Entertainment venues seek to crack down on resellers
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Jan. 31—CONCORD — Saying the sales of bogus and inflated-price tickets have reached epidemic proportions, entertainment venue operators are asking the Legislature to impose civil penalties against ticket resellers.
Peter Ramsey, president and CEO of the Palace Theatre in Manchester, said that since Dec. 1 third-party vendors have make 361 ticket purchases from his venue and resold the tickets at a significant markup. In other cases, tickets purchased by patrons were fake.
He spoke with one anguished woman who bought four tickets online to a show for $60 each — four times the $15 ticket price.
She showed up at the ticket window, only to learn she had bought bogus tickets.
"The patrons are furious. (In her case) I can't give her the money back because she bought it from a fake website," Ramsey said.
"This is a real problem, both for the consumer and the business."
The legislation would create a civil penalty for those who resell tickets for more than $1 over the price of admission, with some exceptions.
Third-party companies working on behalf of a charity venue could resell those tickets above face value. Other companies engaged in online reselling would have to make extensive disclosures to include the guarantee of a full refund if the customer was not fully satisfied.
The penalty for a violation would be full reimbursement of the ticket price.
Some state senators considering this bill Tuesday said it would appear to make it illegal for an individual to sell their own valuable ticket at a profit in a private sale.
Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Bill Gannon, R-Sandown, said a fan of a football team that makes the Super Bowl should be able to sell that ticket at a premium if he decides not to go to the game.
"Are you saying here I can't sell and make money on my ticket?" he asked Sen. Shannon Chandley, D-Amherst, the bill's (SB 201) prime sponsor.
Chandley said the intent of her bill was to deal with a pressing problem for New Hampshire entertainment venues.
"What is happening is tickets are being sold for a great deal more than face value when in fact there are tickets available at the box office," Chandley told the Senate Commerce Committee. "They are not authorized to sell at that venue."
Ramsey said his staff identified 23 people across America who work for reselling companies and routinely buy tickets at the Palace.
"We have a John Adams from Sacramento, California. He buys tickets about once a week, he normally buys four or two at a time. He alters the ticket, takes the Palace Theatre off the top and sends you the ticket," Ramsey said.
Many of these reselling companies copy the venue's website so it appears the consumer has purchased their tickets from the theater, he said.
"Many times in very small print there are the words 'ticket reseller.' If you didn't notice that, you'd have no idea who you are dealing with," Ramsey said.
Salvatore Prizio of the Capitol Center for the Arts in Concord said some of these resellers are buying "hundreds" of tickets and selling them for up to five times face value.
In the past, these reselling ticket companies have managed to get placement on Google above the Capital Center's own website, he said.
"Scalpers will often offer tickets that they don't even own. If they can't get the tickets from us, they will sometimes refund the buyer and sometimes they won't," Prizio said.
"Guess who they are mad at? They aren't mad at the third party, they're mad at the venue that had nothing to do with it."
A new scam, Prizio said, involves scalpers using stolen credit cards to purchase tickets.
This eventually can leave the patron without a valid ticket, after the credit-card purchase is canceled, and leave the venue without a ticket to sell, he said.
"I think it is a first great step to combating this parasitic aspect of our industry," Prizio said of the bill.
Critic: Big would benefit
Drew Cline, executive director of the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy, said the legislation would do little to prevent scalping.
Instead, it would expand the stranglehold a limited number of companies have on the sale of most entertainment tickets in the U.S.
"The No. 1 problem right now is that you have massive consolidation within the industry between venues, concert promoters and ticket resellers," Cline said.
"You will consolidate the industry further, concentrate more power in the players that are already here and prevent somebody from selling something that they legitimately own," Cline said.
For example, Cline said customers pay fees to legitimate resellers that can amount to 50% of the ticket price.
This bill would make it illegal for a consumer to resell his ticket and collect on those fees, Cline said.
Last week, a U.S. Senate hearing featured bipartisan condemnation and questions about whether the 2010 merger of Ticketmaster and Live Nation has created a too-powerful monopoly of the ticket selling business.
In November, Ticketmaster canceled the sale of tickets to a Taylor Swift concert when the website crashed. Resellers who had copped tickets then tried to sell them online again for up to $20,000 apiece.
Sen. Denise Ricciardi, R-Bedford, said lawmakers might consider something less sweeping than this bill, such as making it illegal for any vendor to copy a company's website.
"If we pass this and it's not enforceable, then it is still going to happen," Ricciardi said.
Sen. Dan Innis, R-Bradford, said patrons are always going to be willing to pay above market price to get a valuable ticket.
"I think we have to get at those that are legitimately misleading and abusing the system," said Innis, who confessed to his own weakness for Lindsey Buckingham, the former lead guitarist with Fleetwood Mac.
"Lindsey Buckingham's show is sold out and tickets are available at three times the value. I see that, I'm going to buy it."
