# Why Is Ticket Scalping Illegal? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 22, 2005, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-ticket-scalping-illegal/322910 "2005-09-22T17:21:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Diceman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Diceman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diceman)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2005, 11:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-ticket-scalping-illegal/322910/21 "2005-09-23T11:31:32Z")
> [@CurtC](#): > > It’s interesting that you picked Dell. Every other PC brand is already sold through middlemen, and it seems to work OK. Most computers are sold through middlemen because the manufactuers want it that way. They don’t want to deal with the consumers directly. Dell would rather eliminate the middleman, and pass the savings on to the customers. It’s their decision. Similarly, stadium owners can use resellers (like Tickermaster) if they want to, but if they don’t, why should we allow people to artificially constrain the supply so they can set themselves up as an unwanted extra layer of middlemen? ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2005, 12:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-ticket-scalping-illegal/322910/22 "2005-09-23T12:55:39Z")
It’s not just the event organizers that want to discourage scalping. Most people with incomes south of six figures would generally support laws that help keep tickets at face value, even if the market value might be higher. Regardless of whether the laws are intellectually consistent with a free market ideology, I’d wager to say that an attempt to get rid of those laws would be pretty unpopular among working people and families who like to go to a ballgame, concert, or circus now and then. ---
**Author:** ![hawthorne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/c89c15/32.png) [@hawthorne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hawthorne)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2005, 12:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-ticket-scalping-illegal/322910/23 "2005-09-23T12:58:30Z")
There have been a fair few threads on this over the years. A bit from what I’ve said before: > [@](#): > > Suppose I am a stadium owner looking to price a sporting event. The long term profitability of my venue may be increased by not squeezing the last dollar out of ticket sales for each event. For a sporting event I may get higher season attendances and more loyal fans if price does not vary much between the most and least popular games. For a concert, the type of people who get tickets when they are underpriced may be more willing to shell out for t-shirts etc. Cheap concerts are a good way of selling CDs too. > > The general story here is that the attributes of the “good” being sold here may be more complex than just today’s game or concert and that the attributes of customers may be important. Fans who are prepared to queue for two days to get tickets for a gig will probably improve the atmosphere of the show. > This holds for sport too. **If you maximise revenue from ticket sales for a football game, you will get a bunch of stiffs who will not contribute much to the entertainment. A few “theatre goers” in high priced corporate boxes are fine, but too many spoil the atmosphere and undermine the long-term profitability of the stadium, the team and the sport.** [emphasis added] > > What this means is that a pricing policy where scalpers may find it profitable to operate (remember that scalpers who buy tickets to events that do not sell out will lose) generates economic rent which is shared between stadium owners and performers (in the form of profit) and customers in the form of getting to see a show for less than what you were prepared to pay for it (what economists call consumer surplus). > > This is where previous replies of the “supply and demand” type miss the tension of what is going on here. When a scalper operates, it is true to say that tickets will tend to go from people who value the ticket less to people who value it more, with no participants coerced. However, this dissipates the rents associated with the pricing policy, which may reduce the long-term incentives to produce music or theatre or sport It is not obvious which is more important. > As to the second part of the story, the government may make scalping illegal for a number of reasons: > 1 They might view the social gains from the underpricing of tickets to outweigh any losses from disallowing resale (government intervenes to correct market failure). > 2 The gains to producers are large and concentrated whilst any losses to consumers are small and barely noticable (government intervenes to protect interests of the powerful). > 3 For some reason that they can’t put the fingers on, people don’t like scalpers (government reflects ill-informed community values). > 4 The tickets usually have a clause that states resale are not allowed (government enforces contract law, judging the clause not to be sufficiently anti-competitive top worry about). > > My guess is that the truth is a mixture of these. [from [here](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=15279)] > > To put it economic jargon, scalpers and their customers reduce the extent of gains to a network externality internalised by prohibiting resale. If bands or sporting teams maximise profit in a monopolistically competitive market over consumer demand which is a function of price and quality endogenously determined by crowd demographics, scalping would partially dissipate the surplus shared by consumers and producers. [from [here](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=115111)] I certainly remember playing in bands where the quality of the audience affected the quality of the show and therefore the value of the show to the audience. A lot of people who only knew the single made for a crap show. ---
**Author:** ![glilly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/48db29/32.png) [@glilly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/glilly)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2005, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-ticket-scalping-illegal/322910/24 "2005-09-23T15:50:55Z")
> [@hawthorne](#): > > If you maximise revenue from ticket sales for a football game, you will get a bunch of stiffs who will not contribute much to the entertainment. A few “theatre goers” in high priced corporate boxes are fine, but too many spoil the atmosphere and undermine the long-term profitability of the stadium, the team and the sport. Understandable, but should the desire of the promoters to create the right atmosphere be enfored with the police and judicial system? ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2005, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-ticket-scalping-illegal/322910/25 "2005-09-23T16:11:56Z")
Well, that’s not a factual question, is it? ---
**Author:** ![anson2995](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c77e96/32.png) [@anson2995](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/anson2995)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2005, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-ticket-scalping-illegal/322910/26 "2005-09-23T16:20:40Z")
The other reason, which nobody has mentioned, is to protect consumers from getting counterfeit tickets. If you go to the ticket booth at Yankee Stadium, you know the little piece of paper you fork over $60 for will get you admission to the game. When you hand your cash to some guy in a dirty t-shirt on 157th street, you may not be getting a genuine ticket. Some jurisdictions attempt to address this issue by licensing ticket scalpers, but in my mind, folks that can counterfeit tickets can produce a genuine looking ID card just as easily. ---
**Author:** ![hawthorne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/c89c15/32.png) [@hawthorne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hawthorne)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2005, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-ticket-scalping-illegal/322910/27 "2005-09-23T16:44:41Z")
> [@glilly](#): > > Understandable, but should the desire of the promoters to create the right atmosphere be enfored with the police and judicial system? As **Ravenman** says, it’s not a factual question. But my little list of four possible motivations for intervention should help a bit. For those who doubt that something like this “quality of crowd” effect exists, note that you rarely see scalping for cinema tickets or even for crank-it-out live theatrical events. ---
**Author:** ![gazpacho](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/6f9a4e/32.png) [@gazpacho](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gazpacho)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2005, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-ticket-scalping-illegal/322910/28 "2005-09-23T17:23:08Z")
> [@hawthorne](#): > > As **Ravenman** says, it’s not a factual question. But my little list of four possible motivations for intervention should help a bit. > > For those who doubt that something like this “quality of crowd” effect exists, note that you rarely see scalping for cinema tickets or even for crank-it-out live theatrical events. You rarely see scalping for cinema tickets because the theaters rarely fill up and if they do you can see the movie tomorrow. Without the scarcity of tickets scalping is not profitable. ---
**Author:** ![Shirley\_Ujest](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shirley\_Ujest](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shirley_Ujest)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2005, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-ticket-scalping-illegal/322910/29 "2005-09-23T17:55:34Z")
> [@Mr2001](#): > > This happens all the time with airline tickets, and people seem all right with it. If you buy your ticket the day of the flight, you’re going to pay a lot more than if you’d bought it 2 months in advance, and it’s still going to be a worse seat. [hijack] I have always wondered why the airlines don’t do what alot of carriers in Europe do for unsold seats within a specific time frame before departure. They dump the seats to the public and sell them at a much cheaper rate and even a standby rate rather than having the seat go empty. Now, I understand the crappy or business routes could not do this, but for vacation destinations, it would be a boon for those who don’t mind flying at the last second. If I only paid $100 for a roundtrip flight to someplace sunny in the dead of winter, I wouldn’t complain about the seat one bit. But if I paid $1200 and practically live on a plane, then grrrrr. [/hijack] ---
**Author:** ![Zebra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/c0e974/32.png) [@Zebra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zebra)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2005, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-ticket-scalping-illegal/322910/30 "2005-09-23T18:05:10Z")
> [@hawthorne](#): > > As **Ravenman** says, it’s not a factual question. But my little list of four possible motivations for intervention should help a bit. > > For those who doubt that something like this “quality of crowd” effect exists, note that you rarely see scalping for cinema tickets or even for crank-it-out live theatrical events. When I worked as a manager at Lincoln Square in NYC (a movie theatre) we had some scalpers. We frequently sold out and scalpers would come in in the AM and buy a large number of tickets for the evening shows using the automatic ticket machine and advance sales. They would stand in the lobby and wait for walk ups to look at the board and see their show was sold out and then offer to sell them tickets. When you only have 350 tickets for the 8:00 show and someone buys up 20 to 50 of them with the sole intention of increasing demand, well, that aint right. It is more than an inconvience for the customer. They may have been able to get a ticket at face value if it wasn’t for the scalper. Plus, I think the general idea is that you sell something you create. If you buy something and move it from a distributor to your store, you’ve created the buying oppurtunity for the customer. The scalpers only create more demand for the ticket. We put a stop to the movie ticket scalping by only allowing the machines to sell 2 tickets at a time. ---
**Author:** ![Polerius](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/d78d45/32.png) [@Polerius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polerius)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2005, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-ticket-scalping-illegal/322910/31 "2005-09-23T20:05:44Z")
> [@CurtC](#): > > It’s interesting that you picked Dell. Every other PC brand is already sold through middlemen Maybe that’s why Dell is #1 in PC sales. > [@](#): > > and it seems to work OK. Doesn’t seem to work as well as for Dell. ---
**Author:** ![hawthorne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/c89c15/32.png) [@hawthorne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hawthorne)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2005, 12:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-ticket-scalping-illegal/322910/32 "2005-09-24T12:49:56Z")
> [@](#): > > _gazpacho_ > You rarely see scalping for cinema tickets because the theaters rarely fill up and if they do you can see the movie tomorrow. Without the scarcity of tickets scalping is not profitable. But the tickets would be “scarce” if the cinema consistently sold the tickets at a lower price than would sell all the tickets - and that’s what’s required for there to be regular scalpers. **Zebra** , I think your experience is interesting. Do you know why you didn’t just put the price up? Was it a glamorous location in a chain of cinemas where the price was the same for a ll the theatres? Did there tend to be long queues for tickets in the evenings? > [@](#): > > _Zebra_ > They may have been able to get a ticket at face value if it wasn’t for the scalper. […] The scalpers only create more demand for the ticket. If the punters would have got tickets in the absence of scalpers, the scalpers won’t be able to charge more than face value for the tickets. (OK, except for a few idiots.) > [@](#): > > _Zebra_ > They would stand in the lobby and wait for walk ups to look at the board and see their show was sold out and then offer to sell them tickets. The “walk-up” thing is interesting. Part of what makes a successful neighborhood restaurant is that it is busy, but you can get a table if you feel like popping out for a bite on the spur of the moment. What you’re saying scalpers spoiled sounds a bit like that. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-ticket-scalping-illegal/322910.md?page=1)