The Reemergence of Ticket Scalping

    Retail scalping has become more prominent since the COVID-19 pandemic has kept people inside their homes or away from crowded public spaces for over a year now. However, another type of scalping that once dominated the online reselling market, but was forced into the shadows of the internet, is coming back better than ever: online ticket resales. This includes tickets for any live event from concerts, to sports games, and broadway shows being bought by bots online and resold at absurd prices. While I wish I could say that ticket scalping subsided because preventative measures worked against it, that's not the case. Since most live events were canceled indefinitely this past year and a half, the market took a huge hit. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, reselling concert and sports game tickets yielded millions of dollars in revenue a year. Especially as the practice became digital and was able to bypass legislation, the industry was massive. Now that people are getting vaccinated and places opening up again, this means that more live events are being scheduled for the upcoming year. As one can expect, with this, online ticket scalpers can make their comeback. Since most people haven't enjoyed live events since early 2020, it is understandable that most are desperate to get their hands on tickets, and this is something resellers can take advantage of. 

    Artists are starting to sell tickets for concerts scheduled for later this year or 2022, and scalping for the tickets has already been seen. A recent example this past month was Bad Bunny who, according to an article by Billboard, sold out his upcoming 2022 world tour almost instantly. This being one of the fastest-selling tours ever is not its only interesting feat, but based on current scalping prices, the ticket resale industry is estimated to earn $120 million in profit from this tour. According to Billboard data, scalpers are reselling tickets at over ten times the original price, with most asking for an average of $2,400 per ticket. On a different note, I found a 2006 Wired article written by a reporter that decided to scalp live event tickets online, in order to reveal the secrets of the then-growing industry. At the time the article was released scalper bots were not used, so the reporter Steve Knopper talked about the methods scalpers would use to get their hands on tickets and keep track of sales prior to the introduction of the bots. This was incredibly insightful about the growth of the industry, with even as early as 2006, scalpers having created sophisticated databases to track sales around the world, and found ways to gain access to secret presales. Knopper mentioned too, that the global online ticket reselling market was worth about $3 billion dollars. If this was the case in 2006, one can only imagine where it is at now. With the scalping experiment, the reporter made $732 dollars, since this was a one-time thing for the sake of research, it was definitely made evident that it is a tricky yet highly lucrative market. 

    

    Sporting events are also seeing a lot of ticket scalping recently. According to a CBS local article, tickets for the All-Star baseball game in Denver are currently being resold for up to $1,500. There are a variety of sites selling tickets at different prices, most highly inflated from the original price. The article brought up point about the legality of scalping. While most often wonder whether it is legal to resell tickets at such outrageous prices online, especially when scalping tickets in-person outside of events has been made illegal, the article reveals that most of the laws do not apply in the digital space. 

  

   An important thing to know about ticket reselling is the places where it happens. While they're sold in online marketplaces such as eBay or Craigslist, they are mostly seen on the original ticket selling websites like TicketMaster or Stub Hub. As ironic as it sounds, taking advantage of the features that ticket selling websites offer is one of the best ways for scalpers to resell their tickets. Sites like TicketMaster have reselling options created for people who genuinely need to find a way to reliably get rid of their tickets. The site also charges a fee for this, but there is not always a cap on what the price of the ticket being resold can be. Therefore, the user gets to choose the price of the ticket being resold, and it will be listed on the reliable website, so there is a larger chance it will get seen and sold regardless of the price. Meaning, that the problem is even trickier to solve because it involves services available to the average user and creates a small conflict of interest to the companies who make money by charging resale fees. 

Articles cited: 

https://www.billboard.com/articles/business/touring/9559217/bad-bunny-tour-ticket-scalping-record-levels/

https://www.wired.com/2006/12/scalper/

https://denver.cbslocal.com/2021/06/11/online-resellers-charging-1500-ticket-all-star-game-denver/