Until a few years ago, Minnesota enforced a longstanding prohibition on ticket scalping. In 2007, Gov. Tim Pawlenty worked with DFL majorities in the Legislature to enact legislation allowing concert and sporting event tickets to be sold on secondary markets.
As founder of an organization that promotes personal responsibility and individual freedom, I celebrated this public-policy victory -- by buying tickets on eBay to a sold-out Broadway show. The transaction was a good deal for both the seller and me. The seller made a tidy profit by selling me two tickets for more than face value. I secured good seats to a show I wanted to see.
But ticket sellers, entertainers and sports teams believe they own those tickets -- even after you purchase them. They want to take away this newfound freedom.
Ticket scalping, or selling tickets for more than face value, is nothing new. State, local and even federal legislation has been crafted for nearly 100 years trying to prohibit it, often with the help of lobbyists for sports teams and venues.
Yet big events or popular concerts make ticket scalping inevitable. There is nothing to compare to attending the last game of the World Series. And consistently, market forces prevail. There are always a limited number of seats available to any popular event, and many people are willing to pay a competitive price to be part of it.
The reselling of tickets is big business -- close to $4.5 billion a year nationwide, according to analysts. Every ticket resold by someone other than the original seller likely reflects huge demand for that event, suggesting that the market could have sustained higher original ticket prices. One prominent owner of multiple sports teams said that he disliked scalpers because they make money off of him without his permission.
To better control the secondary market, sports teams are starting their own "preferred" resale websites like the Vikings Ticket Exchange. This site imposes price floors and ceilings on resales so that ticket price is once again controlled by the team, not the market.
Artists in particular seem unified in their defense of restricted tickets to their concerts, believing that their most loyal fans are often unable to secure a reasonably priced ticket due to resellers who inflate ticket prices. Of course "reasonably priced ticket" varies quite a bit from what I consider reasonable. Tickets to Madonna's St. Paul show start at $220 -- not exactly an affordable night out for the masses.