There was a time when scalpers were reviled. They were the people who took advantage of the fact that we desperately wanted to see some show or game featuring our favourite artist or sports team, but didn’t have tickets, either because we didn’t get in the queue on time or, more ominously, someone deviously bought up all the tickets to sell them to us at a big mark-up.
In the past match and show organisers fought against this scalping scourge. It was widely understood among the teams or artists, and us, that the price on the ticket is what will be paid, and organisers wanted to protect the sanctity of that unwritten rule. But inevitably there are more fans wanting to see their teams than there are seats available, and that mismatch created the opportunity for scalping.
My first experience with a scalper was in 2001 at São Paulo’s famed concert hall, the Sala São Paulo, when someone was trying to peddle much-sought-after tickets for a performance of Brahms’ second piano concerto, one of the most loved pieces in the classical music repertoire. He was promptly arrested and I had to accompany the police to the police station in downtown São Paulo as witness. The orchestra subsequently gave me a free ticket to thank me for helping put an end to the scourge.
My second encounter with scalping was in March this year, in a different world, when I tried to get tickets for a football match between archrivals Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid, to fulfil a dream for my daughter to see Vini Jr score a goal at the Bernabeu stadium.
Over the decades I would say I have become quite adept at getting tickets for some sought-after concerts of the world’s top orchestras, such as the Berlin Philharmonic, concerts that would often sell out in five minutes. I thought getting tickets for this football match would therefore be easy for a ticket-buying ace like me.
Well, I was wrong. I was rudely awakened to the differences between buying tickets for the Berlin Phil and a La Liga match. Despite getting up at the crack of dawn to get the tickets, and being a paid-up Real Madrid fan, it was just impossible. With our airplane tickets already booked, with tours to the Palacio Real in Madrid, the Sagrada Família in Barcelona and several opera and concerts around Spain, desperation swept in.
I resorted to ChatGPT, which suggested I try the website Stubhub. Of course many tickets were available, at prices only a loving father would spend on his daughter. In an attempt to make itself look ethical and honourable, Stubhub guarantees its tickets and the event, so it all seemed above board.
I bought the tickets, which were eventually downloaded onto my iPhone in the names of Alejandro and Pedro, with Spanish surnames that I have now forgotten. Real Madrid’s website clearly states that it reserves the right to check ID upon entry, so I started panicking again, because our faces clearly did not match the names on those tickets. But they didn’t check anyone’s ID that day.
We watched Real Madrid beat Atletico Madrid 3-2 despite one of the Real Madrid players being sent off, and we forgot for a while that I had been ripped off. It was a rare victory for Real Madrid after two appalling seasons, with coaches coming and going and players beating each other up in the dressing room. No wonder the team later lost the La Liga title to archrivals Barcelona.
Upon reflection it struck me that Stubhub is nothing more than a glorified scalping service. Rather than preying on hapless fans at stadiums it now sells the tickets at spectacular markups on a fancy-looking website. In addition to the fact that I paid more than twice the face value of the tickets (for seats furthest away from the field, right at the top of the Bernabeu), there was also a big “intermediation fee” that Stubhub charged for facilitating the sale.
Remembering the scalper in São Paulo who got put away with my testimony, I asked myself when scalping went from a criminal offence to an apparently respectable business. Despite the supposed threat of ID checks at the Bernabeu, as my daughter and I walked to the impressive stadium we passed several negotiations where tickets exchanged hands for upwards of €350 (more than the most expensive face value tickets for that match).
Upon reflection it struck me that Stubhub is nothing more than a glorified scalping service. Rather than preying on hapless fans at stadiums it now sells the tickets at spectacular markups on a fancy-looking website.
Real Madrid clearly doesn’t care. So I decided to dig a bit deeper and found a recent BBC Sport article that reported it was estimated that up to 40% of tickets for Premier League, La Liga, Bundesliga and similar matches are snapped up for resale on bot-driven resale sites such as Stubhub, with clubs apparently turning a blind eye.
These tech savvy modern scalpers employ sophisticated bots and loans from banks, to buy tickets far faster than any father can do for his daughter, for the express purpose of selling them at a handsome profit to people who are prepared pay anything to see their team play.
With the upcoming Fifa World Cup this modern-day scalping is now not just limited to bot-driven sites like Stubhub. The event organisers seem to have realised that many people are prepared to pay far more for tickets than the face value, and decided they should also cash in on this business opportunity rather than fighting the scalpers.
By selling tickets to the matches through “dynamic pricing”, where the price of a ticket is determined by the demand for a particular match, Fifa is now in effect acting as a scalper of first resort. Demand (and hence prices) for these matches are being driven up further by secondary scalpers using bots to snatch up as many tickets as possible.
Dynamic pricing works on the principle that the price charged for a ticket does not necessarily reflect what someone would be willing to pay for it. It reflects the maximum pain someone is willing to endure to see a match or show.
Fifa boss Gianni Infantino is so elated by the fact that some tickets for the World Cup final are reportedly being traded by the secondary scalpers for $2m that he has promised to personally serve a hotdog and Coke to people who don’t mind being ripped off. I would like to believe that anyone forking out tens of millions of rand to attend a football match has more sophisticated taste than hotdogs and Coke (but I might be wrong).
That an activity that a mere 25 years ago could land someone in prison is now repackaged, praised as innovative business practice and utilised by event organisers themselves, says something unsettling about the commercialisation of modern culture.
A price tag is now attached to every little joy in our lives, from the window seat on an aircraft to the exhilaration of a World Cup final.
• Myburgh is an attorney practising in Johannesburg and São Paulo.