The Law and Economics of Ticket Scalping

Online ticketing has transformed the sports industry. Fans can more easily access and purchase tickets to a game online with confidence in their validity. Unsurprisingly, professional sports leagues and teams have entered the secondary ticket market at unprecedented levels because of the potential for significant revenue garnered from this ripe market. This incidence marked a shift in the historical and bifurcated model of sports teams being the primary ticket seller with ticket brokers and scalpers dominating the secondary ticket market. The seeming merger of these two ticket markets raises a variety of important questions, including, the need for, and wisdom of, ticket scalping laws. This article seeks to delve into the proliferation and evolution of the secondary ticket market and the accompanying anti-scalping laws that followed. Within the context of public choice and law and economic theory, this article will call into question these laws, as well as raise concerns about the conflation of the primary and secondary ticket markets by professional sports leagues and teams