"For ticket resellers and fans, the game may be changing" by Shira Springer, Globe Staff / September 6, 2011
Newlyweds Michael and Samantha Bono postponed their honeymoon to attend a Red Sox-Yankees game last month. Ten minutes before the first pitch, the couple exited the Ace Ticket store around the corner from Fenway Park with a pair of tickets. They paid $135 apiece for $28 bleacher seats. And they were happy.
“In a strange way, I felt I was getting a good deal, which is disgusting,’’ Samantha Bono said.
“Yeah, but that’s how it is,’’ her husband added.
The secondary ticket market - the multibillion dollar industry in which brokers, online listing services, scalpers, and individuals resell tickets - is risky, expensive, confusing, controversial.
And, probably to the surprise of many fans, it is widely conducted in violation of the spirit of a nearly forgotten Massachusetts law dating to 1924 that was designed to hold down ticket costs.
That law limits ticket prices to $2 above face value, plus attributable service charges. The question is what is truly attributable. High-volume ticket resellers routinely factor in the cost of procuring tickets, operating offices, advertising, and paying employees....
Massachusetts is one of five states with laws strictly limiting what resellers can charge. But with hundreds, maybe thousands, of outlets reselling tickets online and offline, the law is difficult to enforce. Plus, ticket scalping is viewed as a victimless crime.
But by this time next year, legislation under consideration on Beacon Hill could, if passed, make the secondary market in Massachusetts a much different place for fans and licensed resellers. Some overhaul of ticket reselling regulations appears to have legislative support, but it is unclear what form it might take, or whether it would pass.
That will be decided behind clo$ed door$.
Hearings are scheduled for this month....
This is what they are looking into over there?
Sigh.
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