TICKET TOUTING

Ticket Touting-unfair practice or an enterprise culture



Introduction

"Ticket touting" is a strict liability criminal offense. While previously shunned as "scalping", the resale of tickets at a price above face value has since become mainstream practice wherever or whenever the initial sale takes place. Tickets are quick to make their way to the secondary resale market (Courty, 2000). The secondary ticket market is filling consumer demands while continuing to demonstrate rapid growth, even despite recent economic downturns. However, with the rise of the Internet, street scalping is now the smallest part of the ticket resale industry. While anti-touting legislation proved notoriously difficult to enforce prior to online sales, Internet ticket reselling simply exacerbated the problem of the impracticalities of enforcement, such that many anti-touting laws have consequently been repealed." State deregulation of ticket resale, combined with the under-pricing of tickets for primary sale, has opened the door for further expansion of the secondary ticket market (Courty, 2000).

The last few years have seen an explosion of ticket touting with the best tickets for many events selling out within hours of the tickets going on sale, only to appear on eBay some time later at much more than their face value. Such activity makes money for small-time entrepreneurs and large-scale criminal operations alike, potentially depriving artists of income and preventing poorer fans from being able to obtain tickets even when the artists have tried to ensure that ticket prices stay reasonable (Courty, 2000).

The purpose of this discussion is to identify the main issues stating whether they consider touting to be acceptable or undesirable. The paper will discuss what changes should be made and predict what the future holds for ticketing organizations and event organizers. The views will be supported clearly by the preceding document and justified by referring to information already presented (Courty, 2000).

Discussion

While promoters have traditionally fought for their piece of the ticket pie by charging acts for such in-house services as security and catering, they have also developed new streams of revenue by building and owning their own facilities, where they are able to make money on such accommodations as parking or concessions. Ticketmaster, which reportedly pays back as much as 30 percent of its surcharge to the venues and promoters, represents a way for them to earn significant amounts of money on ticket sales. As a result, the concert business is extremely protective of the money it produces and its contracts with Ticketmaster (Duthie, Giles, 2006).

Purchasing tickets to large-scale events and reselling them for a profit is hardly a new phenomenon. Although the practice is illegal, ticket touters have long been a fixture outside of stadiums and theatres, supplying those who arrive without tickets. More recently, ticket touters have taken to flogging their wares via the Internet, a trend reported by the Edmonton Journal last month. While the law enforcing agencies continue to respond to the increasing hue and cry by charging people with illegal re-sales, a spokesman have frequently confessed that law enforcing agencies do not adequately understanding ...