Who Needs Tickets?

During my time at Framingham State, I went to a ton of Celtics games. It was actually a perfect system because the college was relatively close to the green line, so I was able to drive to Newton, park and take the train in for $5 round-trip. (Free tip for anyone who takes the green line to a game: walk to the science museum stop and get on there. Avoids the crowds and guarantees a seat.) At this point I would buy tickets off a scalper for whatever balcony seats they had available and since this was when the Celtics were averaging 30 wins a year a lot of tickets were available. (Cools kids in college spent their money on beer and weed, I spent mine trying to see a crappy basketball team.) Because I was such a frequent customer I had a couple of scalpers on-call to reserve my seats. Despite this 'preferred buyer' status, I never felt completely comfortable in any of my dealings with these guys. I bring this up because there was a story in the Boston Globe earlier this week about how scalpers are having a very hard time selling their Red Sox tickets this season. The scalpers went the usual route of blaming the economy, the down year the Sox are having and way that Sox fans have become spoiled by success and thus unwilling to watch a team that could very well win 85 games but still miss the playoffs. (They said all this but then mentioned that they weren't about to start lowering how much they jacked up ticket prices.) The scalpers biggest complaint was against ticket services like Ace Tickets, which allows season ticket holders to sell their tickets back to the team, who then turns around and re-sells them through Ace. Scalpers think the service has an unfair advantage because has an agreement in place to deal directly with the team.

While I agree that service like Ace Tickets should be considered shady because they allow the Red Sox to sell the same seat twice, I (as I always do) have another theory as to why scalpers are having such a hard time competing with ticket services: scalpers are generally not members of high society. No one ever walks away from a scalper and thinks, "Now there is a guy I would want to hang out with socially." Instead after you finish your business with a scalper you find yourself walking away feeling slightly dirty and wondering how badly you just got screwed over. Their case is not helped by the fact that scalping tickets is still considered illegal and as such you have to hide what you are doing from the cops. Suddenly going to a Celtics game feels like you stepped into a drug deal. Doesn't get the night started with a good vibe. Also, given all the stories that come out around big sporting events of people buying tickets from scalpers only to discover that their tickets are not authentic, it doesn't matter how closely you examine the tickets before purchasing, there is always a sinking feeling in your stomach that you may get to the front of the line, have the usher scan the bar codes and inform you your tickets are counterfeit. So of course a ticket dealer with a direct connection to the Red Sox is going have the advantage, and it's not because they have a wider selection; it's because people know their tickets are actually for real. You can't put a price on peace of mind like that.

The other thing working against scalpers is that when people ask to see the tickets to make sure they are authentic they can also see how much the tickets really should cost. No one dealing with a scalper expects to pay face value, but to be able to immediately see and calculate how much you are over-paying can be a real kick in the face. Think about it like this - if you went in to buy a car where the dealership was charging you $30,000, but they left the factory sticker on which showed they only paid $10,000 then you probably aren't going to buy that car on principle. You know going in that this dealership is going to make a profit, but you simply don't want to know how big that profit is. The best business transactions are the ones where you think you at least got a bit of a deal, which is impossible when it comes to ticket scalping. In that respect, scalping tickets may be the most transparent of all industries. Now, as long as people wait until the last minute to decide to go to a ballgame these guys are in no danger of going out of business and I have no doubt that the Sox will make some moves this offseason to put some juice back into the fanbase. In the mean time I don't want to hear how hard times have gotten for the guys who in the past have been able to charge $150 for $30 bleacher seats just because the Yankees are in town.