RSSTicket Scalping Continues to Frustrate Promoters
Dec 18
Business, Society and Culture, Sports concerts, scalping, tickets Comments Off
A federal court in Australia ruled on Monday that eBay can broker ticket sales for concerts and other events at greater than face value. The ruling is another blow for events promoters world-wide who are crusading against ticket scalping, even as legislation and court decisions are increasingly backing off strict penalties for scalpers.
The concert promoter involved in the action, Creative Festival Entertainment, is the promoter behind Australia’s Big Day Out concert series. In an attempt to thwart scalpers, Creative marked each ticket with a cancellation policy that if the ticket was resold over face value, the ticket would not be honored at the event. In justification for the provision, Big Day Out’s producer Ken West said that brokers were reaping “large profits” at the expense of real fans.
EBay Inc. initiated a suit to block the provision from being enforced. The ruling was not so much in favor of scalping as it was forbidding Creative from arbitrarily canceling tickets, though West says it amounts to the same thing.
Scalping has always been a challenge for concert promoters and bands to get their tickets into the hands of fans at face value, and not at a scalper’s mark-up. And yet, it traditionally has been a losing battle even in the face of some creative means to thwart scalpers.
In one scenario, bands began offering presale tickets to fan club members only. But as U2 found out when they launched their Vertigo Tour, scalpers simply paid the $40 membership fee and bought the tickets anyway. The same happened for the Rolling Stones Onstage Tour, which required fan club members to pay a hefty $100 premium for tickets. Ticket brokers paid the premium and passed the cost along to buyers.
The internet has not helped matters much because it has enabled any individual to become a broker with just a click. No more standing in a queue outside Tower Records or waiting on the telephone for a Ticketmaster operator. Now not just companies, but individuals can buy tickets at face value and post them later in the day on eBay or other auction sites.
While it is easy to condemn scalpers, in United States for instance, ticket brokering is not illegal in all states. And in states where scalping is illegal including Florida, Massachusetts and Illinois, the statues are pretty slack. And even then, in the case of online resellers like eBay, those laws are only subject to enforcement if the buyer and seller reside in the same state.
Ticketmaster, one of the largest hosts for ticket sales, has made the switch to auction sales itself, which ironically has allowed Ticketmaster to operate like a scalper. Ticketmaster defends the practice in the exact same way that eBay does. Quite simply, selling tickets at auction allows the seller to get market value for the tickets. Ticketmaster is allowing demand to set the price.
In fact, the only real difference is that Ticketmaster pays an equitable portion to promoters and artists, whereas eBay and other brokers do not. But the result is that the best seats for concerts go for twenty-five percent or more above face value at auction.
As Creative Festival Entertainment found out, there is no viable solution to ticket scalping. Even companies that have existing anti-scalping policies have little recourse beyond getting a legal injunction against the broker to stop the resale of the tickets. Critics that say consumer laws don’t go far enough to discourage scalpers now have another reason to be disheartened.
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