Most of you won’t ever have a chance to catch that historic home run from a playoff game in your glove. If you’re from Boston like me, you may have moved on to hockey and football anyway. But we likely won’t experience the thrill of Ozzy’s “Crazy Train” at Gillette Stadium either. And those slam dunks or power play goals that some people at the game will call the greatest they ever saw? You won’t be in the arena for those moments either.
October is one of the best times of the year for sports fans. Yet ticket prices are now beyond what even the most passionate fans will find worth paying for the MLB, NFL, NBA, and NHL games worth seeing. One big reason is that ticket resellers often control tickets before the public can buy them.
This spring, I worked with the Digital Citizens Alliance, as it launched the “Responsible Markets Initiative.” Investigators looked at the resale market, including companies like StubHub, Vivid Seats, and SeatGeek. Its report, When It Comes to Digital Markets Trust Can’t Be Secondary, showed how brokers manipulate supply to drive up prices.
For example, when researchers reviewed tickets for the May 16 game between the New York Yankees and the New York Mets, they found that one out of every six seats at Yankee Stadium was listed on StubHub. In some cases, the same seller offered blocks of twenty tickets or more.
Just hours before the first pitch on October 8, Digital Citizens researchers checked prices for the Yankees’ biggest game of the season, an elimination playoff match against the Toronto Blue Jays. They found that secondary market resellers were offering tickets in blocks from eight to twenty, with fees making up 20 to 40 percent to the total ticket cost.
When DCA launched its report, we knew we needed to look under the hood at digital secondary markets. What we didn’t realize was that, in the case of Ticketmaster, the primary market was working with the secondary market.
The Ticketmaster case raises two questions. First, what is going on with tickets to events? Second, do consumer safeguards vary more widely between primary and secondary markets across industries? On the first question, regulators and policymakers are taking notice. They are going after secondary ticket resellers and one of the largest primary ticket sellers, accused of enabling resellers to take advantage of consumers:
Consumers want to invest in experiences. As with any investment, there should be safeguards against bad actors who exploit the system.
Fans can help. If you see sellers hoarding tickets or charging outrageous markups, take a screenshot and send it to your state attorney general or the FTC. Now is the time to reset the ticket market. Help law enforcement win this fight.
About that second question on primary versus secondary markets, we need a deeper look. Other sectors, such as domains and housing, show how secondary-market activity can threaten consumers and small businesses. Since we may not be going to as many sporting events right now, we have some time to examine those sectors as well.
For more than two decades, Brian Cohen has worked alongside top federal and state law enforcement officials. He has worked for both the Department of Justice and Homeland Security. He now partners with leading companies and nonprofits in the consumer-packaged goods, entertainment, and leisure industries to address public safety and policy issues that leave consumers vulnerable and threaten American jobs.