You may have seen the die-hard fans camping outside the Rapid City Civic Center to get tickets to Elton John’s performance in April, some for as long as 4 nights. Knowing that his performance in Sioux Falls had sold out within 20 minutes, they thought that they were doing their best to secure a seat at the event.

Then technology stepped in…..

Within 45 seconds, over 5,000 of the 6,600 available seats had been purchased online. After only 10 minutes, the civic center was forced to open additional seating at the event, as those who had lived in tents and slept outside for the past few nights hadn’t even gotten the chance to purchase a ticket.

So just how much extra space was added? The official number of seats was raised to 9,000! (In case you didn’t already know, Elton John is kind of a big deal. This should be your proof if you for some reason doubted it.)

Tickets were priced between $47 to $97 at the Civic Center, but shortly after the online bombardment, some of those tickets, of course, reappeared on other websites for higher dollar amounts.

Take a look at E-Bay and StubHub for a couple of examples. How much are you willing to bid?

Anyway, if you didn’t seem to click your mouse quickly enough or didn’t make it to the box office window, you might still be able to secure your seat at the event.

I’ll honestly say I’m not a fan of the practice of ticket scalping or resale, but on a hypocritical note, I have purchased tickets to sporting events and concerts from scalpers right outside of the stadium just hours before the doors have opened.  These practices are usually legal, whether we like it or not.

So, what have we learned from this? The next time someone with the magnitude of Elton John ventures through, we might want to bring our laptops with us in our tents on ticket day.