Take a look at Item #5 on the city council meeting agenda for tomorrow night. (Sponsored by the Mayor & Finance Department);
Sale of tickets at more than face value prohibited.
(a) It shall be unlawful for any person to intentionally resell or offer to resell a ticket of admission to any sporting event, theatre, music hall, or other place of public entertainment, amusement, or instruction (collectively the “eventâ€) to which tickets of admission are offered for sale to the general public at a price greater than that charged at the place of admission or printed on the ticket, unless authorized in subsections (b) or (c) below. For purposes of this section, “resell†or “attempt to resell†shall mean to solicit for resale and shall include any sale or attempted sale subsequent to the initial offer to the public.
I am on the fence on this one. First off, I didn’t realize this was a ‘problem’ in Sioux Falls. I am also curious why the mayor is pushing this. I am curious if this has anything to do with the new EC, and contracts with SMG or Ovation? It may also be a suggestion by Legends. Not sure, hopefully we will get more details tomorrow.
The reason I am on the fence about this, because, believe it or not, I am all for the FREE market. If I buy a used car for $1000, fix it up for another $200 then sell it for $1600, am I considered a ‘car scalper’? If someone buys a ticket, or several tickets to a popular show that they know will sell out, what is the problem with profiting from re-selling those tickets for more? All we need to do is look at check cashing places, credit card companies and VL casinos in this state. They all make HUGE profits on ‘re-selling’ something at an enormous rate.
It will be interesting to hear Turbak’s explanation on this one. Hopefully he will let the council ask ‘pertinent’ questions that he will answer 🙂
At the other end of the spectrum – it will also be illegal to resell for LESS money (or give the tickets away?) if you’re within 1/2 mile of the EC or Pentagon:
“It shall be unlawful for any person to intentionally resell or offer to resell a ticket of admission to any event to which tickets of admission are offered for sale to the general public at a price less than that charged at the place of admission or printed on the ticket if such resale or offer to resell is conducted on the grounds of the event or within a one-half mile radius of the event.”
Check out what happened to a Bucks fan recently in Milwaukee: http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1683&dat=20010308&id=PScqAAAAIBAJ&sjid=STAEAAAAIBAJ&pg=4319,7034262.
I can see the SFPD already plotting its next Craigslist sting operation!
I just asked a city councilor if this had went thru the public services committee first, and they told me NO, and the first they heard about it was while reading the agenda. But MMM claims he works ‘closely’ with the council on the city’s business. BS! This should have been presented to their PS committee. My suggestion would be to kill (defer) this item and have it go thru PS committee first, then vote on it. I guess this has to do with a requirement by NCAA tournaments and SMG wants to bid on some of them, and they have to have this ordinance in place before they can do it.
Does this have anything with the Sanford Pentagon opening soon? I see they are having a Buck vs. Timberwolves exhibition game.
That is how I understand it.
I’m just not sure why the City (or any government body) sees the need to subvert normal supply and demand in this instance. Where is the compelling public interest? Is the argument that, since we have publicly funded facilities, we have to artificially keep ticket prices affordable for Joe Taxpayer?
It was one thing when ticket buyers (and scalpers) had to go buy the tickets in person or by phone. But now that everything is online it has really gotten out of hand. Minnesota got rid of its ticket scalper law a couple years back. Scalpers just need a good piece of software (check out a software vendor called “Ticket Bots”) to buy up every ticket in sight. I haven’t been able to get a ticket to any large concert in the Twin Cities in years from the actual ticket seller (ie. Ticketmaster or even the stadium’s own box office) or for anywhere near the real price because some scalper from out of state bought them all up. Scalpers used to have to do some work to scalp tickets. Now they just have to buy a piece of software. This is not much different than HFT traders who screw up the NYSE and NASDAQ through fast-trigger algorithmic trades. I’m all for free trade. But how does this truly further capitalism?
Can those pieces of software really outsmart the Captcha tests that most online box offices now employ? Some of them are too hard for a real human (me!) to solve sometimes.
They can and they do 🙁 Or if you want to get really sneaky in the world of Captcha “outsmarting” you hire it out to a bunch of people in India or Pakistan who will do endless mind-numbing work for beans.
I wish I had seen this discussion before I wrote my own blog post on it -http://toomanynotes.tumblr.com/post/58092567000/scalpers-beware
It’s a stupid law to combat a non-issue.
Unless you can describe to me how through your efforts – you can “fix up” or improve the performance of a ticket…… I’m calling your analogy here worst of the year – so far.
Optical character recognition software can figure out captcha easily enough.
Scott, don’t think your blog post was done in vane. Should a city of our size be changing our city ordinances to appease a college basketball association? Seriously? Now we are changing city law so the college basketball fans of our city have a chance to see a game at a Hospital sponsored basketball arena? And some say healthcare in this country isn’t broken.
Ruf, as I alluded to in my blog, most of the tickets on Stubhub are backdoor deals between the artist/management and the companies. Madonna was caught doing this on her last tour, and it’s been rumored that a lot of the teen idols that are primarily famous for being famous do it for a quick money grab. That’s why quite a few of these instant sellouts actually have quite a few empty seats up front.
It should also be noted that almost every year there has been a NBA preseason game in town. They rarely do well, but now that they’re playing in the smaller Sanford facility they may be able to call it a “sellout”.
Just another handout to Sanford Inc.
Save Damone!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOSalcHVXnU
Creation of this law has nothing to do with the venue as scalpers provide the venue with near sellouts each event. Have you seen all those sellout Vikings games with empty seats. TV contracts help as well.
This is slick Mike trying to pick up votes by fixing one of life’s annoyances. Imagine how many votes he could get with guaranteeing no SNOW this year. I can hear the bitching about how many folks that can’t afford the tickets at the new Huether dome already.
Looks like I can sell my ticket for list price and then just charge a “handling fee”, right?
One must assume this resolution is being brought up for a number of reasons involving contractual language with potential sporting events, concerts, etc.
Authorized internet resellers are exempt from scalping laws I read somewhere.
State by State law link – No SD on it.
http://seatgeek.com/blog/ticket-industry/ticket-resale-laws
I have kinda assumed that even if this ordinance passes, there is nothing stopping you from selling the ticket in Tea, SD for a higher price. This is a prime example of the city getting ahead of the state, just like the texting ban.
More importantly, there will be nothing to stop you from selling it on your computer. It’s a worthless ban to stop something that has never happened anyway.
In the ordinance, if you come to my home to purchase the ticket or vice versa, I can sell it at any price. So I can advertise on the web to sell, I just have to have them come pick it up the day of the event or sooner.
StubHub pick up sites are normally away from the venue.
I’m gonna go ahead and dispute that cheap and widely-available OCR software is sufficiently advanced to solve a good Captcha (see, for example, this or this. Most Captchas are secure, insofar as they are “at least as expensive for a hacker as it would cost him using human operators”, as the second reference puts it.
People will always be able to solve Captchas using ‘sweatshops’, but that’s the point – if you make it that expensive (having to hire human beings), you’ll deter enough people to make it a worthwhile security feature.
To debate the issue accurately, the concern spans many directions. The Wall Street Journal reported “Live Nation and Ticketmaster officials testified before a congressional subcommittee in 2009 about the evils of scalping and how it should be kept separate from the primary marketplace, if not outlawed altogether.” In the same article they also reported that Ticketmaster was networking quietly with high value concert promoters to scalp tickets that were not previously purchased (ie, not a resale). Scalping has become a trade which is much easier for resellers to sell tickets that have never been printed now that many events are sold via the internet. Promoters are able to sidestep their contract with the event on their cut, and take tickets directly to the online resellers. Most events are priced with anticipation that they are offering tickets with a fair value to the ticketholder. Forget about the fancy software to avoid captchas. It was also interesting to learn that in July, there was a ticket brokers conference where Ticketmaster and Live Nation addressed resellers on how to get in on the take. Think of it as a Black Market for tickets, but since many states do allow scalping, tickets don’t have to be sold in a parking lot or dark alley. I would be interested to know how many people would not feel scalped if someone bought all of the gas in town and turned around and sold it for $10 a gallon. Supply and Demand right??