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Ticket scalping boom shuts out fans

By Pete Catapano, amNewYork managing editor | pcatapano@am-ny.com

7:48 PM EDT, April 1, 2008

Just outside Madison Square Garden ticket scalpers are having a difficult time selling tickets due to online competition. (sam horine, Newsday / April 1, 2008)

"We couldn't find tickets that matched your request."

Most of us have seen those words on our computer monitors moments after tickets go on sale on Ticketmaster. But for each frustrated New Yorker who gets shut out of a sporting event or concert, there's a ticket broker who's beaten you to the punch.

It's now almost a year since ex- Gov. Eliot Spitzer and the legislature made scalping legal in the state. Many are wondering if that decision has kept average music and sports fans at home, while brokers who know all the tricks get the top seats and pull in big bucks.

Thanks to the Web, it's easy for almost anyone to become a ticker broker.

"I split season tickets with my friend," said Brent Landro, 28, of Brooklyn. "We sell them on the internet sometimes when we can't go. Usually on the Rangers ticket exchange, for the regular price or a little more- you can't get blood from a stone."

Concerts are already expensive for the average New Yorker, with tickets ranging from $50 to hundreds of dollars, plus service charges. But after brokers get a hold of them, expect to pay at least double, even 10 times the amount.

"It's almost like a season ticket holder has a license to print money," said Russ Haven, legislative council for New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG.) "If you got two or four season tickets you can turn around and sell them and it becomes a commodity that you have by complete virtue of luck that got handed down in your family."

Spitzer's flip-flop
As attorney general in 1999, Spitzer issued a scathing report on scalpers titled "Why Can't I Get Tickets."

"A system that provides access to quality seating on the basis of bribes and corruption at the expense of the fans without whose continued support the theater could not survive should not be tolerated," the report said.

Haven says no analysis was done before the law was repealed and New York joined 44 other states where scalping is legal.

"What's happening now is the average fan gets screwed and the market place gets skewed," he said.

Scalping = lower prices?
While the prices you see on Craigslist and eBay tell one story, brokers contend scalping has resulted in lower ticket prices.

"Prices have come down because more and more people have access to the tickets now because they've legalized it and more people are selling tickets because there are more tickets being circulated," said Sandy Kyrkostas, CEO of Worldwide Event Group and TheTixx.com.

According to Haven, Spitzer changed his mind about legalizing scalping because of criticism from New York Times columnist John Tierney.

"Their crusade against ticket brokers has succeeded only in driving the industry out of state and making hot tickets even more expensive," Tierney wrote on May 18, 2001.

Recently, City Councilman Leroy Comrie introduced a bill that would force city-subsidized venues such as Madison Square Garden and Yankee Stadium to guarantee that 40% of tickets are sold to the consumer. If the law passes, concertgoers would have to prove that they bought their tickets at the venue.

Krykostas said that won't work because 90% of tickets are bought for someone other than the buyer.

"They can say whatever they want but we're the people who are buying the tickets," Krykostas said. "The brokers are the people who are making the shows sell out three or four times. We're the people buying the tickets. I don't know how they're trying to word it. They¹re trying to stop it so the consumer gets it, but the consumer is getting it on the secondary market."