Hundreds of frustrated Texas Tech football fans were shut out of attending Saturday’s thrilling, last-second victory over arch rival Texas due to a massive counterfeit ticket scam.
About 500 fans bought fake tickets, which apparently were on similar ticket stock as real tickets but had duplicate barcodes for seats that had already been sold, according to published reports.
Some placed the scam at as much as an average of about $200 per ticket, according to the Austin American-Stateman and Lubbock Avalanche-Journal newspapers, and those tickets were mostly bought from scalpers beyond the stadium’s grounds.
Though the Internet has done something to curb the sale of counterfeit tickets, and the advent of scalper zones in certain cities, scam artists are still a problem for the secondary ticket industry.
“It’s always sad to hear about ticket scams, but unfortunately fake tickets seem to pop up at some of the big events,” Zach Anderson, Chief Operating Officer at Texas-based TicketCity, told TicketNews.
“We always advise ticket buyers not to pay with cash or a money order and to be extremely careful, or even avoid, buying tickets on the street for an event. Buying from an established ticket broker provides you recourse if there is a problem; paying cash to an anonymous person on the street does not,” Anderson added.
