Why this is confusing on purpose
Three things make event travel harder to price than an ordinary holiday. Ticket fees of 20-30% are added at the last screen, so the listing you compared was never the price. Official and resale inventory sit side by side in search results without saying which is which. And inventory is regional — the site with the best seats for a Las Vegas fight is rarely the one with the best seats for Silverstone.
None of that is an accident, and no single site solves it. What works is a fixed order, so you are never comparing a face-value seat against a marked-up one.
The running order
How we price a trip, every time — in this sequence, because each step changes what you should pay for the next one.
Ticketmaster for UK events, AXS for a lot of US venues. If there is an official sale or official resale, that is the cheapest legitimate route and the safest for entry.
Put the same seat into StubHub and viagogo, click through to checkout, and read the final number. Fees of 20-30% are normal and they are not shown up front. In the US, Gametime is worth a third check because it can show all-in prices.
Skyscanner across a whole month, not a single date. On long-haul the flight usually moves the total more than the ticket does, so it decides whether the trip works at all.
Booking.com, refundable rate, before tickets are settled. Rebook later if something better appears. On US trips check Expedia too, and budget for resort fees charged at the property.
GetYourGuide and Viator carry the same tours at different prices often enough to be worth the cross-check.
Tickets — official sellers, always first
If an official sale is still live you pay face value plus fees, not somebody else's markup. It takes two minutes to check and it is the single biggest saving on this page.
Best for: The first place to look. Face value, plus official resale where the event allows it
Booking and delivery fees are added at checkout and vary by event - the headline price is never the final price
Best for: US venues that do not sell through Ticketmaster - always worth checking before resale
Service fees added at checkout; official face-value inventory when a sale is live
Tickets — marketplaces, once official is gone
Sold out, or the only official seats left are restricted view? This is where the trip gets priced. Compare the all-in total after fees, never the listing price — the cheapest listing is often the dearest seat.
Best for: US events - deepest inventory for Vegas, NFL and arena fights
Fees added at checkout (~20-30%) - compare final price, not listing price
Best for: UK and European events, priced in GBP
Fees added at checkout (~25-30%) - always compare the all-in total
Best for: US events inside the last week, when unsold seats get dumped. App-first, weakest for UK events
Can display all-in prices, which makes it a useful sanity check against StubHub listings
Best for: International sports specialist - often holds allocations the marketplaces do not
Prices shown are closer to all-in; a good benchmark for the other two
Flights — compare, then book direct
Use a comparison site to find the route and the date, then book with the airline itself where the price is the same. Fewer parties in the chain when a flight moves.
Best for: Comparing routes and dates in one view before booking direct with the airline
Skyscanner does not sell the flight - you finish the booking on the airline or agent site, under their terms
Hotels — hold a refundable room early
Event weekends sell out long before your ticket is confirmed. A free-cancellation room booked early is the cheapest insurance in the whole trip, and costs nothing to give back.
Best for: The default for event weekends - free-cancellation rates let you hold a room before tickets are confirmed
Watch for resort fees and city tax paid at the property, which are not always in the headline total
Best for: Worth a second look on US trips, where its hotel rates sometimes undercut the UK sites
Resort fees are common on Las Vegas properties and are charged at the hotel
The other days — the bit everyone underestimates
Nobody flies that far for one evening. The non-event days are where a trip quietly doubles.
Best for: Filling the non-event days - tours and attractions with free cancellation
Price shown is the price paid; cancellation windows vary by supplier
Best for: Cross-check against GetYourGuide - the same tour is sometimes cheaper on one than the other
Price shown is the price paid
One hard rule: English and Welsh football
For those fixtures the marketplaces above are simply not an option — go to the club or the official ticket exchange. Every football event on this site carries no resale links at all, by design. The rule does not apply to NFL games, boxing, motorsport, tennis or concerts, which is why marketplaces appear on those.
How we make money on this page
Every outbound link on this page is currently a plain, untracked link. We have applications in with several of these partners but none is live yet, so at the time of writing this page earns nothing either way.
We list providers because we use them, not because of what they pay. Where a programme is not worth joining — Ticketmaster's commission is about 1% — we say so and link to them anyway, because they are usually the right first stop. Full disclosure.
The price-watch list
We track resale prices for the biggest upcoming events and send a note when they dip. Free.