Some Economics of Ticket Resale

Abstract

A large number of brokers and scalpers resell a significant fraction of event tickets at substantial markups and they manage to do so despite the fact that promoters and ticketing agencies do not support resell for profits and often attempt to block secondary market. Why can't promoters capture the profits from secondary markets or at least deter brokers from doing so? I present a simple explanation that borrows from the literature on airline ticket pricing and draw parallels with that literature. I review some evidence consistent with this explanation.