Not all that long ago, when you forked over your cash for tickets to sporting events, what you received in return were small pieces of paper, covered with ink. At the appropriate time, you took these pieces of paper to the gate, handed them to a human being who tore them in half and handed you back a stub. You then hit the concession stands for a beer and a couple of hot dogs, found your seat, and enjoyed your event.
Sometimes, back in the good old days, if your decision to go to the game was a last minute one you and your buddies would scout out the parking lot at the stadium, hunting for the most honest looking scalper you could find. You'd talk, haggle, swear, cough up 10 or 15 percent more than the face value ("Handlin' charges, my man, handlin' charges!") and take your chances that the tickets were real or that even if they weren't the guy at the gate wouldn't notice. If luck didn't happen to be on your side that particular day, you chalked the 20 bucks you were each out up to experience, hit the nearest bar, and watched the game on TV.
Things don't work quite that way anymore, of course. For one thing, unless you are buying nosebleed seats to a losing baseball team's mid-August home stand, twenty bucks will hardly cover the beer and couple of dogs, let alone the tickets. For regular season football or basketball games in some markets, you are talking hundreds of dollars for tickets. For playoff games and major sporting events like the Super Bowl, the Final Four, The Masters, or the Kentucky Derby, you are talking thousands. And with prices like that, scalpers are no longer just those friendly guys in the parking lot looking to separate you from your twenty bucks. They are now high tech, online and in-person criminals looking to separate you from your next couple of house payments.
Counterfeiting sports and entertainment tickets is a multi-billion dollar per year industry in the United States and it affects virtually every level of the sports world from college and regular season games, to the mega events. Last college football season, the AP reported on October 9 th , 2007 that over 100 people had bought counterfeit tickets to the previous week's LSU game. Every year, hundreds of fake Super Bowl tickets are sold this last year for prices ranging from $2,500 to $3,000. Some of these tickets like the widely publicized case of the New Bedford , MA couple who helped police take down a ring of Arizona ticket counterfeiters at this year's Super Bowl are sold by traditional scalpers "on site". More and more often, however, the Internet with its almost impenetrable veil of anonymity is the preferred vehicle of sale. And even though the warnings are everywhere about buyer beware when it comes to buying anything on the Internet, millions of dollars a year disappear into the seemingly endless void of cyberspace for counterfeit tickets.
And we are no longer talking about simple ink on paper here as in the olden days, either. Today, most tickets to professional and even college events are printed on special papers, and routinely utilize holographic imaging to aid in verifying their authenticity. For the 2008 Super Bowl, tickets included a multi-dimensional hologram on the back, fibers and ink that fluoresced under a black light and heat sensitive ink that disappeared when rubbed. It didn't matter. While the counterfeits were relatively simple for stadium officials to spot with their specialized equipment, to the untrained eye most of the counterfeit tickets seized at this years event were virtually perfect. And really when was the last time you ran the tickets you just bought under the old black light?
What makes ticket counterfeiting so popular (and profitable) of course is that any major sports or entertainment event only has a limited amount of seats or admissions available. The bigger the event, the harder tickets are to come by. Take the Masters Golf Tournament in Augusta , GA which is considered to be the hardest ticket to get in all of sports. You can't buy tickets to the event directly from the Tournament itself they haven't been available to the public since the 1970's. Even the waiting list now decades long was closed to the public a few years ago. Yet every year, the demand for tickets increases; and every year, more and more people offering to sell these tickets pop up on eBay and Craig's list and other online sites. Is everyone selling these tickets a criminal? Certainly not some of them will actually send you what you pay for. The problem is, there isn't any way for you to make certain that you haven't bought a counterfeit from someone on one of these sites until one of the friendly security personnel at Augusta National politely asks you to, "Just step this way, please."
What this all boils down to is the fact that as a consumer, it is your responsibility to exercise both care and common sense when it comes to shelling out your hard earned cash for tickets. Buying tickets on the internet from people you don't know or even from businesses that don't have a proven track record of customer satisfaction is not only incredibly risky, but can also be incredibly expensive. Particularly when you find yourself dealing with a seller on eBay or Craig's List who, because of "time constraints" or "not trusting the internet for sending money" wants you to transfer cash to them via Western Union , the odds are very good that the only thing you will get for your payment is a hearty "so long, sucker". Western Union money transfers, of course, cannot be cancelled which is why no legitimate ticket broker would ever require payment by that method. To put it another way if you try to beat the system, you are liable to get beat. (Just ask any of the thousands of parents who have had to explain to their sobbing tweens why they are in the car heading home instead of bopping along to Hannah Montana because the tickets they bought on eBay were counterfeit.)
As long as there are sporting events, concerts, or any other event for which there are more people looking for tickets than there are tickets themselves, there is going to be counterfeiting. And the more sophisticated the security on tickets becomes, the better the fakes will become. Build a better mousetrap, breed a smarter mouse. The only way to guarantee that you get what you pay for in the ever more complex world of ticketing is to either buy your tickets directly from the hosting venue, or online from a legitimate ticket broker. Legitimate online ticket brokers will have a proven track record of supplying legitimate tickets, verifiably genuine ticket sources, and written money back guarantees. Yes, they might cost a few dollars more per ticket than the "sweet deals" you may run across on eBay or Craig's List, but buying from a legitimate ticket broker ensures that you will spend your time enjoying the event, and not twiddling your thumbs in the Security office, waiting for the next available officer to have that little chat they told you about when they refused your counterfeit ticket at the door.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Gene Hammett is the founder and President of Action Seating, Inc. For the last fifteen years, Action Seating, Inc. has provided both individual and corporate customers with premium tickets and ticket packages to virtually every major sporting event, world wide. Action Seating specializes in packages for events that include The Masters, Super Bowl, Olympics, and more events which can be custom-designed for their corporate clients. Every ticket purchased through Action Seating, Inc. is backed by their 100% Buyer's Guarantee to ensure that customers receive authentic tickets in a timely fashion.
For further information or to schedule interviews, contact Gene Hammett directly by phone at 770-458-4522 or Email: gene@actionseating.com .
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