How to Be a Ticket Scalper When You Grow Up

Americans value an entrepreneurial spirit as highly ancient Romans valued a strong chin. Few children look forward to a cubicle, six bosses and a lawn full of brown grass. Instead, imagination and vigor characterize the nation’s youth. Pre-adults in the U.S. collect cans, rake leaves and open lemonade stands by the thousands to earn a little scratch.

Unfortunately, this creative chutzpah is pounded out of many boys and girls by the time they enter the work force. They are forced into an office job, with all of its attendant unhappiness, just to earn a steady paycheck.

However, not everyone chooses this path. Some men and women decide to blaze their own trails, one of which is the glamorous world of ticket scalping.

At the most basic level, fledgling scalpers sacrifice their time and effort to stand in lines for hot events. Buying tickets from the box office for the Super Bowl, a Billy Joel concert, or the opening night of a Broadway show, scalpers know that they’ll be able to resell their tickets for more than they themselves paid. On the day of the event, the scalpers stand outside the venue and sell their tickets to passers-by or people who arrive at the event without tickets already.

As the operation grows larger, a scalper may pay several people to stand in lines for various events, buying more tickets and reselling them for more money.

While this basic strategy works reasonably well, laws and technology have changed the business. The act of scalping tickets at the venue has been outlawed in many states, though the exact terms of those rules vary. Fortunately, the Internet’s increasing prominence as a marketing medium has allowed scalpers to move off the streets and into cyberspace.

Through the Internet, scalpers have been replaced by brokers, who operate legally within the regulated secondary ticket market. The secondary market, consisting of all tickets available for resale, has grown rapidly in the past few years. So how can you break into the industry?

An internet presence is an essential part of forging a successful business as a ticket broker. While it is possible to earn some profit using the basic strategy described above, you will always be limited by how much you can buy and sell yourself. Also, a lack of advertising results in fewer potential buyers and less competition for your tickets, resulting in lower chances of reselling tickets for a higher price.

The Internet allows you to reach a large number of people who are looking specifically for tickets. A website is an extremely useful tool, as it allows you to display all your tickets in a way that makes it easy for shoppers to find the ones they want.

Your business can really take off when you list your inventory through one of the major exchange networks. These networks are large databases of tickets from many brokers. Shoppers looking for tickets are drawn to these sources because of the wide selection, and listing your inventory in their databases increases your exposure dramatically. Additionally, broker exchange networks can quickly and easily eliminate sellers with phony tickets. Such sites are able to more easily manage fraud by dealing with a more limited group of larger sellers, rather than a site like Ebay which has to manage a huge number of small sellers.

Some networks, like TicketNetwork and Ticket Solutions, allow multiple web sites to display the entire inventory in a database. By paying a premium for this service, you can make money two different ways. First, you can display your tickets at a more favorable price than those of other brokers, making your tickets more attractive and increasing your sales. Second, you can charge a service fee if customers choose to buy tickets on your site but from other brokers. This allows you to make a profit on any ticket bought on your website.

The secondary ticket market is trending toward these sorts of technological advances, rewarding brokers with lower prices, better websites, and superior knowledge of event popularity. While the industry has developed beyond the solitary scalper standing outside Madison Square Garden, it is still very much a business of entrepreneurs, limited only by ambition and imagination rather than the gray walls of a cubicle.