AlBrooks.com: Beware the Ticket Scalper

Most people buy their tickets for concerts, sporting events or theater events from legitimate, trusted ticket brokers. However, you can still find scalpers lurking around venues hawking high-priced, and oftentimes counterfeit, event tickets for last minute buyers who go to the event hoping to find tickets.

The word “scalping” means to buy something at face value and sell it at above cost. It’s a term that’s also used in trading to describe someone who rapidly purchases and sells securities, commodities and foreign currencies at a small profit.

Most ticket scalping occurs at sporting events and concerts. Some scalpers will show up at these events with tickets gotten through various methods. Others will hire kids to stand in line before the tickets first go on sale, and buy up as many as possible. Then there are also scalpers who will arrive early at a concert or sporting event, buy extra tickets from fans, and then resell them at a profit.

Sometimes scalpers make so many regular appearances at local venues that, over time, they develop their own regular customer base.

The problem with scalpers is that many of them sell fake or stolen tickets. In fact, it’s not uncommon for scam artists to travel with a show or concert artist from city to city selling counterfeit tickets to each show.

Where do these bogus tickets come from? Some have been previously scanned. These fake tickets are the most difficult to detect because they are actually real tickets, only they’ve already been used. Scalpers will also print their own tickets, using high tech graphics equipment. The tickets can sometimes be stolen as well.

In California, it's legal to sell tickets at more than their face value, but scalpers must have permission from the venue to sell tickets legitimately on their property.

What recourse do you have if they find out that you’ve purchased counterfeit tickets from a scalper? Unfortunately, none. You will lose your money, and even worse, miss out on the event. So why take the risk?

Always buy your tickets from an established, reputable broker, even when you’ve heard that an event has been “sold out.”

A ticket broker deals with people who go to many concerts or games, people who hold season tickets but cannot attend every performance, and the like. These folks are not average or part of the majority. They know their venues, artists, teams, seating plans, etc. They often have GREAT tickets. And they need a trusted resource to recycle tickets they cannot use while recycling some cash back into their pockets. That resource is the ticket broker.

Reputation is everything to the ticket broker. It is not possible to stay in business without sources of tickets that come to you with every ticket that they cannot use. And it is not possible to move those tickets without a large list of clients who come back year after year. A ticket broker’s new customers are more likely to arrive via word-of-mouth (positive recommendation from existing clients) than from any other promotional means. Our customers know that we can almost always get them good seats, whether it’s at the last minute, or when they’ve heard that no more tickets are available.

Jeff Brooks is President of Al Brooks Tickets (http://www.albrooks.com), located in the Wilshire Grand Hotel at 900 Wilshire Blvd, Suite 104, Los Angeles, CA 90017. Al Brooks Tickets provides tickets for venues throughout the US and internationally. For more information, please access our website at http://www.albrooks.com