What if someone told you that a pair of tickets for the August 30, 2016 Bruce Springsteen concert in East Rutherford, NJ would cost you $500, and those tickets weren’t even in the first row. Wouldn’t you think you were getting scalped? If I told you a Row T (20 rows back) ticket for his Manchester England concert was £ 137.50 ($201.05), you probably would call for the arrest of the person selling that ticket.
Well, if you want to see these high priced ticket sellers go to jail, the first you would see in handcuffs would be Bruce Springsteen. Those are the prices that Springsteen is demanding through Ticketmaster, which are listed under its Official Platinum Seats sales. Ticketmaster states that “Ticketmaster’s Official Platinum Seats program enables market-based pricing (adjusting prices according to supply and demand) for live event tickets…Official Platinum Seats were not purchased initially and then posted for resale; they are being sold for the first time through Ticketmaster on behalf of the artist or event provider [emphasis added].”
Webster’s Dictionary defines a ticket scalper as “A person who buys tickets for entertainment or sports events and sells them at a profit, often at a much higher price.”
Apparently, the only difference between a ticket scalper and Bruce Springsteen is the fact that Springsteen does not have to go through the bother of purchasing the tickets, he just jacks the prices based on the economic principle of market-based pricing.
Isn’t that what the secondary market sellers do?
Stay Tuned, More to Come
