Revenue / 10.30.18

Broadway Ticket 'Short Sellers' Peddle Seats They Don't Own—for Often Exorbitant Price Jumps

Access Staff

NBC 4 New York (10/30/18) Glorioso, Chris; Stulberger, Evan

New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood in September sued the TicketNetwork.com resale platform for "engaging in a massive scheme to trick tens of thousands of unsuspecting consumers into buying tickets that the sellers did not actually have." Her office claims TicketNetwork's own business records indicate that thousands of buyers failed to get the seats for Broadway shows they ordered because they were responding to short-sellers who had no tickets. In addition, they often pay more for speculative tickets than they would otherwise pay for actual tickets. TicketNetwork legal counsel Peter Harvey counters that the platform is fully compliant with the law, and "vigorously defends users' ability to place traditional ads—where sellers already own tickets, along with speculative ads—where sellers don't have the seats yet." Yet an internal document states that the company's sales strategists noted that short-selling tickets "create[s] the appearance of plentiful inventory on the exchange when there are little or no real tickets." The document also lauded speculative ads because they "generate sales that would not otherwise materialize when limited real inventory is available." The National Consumers League's John Breyault calls short-selling Broadway tickets more worrisome than short-selling the stock market.

Read the full article on the NBC 4 New York website. 

Tags: Reselling , News , Broadway , Secondary Ticketing