Ticket Scalping
by Penny Isaac
In 1976 fans could see Bruce Springsteen for the low price of $8 (about $44 in modern day prices) and in 1988 they could see him for only $22.50 (about $60.84 in modern day prices). In 2024 this price changed so much that fans paid anywhere from $59.50 to $399 on the primary market and up to $5,000 on the resale market. This turn of events left many to wonder, what changed? The answer may seem obvious, inflation prices are going up after all, but inflation is actually not the problem here. The true problem behind concert ticket prices is ticket scalpers.
Concerts saw their first rise in scale thanks to The Beatles in 1965 and since then have taken off in size and popularity. This rise in popularity has only further increased after the pandemic as we worked as a community to come closer and get back to a new sense of normality. Although the growth in community has generally impacted positively on the music industry and music fans, not all aspects of the concert’s growth have had a positive impact. The main problem with this growth comes with the growth of ticket scalping.
When an artist decides on a venue, the artist, and their team work together with the venue to agree on a ticket price and ticket quantity before sending the tickets off to the venue’s contracted ticket selling company, like Ticketmaster or Fair AXS. The ticket company will then send out the tickets through presale and primary sale until the tickets get sold out. Once the tickets are sold out, any remaining tickets will be sent to the secondary market, which is where problems occur.
During primary sale ticket scalpers, often called brokers, will buy as many tickets as they can, often using bots that have been made unlawful under the BOTS Act 2016 to bypass ticket limits. Once the brokers have as many tickets as they can buy they often use manipulative and deceptive marketing tactics like advertising lower prices and then upping the price during checkout or affiliating themselves with the venue, artist, team, or ticket selling website to sell the tickets at inflated prices. The price increase in the resale market is often so dramatic that the price of a resale ticket can get up to 20 times the original face value of the ticket.
The ticket scalp problem has affected the resale market in horrible and manipulative ways. Most ticket selling platforms don’t offer refunds, so the resale ticket market was designed as a way for fans to sell tickets to fans for an event they are no longer able to attend. The creation of the secondary market also allowed fans to find tickets if they missed the primary market and, in some cases, allowed them to explore cheaper options. As more and more ticket scalpers begin to show up on the secondary market, they are corrupting the ideas that the secondary market was built on and inflating the prices unjustly in the process.
The problem of ticket scalping has grown so significantly that in 2024 alone the resale market brought in about 3.4 billion dollars in sales and this problem doesn’t just affect the fans, but the artists too. With the modernization of music and the use of online platforms, artists are getting paid less and less in comparison to the money they use to make from vinal, CD, and cassette tape sales. Many artists rely on concerts to make their living and thus it is their right to set the concert ticket prices. If an artist decides they want their ticket to be $800 that is between them and the venue but instead that money is going to someone who has no affiliation with that artist’s music and decisions.
Nevertheless, there is now a solution: The current federal government along with Massachusetts government are taking a stand. In Massachusetts there are laws in place making the use of or selling of automated ticket buyer, bots, illegal along with requiring a license for a person to sell any tickets to a concert. This law also contains strict rules on the maximum price of fees on tickets, refunds and when they must be issued, marketing and how to accurately disclose price information, along with strict fines and even jail time for violations.
On a federal level there are currently two bills stuck in the Senate. The first bill is called the Transparency In Charges for Key Events Ticketing Act (TICKET Act). The TICKET Act passed the house of representatives on April 29th, 2025, and is currently in the senate waiting for floor consideration as of September 16th, 2025. The TICKET Act is a bill that contains strict procedures on the price and advertisement of tickets, refunds, and the rights of the Federal Trade Commission to investigate. This bill, if passed, would require honest advertising, itemized breakdowns in the price, refunds, and full clarity of what the ticket includes.
The Fans First Act is a bill currently in the house of representatives and was introduced in senate on December 7th, 2023. This bill contains all the main ideas ad the TICKET Act but adds additional conditions like strengthening the BOTs Act and adding more extreme fines, gives the buyer venue information, protects fan bases and fan websites, requires proof of purchase, and a study to be released on year after the bill is put into action. The study must contain information on the secondary market, how brokers bypass rules and regulations, fraud tickets, price increases due to brokers, and the relationships between primary sellers and venues/artists. This bill generally just goes into more detail than the TICKET Act and adds more conditions to protect music fans in particular from scalpers.
For the past month I have been studying the secondary ticket market and how brokers have impacted it in a negative way for my high school civics project. What I found is that this problem has affected so many more people than I could’ve imagined. From a survey I took from Parker Charter Essential School, a local middle and high school in Massachusetts, 42.5% of people said that they couldn’t attend their favorite artist’s concert due to the price. Ticket scalping has turned from a minor inconvenience to a huge problem in just a few years and the solution to this problem is within reach with the TICKET Act and the Fans First Act. This problem can affect anyone who likes a certain artist. So, even if it doesn’t affect you , it likely affects someone you know like a friend of family member. Due to this I would highly recommend that you call your local and federal senate representatives and urge them to vote yes on the TICKET Act and bring attention back to the Fans First Act. It is the opinion of over 260 artists that “predatory resellers should not be more profitable than the people dedicating their lives to their art,” so let’s change that by passing these Acts!
In 1976 fans could see Bruce Springsteen for the low price of $8 (about $44 in modern day prices) and in 1988 they could see him for only $22.50 (about $60.84 in modern day prices). In 2024 this price changed so much that fans paid anywhere from $59.50 to $399 on the primary market and up to $5,000 on the resale market. This turn of events left many to wonder, what changed? The answer may seem obvious, inflation prices are going up after all, but inflation is actually not the problem here. The true problem behind concert ticket prices is ticket scalpers.
Concerts saw their first rise in scale thanks to The Beatles in 1965 and since then have taken off in size and popularity. This rise in popularity has only further increased after the pandemic as we worked as a community to come closer and get back to a new sense of normality. Although the growth in community has generally impacted positively on the music industry and music fans, not all aspects of the concert’s growth have had a positive impact. The main problem with this growth comes with the growth of ticket scalping.
When an artist decides on a venue, the artist, and their team work together with the venue to agree on a ticket price and ticket quantity before sending the tickets off to the venue’s contracted ticket selling company, like Ticketmaster or Fair AXS. The ticket company will then send out the tickets through presale and primary sale until the tickets get sold out. Once the tickets are sold out, any remaining tickets will be sent to the secondary market, which is where problems occur.
During primary sale ticket scalpers, often called brokers, will buy as many tickets as they can, often using bots that have been made unlawful under the BOTS Act 2016 to bypass ticket limits. Once the brokers have as many tickets as they can buy they often use manipulative and deceptive marketing tactics like advertising lower prices and then upping the price during checkout or affiliating themselves with the venue, artist, team, or ticket selling website to sell the tickets at inflated prices. The price increase in the resale market is often so dramatic that the price of a resale ticket can get up to 20 times the original face value of the ticket.
The ticket scalp problem has affected the resale market in horrible and manipulative ways. Most ticket selling platforms don’t offer refunds, so the resale ticket market was designed as a way for fans to sell tickets to fans for an event they are no longer able to attend. The creation of the secondary market also allowed fans to find tickets if they missed the primary market and, in some cases, allowed them to explore cheaper options. As more and more ticket scalpers begin to show up on the secondary market, they are corrupting the ideas that the secondary market was built on and inflating the prices unjustly in the process.
The problem of ticket scalping has grown so significantly that in 2024 alone the resale market brought in about 3.4 billion dollars in sales and this problem doesn’t just affect the fans, but the artists too. With the modernization of music and the use of online platforms, artists are getting paid less and less in comparison to the money they use to make from vinal, CD, and cassette tape sales. Many artists rely on concerts to make their living and thus it is their right to set the concert ticket prices. If an artist decides they want their ticket to be $800 that is between them and the venue but instead that money is going to someone who has no affiliation with that artist’s music and decisions.
Nevertheless, there is now a solution: The current federal government along with Massachusetts government are taking a stand. In Massachusetts there are laws in place making the use of or selling of automated ticket buyer, bots, illegal along with requiring a license for a person to sell any tickets to a concert. This law also contains strict rules on the maximum price of fees on tickets, refunds and when they must be issued, marketing and how to accurately disclose price information, along with strict fines and even jail time for violations.
On a federal level there are currently two bills stuck in the Senate. The first bill is called the Transparency In Charges for Key Events Ticketing Act (TICKET Act). The TICKET Act passed the house of representatives on April 29th, 2025, and is currently in the senate waiting for floor consideration as of September 16th, 2025. The TICKET Act is a bill that contains strict procedures on the price and advertisement of tickets, refunds, and the rights of the Federal Trade Commission to investigate. This bill, if passed, would require honest advertising, itemized breakdowns in the price, refunds, and full clarity of what the ticket includes.
The Fans First Act is a bill currently in the house of representatives and was introduced in senate on December 7th, 2023. This bill contains all the main ideas ad the TICKET Act but adds additional conditions like strengthening the BOTs Act and adding more extreme fines, gives the buyer venue information, protects fan bases and fan websites, requires proof of purchase, and a study to be released on year after the bill is put into action. The study must contain information on the secondary market, how brokers bypass rules and regulations, fraud tickets, price increases due to brokers, and the relationships between primary sellers and venues/artists. This bill generally just goes into more detail than the TICKET Act and adds more conditions to protect music fans in particular from scalpers.
For the past month I have been studying the secondary ticket market and how brokers have impacted it in a negative way for my high school civics project. What I found is that this problem has affected so many more people than I could’ve imagined. From a survey I took from Parker Charter Essential School, a local middle and high school in Massachusetts, 42.5% of people said that they couldn’t attend their favorite artist’s concert due to the price. Ticket scalping has turned from a minor inconvenience to a huge problem in just a few years and the solution to this problem is within reach with the TICKET Act and the Fans First Act. This problem can affect anyone who likes a certain artist. So, even if it doesn’t affect you , it likely affects someone you know like a friend of family member. Due to this I would highly recommend that you call your local and federal senate representatives and urge them to vote yes on the TICKET Act and bring attention back to the Fans First Act. It is the opinion of over 260 artists that “predatory resellers should not be more profitable than the people dedicating their lives to their art,” so let’s change that by passing these Acts!
