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, people wishing to attend a boxing match are told that all the good tickets were sold (to "specs" — that is, speculators) yesterday, even though the match was only announced that morning.]] Ticket resale (also known as ticket scalping or ticket touting when done for profit) is the act of reselling tickets for admission to events. Tickets are bought from licensed sellers and then sold for a price determined by the individual or company in possession of the tickets. Tickets sold through secondary sources may be sold for less or more than their face value depending on demand, which tends to vary as the event date approaches. When the supply of tickets for a given event available through authorized ticket sellers is depleted, the event is considered "sold out," generally increasing the market value for any tickets on offer through secondary sellers. Ticket resale is common in both spectator sport and concert.
Ticket resale is a form of arbitrage that arises when the number demanded at the sale price exceeds the number supplied (that is, when event organizers charge less than the equilibrium prices for the tickets).
During the 19th century, the term scalper was applied to railroad ticket brokers who sold tickets for lower rates.
Ticket scalpers (or ticket touts in British English) work outside events, often showing up with unsold tickets from brokers' offices on a consignment basis or showing up without tickets and buying extra tickets from fans at or below face value on a speculative basis hoping to resell them at a profit. There are many full-time scalpers who are regulars at particular venues and may even have a pool of loyal buyers.
One common concern with resale is with Confidence trick selling fake tickets to unsuspecting buyers. Another common scalping practice is to sell tickets that have already been scanned at the venue gate. Entry is typically allowed only when a ticket is scanned for the first time, but unsuspecting buyers may purchase an authentic but unusable ticket that has already been scanned.
A concern when buying tickets on the street from a ticket scalper or via an online auction is that the tickets sold by ticket resellers may themselves be stolen or counterfeit. For many major sporting events, counterfeit tickets are auctioned off in the months leading up to the event. Criminals selling stolen or counterfeit tickets are not to be confused with legitimate ticket brokers and individuals who abide by the law to legally resell tickets on the secondary market.
In 2009, Ticketmaster started adoption of a "paperless" restricted ticketing in which tickets could not be resold. Under the system, customers prove their purchase by showing a credit card and ID. The measure was taken in response to ticket scalping and resale markup of tickets on secondary markets and adopted during Miley Cyrus (2009) World Wonder Tour, although Ticketmaster first experimented it with AC/DC's Black Ice World Tour (2008–10). Ticketmaster has since changed the name of the system to "Credit Card Entry". The system requires large groups to enter together with the person who purchased tickets. Some events have Ticket Transfer which allows the tickets to change ownership and allow for tickets to be transferred through Ticketmaster's proprietary systems. These cannot be later resold or transferred via such as StubHub.
Some ticket brokers offer tickets even before the tickets are officially available for sale. In such scenarios, those ticket resellers are actually selling of those tickets. This is often possible if the reseller is a season ticket holder. Season ticket holders generally receive the same exact seat locations year after year thus they can enter a contract to deliver on tickets that they own the rights to, even if those tickets have not even been printed or sent to the original ticket holder.
Online ticket brokering is the resale of tickets through a web-based ticket brokering service. Prices on ticket brokering websites are determined by demand, availability, and the ticket reseller. Tickets sold through an online ticket brokering service may or may not be authorized by the official seller. Generally, the majority of trading on ticket brokering websites concerns itself with tickets to live entertainment events whereby the primary officially licensed seller's supply has been exhausted and the event has been declared sold out." Critics of the industry compare the resale of tickets online to "ticket touting," "scalping," or a variety of other terms for the unofficial sale of tickets directly outside the venue of an event.
The late 1990s and early 2000s saw the emergence of online ticket brokering as a lucrative business. The American corporate ticket reselling firm Ticketmaster developed a strong online presence and made several acquisitions to compete in the secondary markets. Securities analyst Joe Bonner, who tracks Ticketmaster's parent company New York-based IAC/InterActiveCorp, told USA Today: "You have to look at the secondary market as something that is a real threat to Ticketmaster. They missed the boat. StubHub has been around a few years now already. They weren't as proactive as they probably should have been." Ticketmaster launched ticket exchange site TicketExchange in November 2005. Ticketmaster acquired former rivals GetMeIn and TicketsNow, while eBay bought StubHub. In 2008, the Boston Red Sox chose Ace Ticket over StubHub to sell their tickets. There are also independently owned online ticket resellers such as viagogo and SeatMarket.
The growth of the ticket resale market has been consistently growing and is expected to expand even further.
According to Stephen Barrett of Quackwatch, many online ticket resellers use that are similar to official box-office websites and sometimes imply via their texts or their pictures that they are official, use internet advertising to increase traffic to their website, and avoid clearly stating the real prices that are charged for a ticket.
In Australia, the secondary ticket market has been put under much scrutiny in the past few years as ticket scalpers dominated the resale ticket market. Scalpers would purchase tickets in bulk from the promoter hoping that the tickets would sell out causing an increase in demand for tickets and thus an increase in the ticket price. This caused event promoters to put restrictions on the number of tickets that can be purchased in one transaction, which has greatly reduced unfair ticket pricing. After many complaints from the community and event promoters, the Commonwealth Consumer Affairs Advisory Council and NSW Fair Trading conducted a survey discussing scalping issues and released The Ticket Scalping Issue Paper for NSW.
In Victoria, New South Wales, South Australia and Western Australia, the reselling of tickets for more than 10% above its face value is banned; in the latter three states, the use of Internet bot to purchase tickets is also banned.
In recent efforts to combat illegal ticket scalping and enforce resale laws, Australia has seen the emergence of responsible ticket resale companies employing advanced technologies. Australian regulations stipulate that ticket resellers must conspicuously display key information to potential buyers. This includes a clear statement indicating that the service being used is a ticket resale platform, thereby not directly affiliated with primary ticket providers. Additionally, it is imperative that these platforms provide a comprehensive breakdown of the ticket's cost, comparing the original selling price to the resale price, hence offering transparency about the markup. This total cost can be determined through various means such as the price indicated on the ticket.
In Ontario, reselling the tickets above face value is prohibited by the Ticket Speculation Act and is punishable by a fine of $5,000 for an individual (including those buying the tickets above face) or $50,000 for a corporation.
Effective July 1, 2015, in an effort to protect consumers from purchasing fraudulent tickets, Ontario created an exemption under the Ticket Speculation Act to:
Following an announcement in 2016 that The Tragically Hip's lead singer Gord Downie had been diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, the band held the Man Machine Poem Tour. Ticket resellers reportedly purchased two thirds of all available tickets to capitalize on public demand. "'There's a big problem': Two-thirds of Tragically Hip tickets weren't sold directly to fans". CBC News, October 21, 2016. As a result, in 2017, Ontario announced legislation to attempt to crack down on scalper bots. "After Tragically Hip show outrage, Ontario moves on ‘scalper bots’". The Globe and Mail, February 28, 2017.
Other than in the case of football tickets, there is no legal restriction against reselling tickets in the UK although individual organisations (like Wimbledon) may prohibit it.
In July 2016, several prominent music managers in the UK including Ian McAndrew, Harry Magee, Brian Message and Adam Tudhope came together to fund a new initiative called the FanFair Alliance, to work towards tackling the issue of 'industrial-scale online ticket touting'.
New York State law permits prices above face value only by the greater of $5 or 10%.
Some U.S states and venues encourage a designated area for resellers to stand in, on, or near the premises, and other states and venues prohibit ticket resale altogether. Resale laws, policies, and practices are generally decided, practiced and governed at the local or even venue level in the US and such laws and or interpretations are not currently generalized at a national level. However in 2025, President Donald Trump issued an Executive order directing the Federal Trade Commission to crack down on "exploitative ticket scalping".
Another issue in the U.S is that since ticketing laws vary by state, many ticket resellers use a loophole and sell their tickets outside of the state of an event.
Events that have sold tickets by ballot include the Big Day Out in 2007, the Ahmet Ertegün Tribute Concert – Led Zeppelin reunion concert at The O2 Arena in 2007, and the 2006 Commonwealth Games.
A similar practice used among ticket resellers is to list an item as an online auction (such as eBay), most commonly an innocuous item such as a collector's card, and give the tickets as a bonus to the winning bidder and so they do not actually sell tickets to circumvent ticket laws. That does not actually get around eBay's selling rules, which effectively state that the goods that the buyer receives are the ones that are sold by the seller, including any free bonuses.
Online auction sites like eBay enforce state ticketing laws only if either the buyer and/or the seller resides in the state in which the event takes place. Otherwise, there is no resale limit for tickets.
For taping of Comedy Central's The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, tickets were free. However, identification of ticket holders is checked when entering and while standing in line and most notably when progressing from the entrance queue into the studio space. Those measures serve effectively as a means of preventing those reserving the sought-after tickets from selling them for a cash value upon reservation.
Some ticket sellers allow buyers to provide personal information in exchange for being allowed to buy tickets earlier.
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