August 2008
Buying tickets?
How to play the game
Looking to rock out with Santana? We were. But when we tried to buy tickets for the band's two gigs at the Fillmore, in San
Francisco, just 72 hours after they went on sale to the general public, they were sold out. At the same time, however, we
found hundreds of tickets for $79 to $451 above the $89.50 face value on Web sites.
Hey, that sounds like scalping. But today's scalpers aren't guys in trench coats hissing at passersby outside a ticket booth. (In fact, many venues still don't permit second-hand selling near the box office.) Instead, they're big companies such as StubHub, TicketsNow, RazorGator, TicketLiquidator, and TicketExchange, and they're called resellers.
Resellers don't set prices, and they don't buy or own tickets themselves. Rather, they provide a trading post for fans seeking to sell unneeded tickets and for professional brokers who want to make a killing on tickets bought on speculation, much like investors banking on future demand for oil or pork bellies.
All but a handful of states have eased or eliminated restrictions on scalping enacted in the 1920s to preserve entertainment for the masses. (Only Arkansas, Kentucky, and Michigan flat-out ban the sale of tickets at more than face value.) If you can't beat 'em, join 'em, legislators figured, or at least collect taxes. As a result, reselling at whatever price the market will bear is now a $2.6 billion online business projected to almost double by 2012, according to Forrester Research.
Even sports teams that once took punitive action against season ticket holders who resold seats for a profit have jumped on the bandwagon. Major League Baseball, for instance, dubbed StubHub the league's official reseller, and the teams get a cut of each ticket that changes hands.
If you know how the system works, using a reseller can be a boon, allowing access to seats that are otherwise unavailable—usually at high prices, but sometimes at a discount. According to a 2007 survey conducted for Forrester Research, 60 percent of respondents who bought tickets on the resale market said they paid more than face value; 17 percent reported paying less than face value.
If you don't know what to expect, reselling can leave you feeling ripped off.
Hey, that sounds like scalping. But today's scalpers aren't guys in trench coats hissing at passersby outside a ticket booth. (In fact, many venues still don't permit second-hand selling near the box office.) Instead, they're big companies such as StubHub, TicketsNow, RazorGator, TicketLiquidator, and TicketExchange, and they're called resellers.
Resellers don't set prices, and they don't buy or own tickets themselves. Rather, they provide a trading post for fans seeking to sell unneeded tickets and for professional brokers who want to make a killing on tickets bought on speculation, much like investors banking on future demand for oil or pork bellies.
All but a handful of states have eased or eliminated restrictions on scalping enacted in the 1920s to preserve entertainment for the masses. (Only Arkansas, Kentucky, and Michigan flat-out ban the sale of tickets at more than face value.) If you can't beat 'em, join 'em, legislators figured, or at least collect taxes. As a result, reselling at whatever price the market will bear is now a $2.6 billion online business projected to almost double by 2012, according to Forrester Research.
Even sports teams that once took punitive action against season ticket holders who resold seats for a profit have jumped on the bandwagon. Major League Baseball, for instance, dubbed StubHub the league's official reseller, and the teams get a cut of each ticket that changes hands.
If you know how the system works, using a reseller can be a boon, allowing access to seats that are otherwise unavailable—usually at high prices, but sometimes at a discount. According to a 2007 survey conducted for Forrester Research, 60 percent of respondents who bought tickets on the resale market said they paid more than face value; 17 percent reported paying less than face value.
If you don't know what to expect, reselling can leave you feeling ripped off.
