Sign posted at the Verizon Center
This sign makes it clear that it is illegal to sell a ticket for face value.
Why does the city care if people are buying tickets for face value?
Imprisonment of up to 90 days seems high. Instead, the punishment should be having to sit through a whole event in crappy seats.
4 comments:
One time I tried to buy a ticket from a fellow fan instead of one of the scalpers. The cops busted the fan while the scalpers continued to go about their business. Why the cops decided to selectively enforce the law against him and not them I will never understand. If they are going to enforce the law selectively, why not go after the creepy scalpers who insult you if you feel like paying their markup?
This has become a higher-profile issue over the past year or two, as the "secondary" ticket market -- that is, re-sellers of tickets -- starts to rival the primary market. The bottom line is, companies like Ticketmaster (and event promoters) don't want anyone except themselves to receive money from the sale of tickets, regardless of the resale price.
In many places, season-ticket holders can sell unneeded tickets back to the team, which then sells them at market price through its own secondary ticket market. When such options aren't possible, it's easy enough to skirt rules prohibiting resale via online sites such as StubHub or Ticketsnow. It's still scalping, just high-tech.
I know why Ticketmaster and event promoters don't like scaping. I just can't figure out why the city is invested enough in this stuff to waste jail space on it.
They are really pushing this at the Verizon Center - it appears repeatedly on the LED crawler by the metro. There they seem to suggest that they have had problems with people selling/buying forged tickets. That might explain the crackdown and why the city would want to be involved, but not the selective enforcement. It also could be a convenient excuse to pander to ticketmaster.
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