Selling tickets? If so, watch out
All of a sudden, a moribund 1924 law is showing signs of life.
No one has paid much attention to the state's antiscalping law for years. Not the police. Not state regulators. Not the attorney general's office. Not ticket resellers themselves.
But all of a sudden the moribund 1924 law is showing signs of life.
A Quincy District Court judge last week indicated he plans to force a Weymouth ticket reseller accused of violating the antiscalping law to identify one of its key ticket suppliers. Admit One Ticket Agency LLC, which operates online as RedSoxTix.com, said giving up the name of its supplier would be devastating to its business.
A Kenmore Square ticket agency is warning that a strict interpretation of the antiscalping law at a state regulatory hearing later this month could drive it and every other reseller out of business.
StubHub Inc., a San Francisco-based online marketplace for ticket resellers, last week tried to fend off a New England Patriots legal challenge by arguing that the state's antiscalping statute only applies to specific licensed events. StubHub says weekend events, like Patriots games, are not among the covered licensed events.
And after several years of giving a pass to street scalpers around Fenway Park, the Boston Police Department now says it plans to be out in force at Tuesday's Red Sox home opener.
"We are going to enforce the law on the tickets and try to have a lot more visibility to enforce it," said Captain William B. Evans in an e-mail. He declined to comment further, saying he didn't want to tip his hand.
Charles Steinberg , Red Sox executive vice president, said the team is doing its part. The Sox last week began selling 200 temporary bleacher seats for home games in an area in right field called Conigliaro's Corner. To deter scalpers, the tickets must be picked up at Fenway Park on the day of the game, and buyers must enter the park immediately.
The antiscalping statute says anyone in the business of reselling tickets must be licensed by the state and charge no more than $2 above the face value of the ticket.
Price increases of more than $2 are permitted only to recoup membership fees, office expenses, the cost of processing credit card orders, and service charges for things like messengers, postage, long-distance telephone calls, and extensions of credit. A reseller's cost to acquire a ticket is not a covered expense, according to a 1988 court ruling.
In response to several court and regulatory challenges, ticket resellers have come up with a number of defenses.
Admit One, for example, has argued that it can allocate more of its business expenses to some tickets than others, so a Red Sox-Yankees ticket with a face value of $85 can sell for $500 and still comply with the antiscalping law.
StubHub and Ace Ticket Worldwide Inc. of Boston have argued that the antiscalping statute, whether by design or because of poor drafting, applies only to specific types of events licensed under other sections of the law. StubHub says weekend Patriots games are not licensed under those sections and therefore are not subject to the antiscalping statute. Ace says events held in Boston are also exempt from the statute, including Red Sox, Boston Celtics, and Boston Bruins games.
In correspondence with the state Department of Public Safety, which licenses ticket resellers, Higs Cityside Tickets Inc. in Kenmore Square has argued that the antiscalping law needs to evolve with the times.
Dorchester consumer activist Colman Herman has accused Higs Cityside of violating the antiscalping law by charging $825 for a Green Monster Red Sox ticket with a maximum face value of $130.
"We cannot hold current license holders to the same standards that were created for resellers of theater tickets in the 1920s," said the Higs Cityside attorney, Robert L. Allen Jr.
Allen said resellers have been marking up their ticket prices for years and the state has never done anything but renew their licenses. In fact, Public Safety has never disciplined a reseller.
"Make no mistake about it," Allen wrote. "Mr. Herman's strict construction of the statute would inevitably put this entire industry out of business. It is neither right nor fair and would certainly create more public harm than good."
Jim Holzman, the president of Ace, has said strict enforcement of the antiscalping law would probably force ticket resellers to leave Massachusetts, taking their jobs and tax payments with them, and do business in states that have no restrictions on ticket sales.
Lawmakers have filed a number of bills to address the situation. One bill would raise the cap on markups to $10, another to 25 percent of face value, and a third to three times face value. One bill would let the original seller of a ticket set the maximum resale price for the ticket. Another bill would eliminate the cap on markups entirely as long as the resale is handled by a website authorized by the original seller.
Most ticket resellers want the cap on markups eliminated, saying competition will keep prices in check. Herman says it is reasonable to raise the cap on markups above $2, but he said three times face value is too much.
"It's reasonable for the government to set a ceiling on resale prices," he said. "It used to be said that horse racing was the sport of kings. Now Red Sox baseball games have become the sport of kings."
Until the law is changed, Herman said, the existing law should be enforced.
At a hearing last week in Quincy District Court on a complaint Herman filed against Admit One, the ticket reseller said it would disclose the name of one of its biggest ticket suppliers but it pleaded with Judge Mark S. Coven for a protective order that would conceal the name from the public.
"Why shouldn't the public know?" Coven asked.
Joel G. Beckman , Admit One's attorney, suggested disclosure of the name might cause the ticket supplier to go elsewhere with his tickets. It could put Admit One out of business, he said.
But Coven disagreed. "If you're following the law, nobody's going to be put out of business," he said.
Coven added that the Admit One case has attracted enormous interest from the press, the public, and lawmakers. "The more information they have to make informed judgments the better," he said.
Bruce Mohl can be reached at mohl@globe.com. 