When Renny Harrison started scalping tickets as a student at Zionsville High School and Indiana University, the business wasn't nearly as crowded or complicated as it is now. He would show up on the street, make some cash, then watch the game.

Now an owner of Circle City Tickets, Indianapolis' largest reseller of sports tickets, Harrison, 33, recalled those days fondly as he sat in his Northside office earlier this month, talking about the industry while also selling for Monday night's game between the Indianapolis Colts and Pittsburgh Steelers at the RCA Dome.

He called it "far and away the biggest (Colts) game we've ever had."
"You like to be on the visitors' side, right?" Harrison said to a client on the phone. "I could do 50-yard line, Colts' or visitors' side, 24 rows up, at $695. . . . Did you need more than two? . . . Yeah, this is the best pair now. They're the ideal seats. . . . These are seats that were probably $400 two months ago and $500 a month ago and $600 a couple weeks ago."

On the other end of the market, James Cole stood on the corner of Meridian and Maryland streets with four Indiana Pacers tickets.Cole, 50, bought them for $10 each at the box office, speculating that a Friday night game against New Jersey would sell out and bring more than face value -- "whether it's five or 10 bucks, whatever."

From Jim Cole to Circle City Tickets, the business of reselling tickets is booming and will become an even more prominent part of the city's sports landscape. The Colts stand undefeated and are looking toward the Super Bowl. The Pacers also are regarded as a title contender, and in April, the annual scalp-a-thon known as the NCAA men's Final Four comes to town."Having a national event like the Final Four and a 10-0 football team doesn't come along very often for any broker across the country," said John Lamoreaux of Ticket King, a broker in Milwaukee. "Anything can happen, but that's a great opportunity for exceptional profits."

Indiana is among 19 states that don't restrict the resale of tickets, according to the latest research from the National Association of Ticket Brokers.Yet for some people, the business still carries a whiff of suspicion, if not seediness. The Colts and Pacers express concern about counterfeit tickets, fans being bothered by street scalpers and brokers quickly buying up large blocks of tickets and pricing some fans out of the market.

Free-market economists have a word for it: capitalism. And despite their concerns, the city's two major pro teams, once disdainful of the scalping industry, have jumped into the fray.

StubHub, an Internet marketplace for reselling tickets, is in its first season as an official advertising partner of the Colts. Pacers season-ticket holders can sell their tickets on the team's Web site, and this season the cap on prices was lifted.

No broker interviewed for this story would divulge earnings. Many did, however, note that while the media routinely seek out brokers to quantify excitement about a game, breathlessly reporting the highest prices, rarely do they mention the financial risk.

"All ticket brokering is, is a high-stakes poker game," said Bob Jones Jr. of Great Seats. "There are times we guess wrong. I have 300 Denver-Colts playoff tickets that we never sold -- from the last two years."

Thriving market

Anyone can show up to a Pacers or Colts game and buy and sell tickets, as long as he stays off the venue's property. The town of Speedway requires street sellers to buy permits for $200 per event at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

At the NCAA's request, the City-County Council enacted an ordinance banning resale of tickets above face value for college championships such as the 2006 men's Final Four at the RCA Dome. Sellers who violate the ordinance can be fined up to $2,500. Brokers say they will simply process and ship Final Four orders outside the county.

Brokers buy from people or businesses that have season tickets. They routinely work together, listing each other's inventory on their Internet sites. The ones without the physical ticket charge a premium on top of the asking price from the broker who has the ticket.

Brokers also use national Internet "marketplaces" such as StubHub and TicketsNow . Those sites specialize in tickets, but brokers sometimes use eBay, too.

Nobody knows for sure how many tickets end up on the "secondary market." Arizona State University economist Stephen Happel, who studies the subject, estimated that it's about 20 percent to 30 percent for major events.

"With other things, you can buy low and sell high," Happel said. "Why not a game? It's not like water after a natural disaster."

On the morning of Nov. 13, there were a combined 791 tickets to the Colts-Steelers game for sale on the Web sites of local brokers Circle City and Great Seats, Internet companies StubHub and TicketsNow, and eBay. (Duplicates advertised on more than one site were excluded in the count.)Because those and other companies have been selling for months, the total number of Colts-Steelers tickets that went on the secondary market is probably in the thousands. The RCA Dome seats more than 57,000 for football.

"We know it's legal, it's been legal, and it's ingrained in society here in Indiana," said Pete Ward, the Colts' senior executive vice president. "Our primary issue is with institutional scalpers, when they corral large numbers of tickets before fans get a fair shot at purchasing them at face value." More>>>

   

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posted by ADMIN @ Sunday, November 27, 2005