promoter provides the venue with a dedicated block of tickets to sell during their presale. This inventory is not just leftover seats; it's a representative cross-section of tickets from various price levels and locations throughout the venue. While they may not include the absolute front-row seats often reserved for VIP packages, they provide a fantastic opportunity to get great seats with significantly less competition than you'd face during the frantic general public on-sale.

Venue and American Express presales serve different purposes and audiences. Venue presales reward local loyalty; anyone can sign up for a venue's mailing list for free to get access, making it a very democratic process. In contrast, American Express presales are a premium perk designed to reward financial loyalty; access is restricted to individuals who hold an Amex card, with better access often reserved for premium cardholders. Essentially, venue presales are about being a fan of your local scene, while Amex presales are about being a customer of a specific brand.