Alaska News

Buying tickets to a highly anticipated show? Be wary of third-party vendors

Buying tickets to Cirque du Soleil's "Dralion" online? Be careful what you click on.

That's the warning from Janie Odgers of Anchorage, who found herself paying much more than she expected when she navigated to the website of a ticket reseller.

"I went online to order tickets and purchased two, I thought, at $79 each," she told Alaska Dispatch News. "Then it said there was a fee for $15 for handling. I thought that was fair and paid for them with a credit card. Then it popped up that there was a charge of $53 or $59, something like that, on top of it."

At this point she decided she was paying too much and tried to call the seller, Tickets-Center.com. There was a recording. So she sent an email. There was no reply.

On the next business day, she went to her bank as soon as it opened and stopped payment. "There was another $3.88 charge on top of it when I got to the bank," she said. "I don't know what that was for."

Tickets-Center.com is a third-party ticketing agency or ticket broker. "Scalper" is the popular word. They buy tickets from the direct seller and resell them at a higher price.

"Scalping is not illegal in Alaska," said Alaska Center for the Performing Arts President Nancy Harbour in an email. "Sadly, patrons do get caught by their lack of knowledge in this area.

ADVERTISEMENT

"Whenever there's a big show and a patron goes through a browser online, the first three or four listings are all by brokers who 'sell' tickets at significantly higher rates than the ticketing company associated with the venue."

John Fraser, director of ticketing for the center, wrote, "This is not a surprise to anyone here at the ACPA. Over the years, we have seen an increase in the number of tickets purchased from third-party ticket brokers."

"Not all third-party ticket agencies are bad," Fraser wrote in a blog for centertix.com last year. Groupon sometimes sells tickets at half price. Television and newspaper promotions can also sell a certain number of tickets at a discounted price. "If you are looking for tickets to a sold-out show or if you are looking to impress out-of-town guests with premium seats, ticket brokers can be a lifeline."

In some markets, brokers will invest in seats early, knowing they will be sold out. But in Anchorage, few events sell out in advance, Fraser said. "So ticket brokers generally wait for someone to purchase tickets from them before getting tickets to fulfill these orders."

Such resold tickets are valid and honored as long as they aren't counterfeits. But they can cost a lot.

This reporter tried several approaches to finding tickets for the "Dralion" shows taking place at Sullivan Arena in January. The first several tries took him to Tickets-Center.com, where limited tickets in each section were offered for more than $500 in some cases. That's before any extra fees were added.

Fraser advised patrons to go to the venue's website to find the authorized seller. In this case, that's sullivanarena.com. Once there, click on the Ticketmaster.com logo, move the calendar dates to January and click on the event and date you want. Double-check the address bar to make sure that you're on "Ticketmaster," not "Tickets-Center." The Sullivan website isn't the easiest system to use, but it showed several tickets still available for all shows at prices ranging between $48 and $134.90.

Ticketmaster.com is the authorized seller for most Sullivan Arena events, as centertix.net is for the ACPA.

As of Wednesday, Odgers said she had not yet tried to get replacement tickets. "The plan is, yes. But not at the moment. I'm still kind of stung. I just hope it doesn't happen to other people."

Mike Dunham

Mike Dunham has been a reporter and editor at the ADN since 1994, mainly writing about culture, arts and Alaska history. He worked in radio for 20 years before switching to print.

ADVERTISEMENT