Can We Really Live Without the Ticket Scalper?

    It will forever be a part of sport. Whether you are a baseball, football, soccer, or basketball fan, there is one thing they all have in common. As you are slowly making your walk up to the majestic stadium, feeling the energy of the throngs of people around you, getting lost in the crowd of excitement, there is always one common sound echoed outside every stadium or arena:

"Tickets! Who needs tickets? I got two. How 'bout you? I got good ones. Who needs tickets?"

Scalpers: whether you like them or not, they are and likely will forever be part of the sporting experience.  Sure, you hate them for how they buy up all the good seats and typically charge you well above the regular price, especially if it's for an important game. But how many of us sports fans have never bought tickets from a scalper? Isn't it nice knowing that although the game might officially be sold out, we can always show up and get tickets? It's just a matter of paying their price. You get the excitement of haggling a good deal that you can later brag about to others (who honestly don't really care much to hear about it) or the disappointment of getting ripped off for what turns out to be an eventful game. Winning or losing before the real game you went down to see has even begun: that's the thrill with scalpers.


    It's easy to get upset with scalpers, as they buy up the seats meant for the real fans and sell them for profit, but what are they doing outside of fulfilling the supply and demand of the people. Quite simply, if no one bought tickets from them, they'd be losing so much money that they'd soon be a thing of the past. But we sporting fans sometimes just have to be at the game, regardless of the price, don't we? And in truth, often times, these tickets are cheaper than those at the box office. The scalpers buy the tickets at the season ticket rate and subsequently sell them for below the box office rate. The situation is a win-win for both buyer and seller.  Other times, people might just show up late to a game and the scalper may sell the tickets at a seriously reduced rate. This isn't so bad for the buyer. Besides, for some sports (i.e. basketball) the game only gets really exciting at the end. 

    Typically though, the scale is always tipped for the seller. For example, Toronto Blue Jays season tickets in the bleachers can be bought for the ridiculously cheap rate of $99. That would mean for someone who attended all the games, s/he'd be paying less than $1.50/game. At the box office, individual tickets for the same seats sell at $11 ($14 for games versus the Yankees and Red Sox). So what would be the fair price for these scalpers to sell their tickets? Well, ask any one of them what they’re selling them at: $10. Sure it's cheaper than the box office, by one whole dollar, and because the profit margins are so high, the stadium is surrounded by scalpers. However, most sporting teams don't have the dwindling fan support of Toronto baseball that forces ownership to have such cheap season ticket prices just to get fans at the game. Go to any hockey game in Canada or NFL game in the U.S. and see just see what the mark-up on the prices are, regardless of how bad the team might be. If people care about the game that much, they'll pay almost anything.

    So if scalpers are bad by overcharging the fans that actually want to see the game, how can they be stopped? Well, scalping tickets is illegal, so potentially police roaming the area and fining the scalpers might hold them back, but it isn't as though they have a booth with official documentation and name tags. And the events are so crowded as it is that it wouldn't be easy for an officer to chase a scalper through all the foot traffic. Besides, police have enough things to worry about that take precedence.

    Perhaps one step towards reducing the number of scalpers at the stadium is to follow the path of Jerry Jones, owner of the Dallas Cowboys, a team which as of the 2009/10 football season opened at the brand new Cowboys Stadium. Football is so beloved in United States, especially Texas, and with the Cowboys being the self-proclaimed "America's Team," it is of little shock to hear that the cost of building this stadium was in the range of $1.3 Billion. (1)  Being inside the stadium first-hand, I can say that it is a masterpiece, but for that price what would you expect? Naturally football being the way it is in Texas, and to top it off with the world's most advanced stadium, tickets are at a premium. People would pay almost anything to get a chance to see a game at Cowboys Stadium. So how did Jerry Jones decide to rid the stadium of these scalpers? He decided that those who want to have season tickets have to lease the actual seat in the stadium for an extended period of time. And what does the price of one seat cost in Cowboys Stadium? How about an extra $5000? (2) Granted, this is not just to have the seat for football games, but rather the opportunity to buy a ticket in this seat for each event that comes to this stadium. Still, the non-everyday scalper cannot afford to take the chance on such a big overhead cost. Many of them may not even have that type of money to give away in the first place. But in reality, many everyday sports fans will not be able to give out that kind of money for a long term commitment. And who's to say if this system even works.

     In Germany, they had a different way to work around ticket selling outside the stadium for the 2006 World Cup. As for every major world soccer event, the demand for tickets far outweighs the amount of tickets that can be sold. So to be fair, all the tickets were awarded via lottery to those who registered online. For those tickets awarded in Germany, the ticket holder would register the names of who would be attending the games with said tickets, together with a picture. This whole process was done so far in advance that the ticket would be sent to the ticket holder and have the person's name together with a picture on it. Not only would this prevent anyone from being able to sell their ticket right before kickoff for a ridiculous profit, it would also prevent anyone from stealing tickets outside the stadium as the thief would not be able to make it into the stadium with the picture on the ticket not matching their face. The main problems with this method is that a ticket could not be quickly transferred to a friend if the ticket holder was unable to attend the match, perhaps due to illness or a family emergency. The other problem is that the World Cup is held every 4 years and has a total of 64 matches. This means of scalper control works perfectly for this tournament itself, but it would not be transferable to baseball, for example, which has each team playing 81 home games every year, most of them being far from sold out.

    Other teams do not try to stop the scalpers, but instead just alleviate the problem of them surrounding the stadium. The Milwaukee Brewers baseball team, for example, is one of many teams to have designated 'ticket reselling' zones outside the stadium. However, due to confusion around the law, those who chose to resell outside the zone could still not be prosecuted. (3)

   To boot, the advancement of the Internet has allowed for online resale of tickets, typically costing the buyer a serious premium for hard to get tickets. Now the scalper doesn't even have to leave home to make some money. And with technology advancing at this rate, will we be able to use it to avoid scalpers and purchase tickets at  a fair price, or will these online resale sites get the better of us and make a hefty profit?

    With the system the way it is, you may like or dislike the scalpers. You may hate that their money-making is purely based on exposing your love of whichever team you support. You may believe that if they weren't around, games wouldn't be so overpriced making them too expensive for the average sporting fan to attend.  But come playoff time, when the game is long sold out, are you going to be the one content at home in front of the TV or are you going to be outside the stadium with a wad of cash looking to cut a deal?





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1  Mosley, Matt (September 15, 2008). "Jones building a legacy with $1.3 billion   Cowboys stadium". Sports.espn.go.com.
 http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/columns/story?columnist=mosley_matt&page=hotread1/mosley

2 Spagnola, Mickey (May 15, 2008). "Cowboys Unveil New Stadium Reserved Seat Pricing". dallascowboys.com
 http://www.dallascowboys.com/news/news.cfm?id=EE1C78DC-E46A-CE86-C23B280AE147A133

3 Associated Press (January 10, 2010) "Brewers Pitch Bill To Catch Ticket Scalpers". channel3000.com
 http://www.channel3000.com/sports/22198828/detail.html