Scalpers .. Are They Good or Bad?

You can't talk about sports without talking about ticket scalping. It is a major part of any sport from the college level up, and sometimes even at the high school level. Ticket scalping is when people buy tickets from a particular venue at face value, then turn and sell those tickets for a profit on the street.

One key thing to determine if you're going to decide if they are bad or not is who they hurt. Ticket scalpers are usually the first people in line to get the good tickets for face value. A lot of these scalpers do this for a living. This means that the people working other jobs may not be able to take time off to get tickets directly from the venue.

They don't lose, though, because they can still get the tickets from the scalpers, just not at the best price. The people that do lose are the people who can't get out of work to get in line for face value tickets, and also can't afford to pay the scalper's price for the tickets.

The scalpers benefit by making money off of the tickets (and even attending the game themselves if they save themselves tickets), and the venue benefits because all the tickets are being bought for the price that they are selling them for.

So far it would appear as there as very few losers! Well, listen to my most recent interaction with ticket scalpers.

For the historical Indiana vs. Ohio State football game (historical because of Ohio State beating the University's longest win streak record) I bought tickets from the third scalper that I spoke to. The first one offered me two tickets in the A deck (lowest deck to the field) that were in the endzone for $100 each. The second had upper B seats for $150 each. The last scalper offered me two tickets in section 23B (home side, middle deck, midfield) in row 4 for $120. My friend and I decided that those were the best seats we were offered and took the deal.

As it would turn out, those seats were not what we got. The seats were 22B. So they were at the 20 yard line rather than 50, they were visitor side, and the scoreboard was blocked from view. If we had been paying more attention, Shay and I could have turned those down in favor of the lower seats for $20 cheaper.  We got ripped off.

I will say, though, that generally scalpers are very upfront and honest about what they have and are willing to negotiate a reasonable price with me. It just goes to show that you have to be careful which ones you buy from.

This is how Shay and I got ripped off by a scalper in Columbus (Photo/ Colton Byers).