If you're a Miami Heat season-ticket holder, you could be sitting on a fortune.

Courtside seats are going for as much as $8,800 on the scalpers' market for Game 6 of the NBA Eastern Conference finals Friday -- a game that will be played only if the Heat loses in Detroit tonight. If the Heat makes it to the championship round, they could be worth even more.

And guess who wants to help you scalp such pricey tickets? The Florida Legislature.

After six decades, the state is set to overturn a law that forbids the reselling of tickets for more than $1 above face value. A bill that passed the House and Senate in the recent session calls for nothing short of legalized scalping.

If signed into law by Gov. Jeb Bush, it will impose no penalties for selling a ticket at any price, provided the seller offers certain protections, including a refund if the event is canceled.

Given what some tickets are worth, there's much at stake. But it's unclear if the average buyer who purchases scalped tickets will benefit from the deal.

Currently, Florida is one of about a dozen states with an anti-scalping law. But the law is not particularly enforced -- just look at the scene outside any concert or sporting event, or check online. And for years, ticket brokers have found a way around the law by packaging tickets with travel, so buyers are "paying" for, say, a pricey limo ride to the event.

Advocates argue that by legitimizing scalping, the bill will create a healthy wave of competition because new resellers, no longer considered petty criminals, will enter the market. In turn, advocates say, that will result in lower prices.

"The bottom line is that this bill is going to benefit consumers," said Nick Iarossi, a Tallahassee lobbyist who represented the online fan-to-fan ticket marketplace StubHub in pushing for the new law.

But some of the biggest resellers say just the opposite. The National Association of Ticket Brokers argues that the bill will stifle competition because of a provision that restricts how many tickets can be purchased per event. If a popular event has a limit -- in the case of Madonna's July shows in Miami, it's six tickets -- a broker must respect it.

That means brokers theoretically can't employ such bulk-buying methods as using aliases or hiring others to make purchases on their behalf without facing a criminal penalty. Some promoters believe the methods are part of what drives the scalping industry, estimated at $10 billion to $25 billion a year.

While brokers aren't admitting to such tricks of the trade, they are saying that with the provision, their business is bound to suffer. And the consumer will pay for it because there will probably be fewer brokers around, resulting in a tighter market and escalating prices, they contend.

The bill's provision "is restricting free trade," said Todd Robin, a South Florida broker who runs Todd's Tickets at the Town Center mall in Boca Raton.

Florida isn't the only state taking a close look at ticket reselling. Legislation is pending in at least four other states -- California, Louisiana, South Carolina and Massachusetts.

The current push is not by accident. Reselling has taken off since the advent of the Internet, which transformed what was a small-time business to a thriving national industry. Major players include StubHub, the auction site eBay and the ticket industry's most dominant force, Ticketmaster, which has helped create a safe, legitimate resale market for fans in states where it is legal. More>>>

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