In the world of miles and points it’s always nice to find an opportunity to double dip. Double Dipping is when you can earn 2 or more types of points/miles currencies from a single purchase. A great example of a Double Dip is when you earn Hilton Miles for Lyft rides. This means that for every Lyft ride you take, you’ll earn the 3X points for “travel” with the Chase Sapphire Reserve card and 3X Hilton Honors points! That’s effectively a 6% return on all Lyft rides.
Well, I recently discovered yet another, albeit less frequently used, double dipping opportunity. Specifically, I just received an email from American reminding me of their partnership with online ticket reseller VividSeats.
What Is VividSeats?
Until I read about this promotion I had rarely ever hear of VividSeats. I have seen the name around, but have never used the service. From my limited knowledge of the company, VividSeats is a large online ticket reseller that matches ticket sellers to ticket venues. It’s nearly identical to StubHub. So, if you’re looking for tickets to an event that has already sold out, going to VividSeats might be your best bet.
Now of course, as with any ticket reseller, VividSeats takes a cut of every ticket sold on their site. However, after poking around it appears VividSeats and StubHub charge similar fees and have similar prices. If searching for a specific event, it seems either VividSeats or StubHub will have the better price. It all depends on where the original ticket purchases chose to list their seats and for what prices. That’s to say, sticking with just one reseller won’t necessarily get you the best prices.
How Does The VividSeats & American Airlines Partnership Work?
If you go directly to VividSeats’ website the American Airlines partnership isn’t all that easy to find. Instead, it’s best to start out by visiting American.Vividseats.com. From there you can search all of the events typically found on the normal VividSeats website. Then, at checkout, you will earn 3X AAdvantage miles per dollar spent with VividSeats. Keep in mind the 3X miles only applies to the cost of the tickets and excludes any taxes and fees. I’ve included a screenshot of the terms & conditions below.
When purchasing your tickets through the American/VividSeats website you should see the number of AAdvantage miles you can expect to earn from your purchase below the “Buy Now” button.
Obviously, the more expensive the tickets the more AAdvantage miles you earn. For example, here’s the number of miles you could earn when buying Chicago Cubs American Airlines 1914 Club tickets I found when searching through VividSeats.
In the above example you can earn up to 3,710 AAdvantage miles for purchasing two tickets. I personally value American Airlines AAdvantage miles at $0.015/mile. So, in the above example you’d get about $55 back on a $1,200 purchase or about 4.5% back. That’s not the best deal of the century, but it’s better than nothing.
Final Thoughts
I’m pretty excited by the American Airlines and VividSeats partnership. Now that I know I’ll earn 3X AAdvantage miles per dollar spend with VividSeats, I’ll start with them to purchase tickets to any events I’d like to attend. In the past I would have simply gone to StubHub because that was the site that I knew of. I historically have never made purchases through VividSeats because I wasn’t aware the service existed.
Additionally, when making an event purchase I’ll make sure to use a credit card that offers a bonus on “entertainment” spending, such as the Citi Premier card. In that case, I’ll earn 2X Citi ThankYou points and 3X AAdvantage miles on my purchase. No matter how you calculate it, that’s at least a 5% return on event ticket spend. Even better, I could put the spend on a Citi DoubleCash card and get the same 2X ThankYou point return on a card that lacks an annual fee!
Lastly, I think this partnership represents a great opportunity for anyone in a sales/marketing role that frequently buys event tickets on behalf of clients. If you’re able to purchase tickets through any online marketplace you might as well start here. By doing this you can earn a ton of extra AAdvantage miles that you would otherwise be missing out on. That should help you get over the fact that you’re once again buying tickets to an event you won’t be attending…
