What happened yesterday morning, when online ticket sellers finally opened “Avengers: Endgame” up for pre-sale, was truly astounding. The frenzy that ensued led to crashed websites, hour-long digital waits, and record numbers of tickets sold. This sort of excitement around pre-sale tickets normally is relegated to music events, and never for films. However, ‘Endgame’ isn’t your everyday film, is it? That being said, perhaps the craziest thing we saw, as a result, is how people are actually attempting to scalp their movie tickets to Marvel Studios’ 22nd film.
For a little background, “Avengers: Endgame” is the latest MCU film and the conclusion to the almost-two-dozen film series dubbed “The Infinity Saga.” And as with most superhero films, fans are anxiously awaiting the chance to be first to see the film, not so much as a way of having bragging rights, but also to be part of the ensuing conversation that will no doubt take over social media over the weekend.
This sort of excitement led to record sales for the major online ticket sellers. Fandango, the biggest one of them all, said that ‘Endgame’ broke the record for most first-day sales ever for the company. Best of all, the film eclipsed that record in only 6 hours.
Fandango Managing Editor Erik Davis said, “We’ve never seen anything like this – it’s truly a groundbreaking accomplishment – as fans simply cannot wait to see how this epic saga comes to a close.”
Of course, this brought even more attention to the fact that screenings for the film are selling out at a record pace, which led some, uh, financially-conscious fans to decide that they should attempt to scalp the tickets for top dollar on re-sellers like eBay. Obviously, you have folks trying to really fish for the most desperate folks out there, offering their ‘Endgame’ tickers for thousands of dollars to the lucky bidder (aka idiot).
There are folks that seem really interested in dumping their tickets, offering Buy It Now options of only $100. And before you say, “This is all fake news, no one is actually buying these!” I present you with one listing on eBay that is actually sold. Someone in Arizona bought tickets for an ‘Avengers’ screening for well over the original price. Desperate times, I suppose.
Obviously, the fans’ struggle to secure tickets is newsworthy for being unprecedented, but really the only people smiling at the end of the day are the folks at Marvel Studios and Disney, who will no doubt have some massive, massive numbers to gloat about after the first weekend of ‘Endgame’s’ release.
A couple of those folks are the Russo Brothers, who posted on social media, saying, “Unbelievable. You guys are awesome. #WhateverItTakes”
Whatever it takes, indeed.
Unbelievable. You guys are awesome. #WhateverItTakes pic.twitter.com/6GgZnqsZOb
— Russo Brothers (@Russo_Brothers) April 2, 2019