Presales explained: O2 Priority, artist presales and the rest

A presale is a window before the general sale when a limited allocation is available. They exist because promoters want certain groups to get first refusal: fan-club members, card holders, venue members, and people on a mailing list.

The presale types in our listings

These are the types we have actually seen attached to on-sales, most common first. The exact rules change between tours, so treat this as a starting point rather than a guarantee.

$20 Ticket Promotion
$21 Ticket
$21 Ticket Pre-sale
$21 for 21 Years
$30 ON THE 30TH
$5.00 off offer
'Quin Membership Tickets
02
10 or more tickets
106.1 KISS FM VIP Sale
18+
18+ v/ Valid ID
18+ w/ Valid ID
18+ w/ Valid ID Only
2 for 1 ticket offer
21+ w/ Valid ID
313 Presents
313presents
35JERSEY
4-Pack

How to prepare for one

Create the account on the seller's site before the day. Verifying an email address mid-queue is how people lose their place.
Save a payment card to the account. Card entry is the slowest part of a fast checkout.
Know which block you want, and one acceptable fallback. Deciding while the timer runs is the other way people lose their place.
Log in on more than one device only if the seller allows it — many treat a second session as a bot and drop you to the back.

Reading a presale listing on this site

Where we know a presale time it appears on the on-sale calendar marked as Presale, with the type next to it. If a show only has a general sale listed, that means we have not seen a presale published for it — not that one does not exist.

When the presale has gone

The general sale is still worth turning up for; presales rarely release the whole allocation. After that, resale is the market, and the event page for the show tells you what buyers have actually been paying for that artist.