How can I ensure the tickets I purchase are legitimate?
The only way to ensure that the tickets you purchase are valid is to purchase them from the Iowa State Center Ticket Office or through Ticketmaster. Two options to purchase:
- In person at the Iowa State Center Ticket Office
- Online at Ticketmaster.com
I searched for “Stephens Auditorium Tickets” on Google and clicked on the first result; was it your site?
Our website is www.center.iastate.edu and the site to buy tickets for our venue is Ticketmaster.com. Many times the first few results of a web search are “sponsored links,” where broker/scalper sites pay the search engine to put their site at the top. Many of these sites are meant to look like our official site.
I bought tickets from someone on Craigslist or StubHub. Are they going to work when I get to the event?
The answer is maybe. The original purchaser can reissue print at home tickets or have them reprinted, which would make the original tickets void. They can also photocopy the tickets and sell the same seat to multiple people. Whoever gets to the gate first will get in, and all subsequent tickets will be refused entry. This is generally a rare occurrence, but it is the risk of buying through a third party.
The tickets I received are on sheets of paper and have someone else’s name on them. Are they legitimate?
The tickets are on sheets of paper because the original purchaser chose the print at home option when they purchased through Ticketmaster. The original purchaser does not need to be the one who uses the tickets, so they may still be legitimate even if the name doesn’t match yours. It will be based upon the barcode of the tickets whether they are legitimate or not.
What if you are “sold out” of tickets?
Before you buy tickets from any third party site, make sure you check with the Iowa State Center Ticket Office to see if there are tickets available in a location that you would like. Sometimes tickets open up closer to the event as the promoters and artists have seats on hold that they do not end up using. These seats can be released at any time, and we have no advance knowledge of when these seats will be released. If you do choose to purchase via a third party site, make sure they have clear contact information so that in the event of a problem with your tickets, you may resolve it with the third party site as we would only have record of the original purchase and not yours.
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