Scalping is illegal in Massachusetts. There was a whole big thing over tickets to Fenway Park -- the Fenway owners will help re-sell unwanted season tickets, but they have to resell them at face value (plus a service charge). Whereas, other parks in other states have their own, corporate reselling service that marks up the tickets like whoa.

In the latter case, although formally 40% of the tickets cost, say, $20 or less, in reality huge blocks of tickets are designated automatically to the reselling service, which sell them at 500% of face value. So, in effect, the "40% of our tickets are affordable!" claim is a lie.

(In the case of baseball, there's a whole "public good" issue, because of the antitrust exemption under which the enterprise works. So, since the public good is not served by tickets being wildly unaffordable to your average Jane, there are constant and persistent rumblings about this. In MA, not nearly the amount of rumblings.)

I also know for the Patriots that if you are caught reselling your season tickets, they will cancel your season tickets permanently.

if you are caught reselling your season tickets, they will cancel your season tickets permanently.

Pretty typical example, but it doesn't get to why. (I'm not bon bon, but I've wondered about this for eons.)

Pretty typical example, but it doesn't get to why. (I'm not bon bon, but I've wondered about this for eons.)

I'd say it's not dissimilar to the reason for all the warnings and disclaimers on fanfic. If there's a profit to be made off the game or broadcast thereof, it's not yours to make.

Why is scalping offensive?

The tickets are rare, and in demand, and therefore valuable. If the issuers wanted to sell them at auction or "for all the market will bear" they could have done so and reaped the value created by the rarity. To sell them instead for a flat nominal sum is a kindness, and for a purchaser to turn around and re-sell the ticket for a profit is an abuse of that kindness.

In the case of the Patriots, or any private org that sells tickets, it's the Patriots who want to make the profit, rather than hand the profit off to anybody with an eBay account. I know that broadway shows were experimenting with selling a small block of tickets at $500 each, ridiculous prices, because they figured, better the last-minute charlie buy their ridiculously expensive tickets from the box office than from Creepy Dave on the street.

I am a big fan of the block of cheap day-of tickets. I know in Britain they've been used to drum up business for otherwise-scantily-attended plays, and such. Actually, at Fenway, day-of you can get in line and buy any ticket not already sold in the whole stadium -- and then you have to enter the stadium immediately, so you can't scalp the ticket you just bought.

Look, like I said, there's nothing inherently wrong with resale. In the case of Serenity, the tix went to the first purchasers. There's nothing wrong with selling your ability to be there first to someone else who will pay because they can't. If I've got a Big Important job that prevented me from buying the tix within moments of their release, the fact that someone else buys them and sells them to me at a price I'm willing to pay IS a "kindness"-- at least in the definition used above. They're NOT stealing the profit of the issuer-- the issuer already made the profit from the price they chose, and the buyer just makes the premium over his investment.

I'd say it's not dissimilar to the reason for all the warnings and disclaimers on fanfic. If there's a profit to be made off the game or broadcast thereof, it's not yours to make.

Again, this is a different situation from intellectual property. It's more like a bookstore selling books-- the author made his profit, and someone else gets a premium for making the property conveniently available. It's not the same thing as someone NOT paying you what you're asking to be paid and making money off of it.

Scalping is illegal in some places for reasons like the one Nutty stated above-- it's a weighing of interests that, in the case of monopolistic sports, favors people who get there first, rather than the people who can pay a premium. It's not a evil/good dichotomy.

It may be that the 800 lb gorillas can always get there first, and with their premium they're not doing me a kindness. Without them, I'd have gotten a ticket at the normal price. Now I'm forced to pay 1000% of the price instead, or just not go.

I think some people were trying to get at the idea (without fully explaining it) that there is something shady about creating a rarity and profiting off of that when you're not actually responsible for the rare property. Well, why is that, necessarily? Why should the people who who could have purchased but for the scalpers be privileged over the purchasers from the scalpers? The issuer is perfectly capable of limiting purchase to a certain number per buyer if he wanted to privilege the time-advantaged buyer over the richer, later fan.

It's not a evil/good dichotomy.

And yet - I still want to smack those guys who get in your face shouting "Buying tickets? Selling tickets?" in front of the Fleet Center with a rolled up newspapaer until they bleed from the eyes.