ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) – Don Vaccaro is a high profile kingpin in a lucrative business he won’t talk about. It’s a booming, secretive industry that impacts anyone who has ever been to a major sporting event, a pop concert or a Broadway show at the theater.
We’re talking about ticket scalping.
“[It] used to be if you wanted to buy scalped tickets you could only get them from somebody on a street corner,” John Breyault with the Washington based National Consumers League said. “Now you can go online with the click of a button you can buy resale tickets.”
After a three-month investigation, KRQE News 13 found anonymous internet firms reaping staggering profits by peddling concert and theater tickets to New Mexico consumers.
“I’ve seen estimates anywhere from $3 billion to $15 billion on the size of the secondary ticket market in the United States,” Breyault said.
Companies use names like “Ticket Liquidator”, “VIP Seats”, “Box Office Ticket Sales”. They are scalping tickets to stage events across New Mexico.
Did you want to see Jimmy Buffett when he performs in his first New Mexico concert at the Isleta Amphitheater in October? Even though tickets just went on sale, the best seats in the house are already sold out, unless you go to a scalper who will sell you a $159 ticket for $1,000.
“It just seems like an incredible ripoff.” Terry Davis with Albuquerque’s Popejoy Hall said. “The people we are talking about in this case are really out-of-state, they’re companies, they are literal corporations who are making lots of money selling tickets to people across the country literally at huge markup.”
Months before New Mexicans ever had an opportunity to buy “Book of Mormon” tickets, KRQE News 13’s investigation found out-of-state ticket brokers snatched hundreds of seats at face value and then peddled them on dozens of internet sites at exorbitant prices.
When the Broadway smash hit “Book of Mormon” premieres in Popejoy Hall in September, it will play to a packed house.
“They took essentially 600 seats off the market and took them out of reach of New Mexicans and put them out on the marketplace for a much higher price,” Davis said.
For example, an orchestra seat bought by scalpers for $156 is now marked up more than 500 percent, and sold by Ticket Office Sales for $1,000.
TicketCenter.com bought a seat from Popejoy Hall in the last row of the orchestra section for $88, marked it up 279 percent and then hawked it on the internet for $322.
GoodSeats.com boasted “Book of Mormon” tickets at a 75 percent discount, but KRQE News 13’s investigation found the website marked up its inventory as much as 400 percent.
The most expensive “Book of Mormon” seats offered by scalpers are right up front. Online ticket resellers offer seats in Popejoy’s Zone A for as much as $1,000 apiece. Though there is a catch. Zone A is the orchestra pit. There are no seats for sale in the pit where the orchestra performs. If you bought a Zone A ticket from a scalper, then you have been scammed.
KRQE News 13 found at least 20 internet sites peddling non-existent Popejoy tickets.
Some of the sites even use Albuquerque graphics designed to deceive. Davis says resellers like PopejoyHall.tickets.com and PopejoyHall.boxoffice.com are scalpers.
“I think it’s absolutely deceptive to the public if you are creating a website that looks like the box office or its purporting to be the box office or somehow associated with the box office.” Breyault said.
So how did scalpers get their hands on Popejoy’s “Book of Mormon” tickets?
Before offering tickets to the public, venues like Popejoy commonly sell seats to local community groups like the Chamber of Commerce. However, nobody noticed when out-of-state scalpers got on the group sales list and bought big blocks of tickets at face value.
For example, Michael Huey with Dream Team Tickets in California bought 116 “Book of Mormon” tickets, marked them up and sold them at inflated prices.
Ann Foust of Atlanta grabbed 454 seats. Foust and her husband own the scalper site, Amazon Tickets and Events.
Molly La Flesh snagged 50 seats for Ticket Galaxy in Connecticut. La Flesh paid Popejoy $88 for a seat in the orchestra section. An online scalper called Good Seat Tickets marked it up 160 percent and sold the ticket to KRQE News 13 for $145.
Online scalpers also commonly use bogus addresses.
The corporate office for Good Seat Tickets is listed at an address in Chandler, Arizona. However, nobody at that location had heard of them.
Who are these guys?
There is a common thread to all those websites, but you have to follow the clues.
KRQE News 13’s investigation led us to Hartford, Connecticut. That is where the corporate headquarters for one of the largest ticket brokers in the country, Ticket Network.
Run by CEO Don Vaccaro, Ticket Network and dozens of its internet affiliates resell tens of thousands of concert, sports and theater tickets nationwide.
Last year, the Federal Trade Commission and the Connecticut Attorney General filed a complaint accusing Ticket Network and three affiliates of misrepresentation. The defendants settled the case after paying $1.4 million.
KRQE News 13 visited Vaccaro’s Connecticut office to ask about ticket scalping in New Mexico. A receptionist said that Vaccaro was not in the office and apologized that he wasn’t in for the day. However, KRQE News 13 found him in the parking lot. When KRQE News 13 asked Vaccaro about ticket scalping, the Ticket Network CEO said. “Get off the property right now.”
Vaccaro refused to discuss his business practices.
While Vaccaro didn’t want to talk, Connecticut Attorney General George Jepson had plenty to say about ticket network.
“The practices employed by Ticket Network were deceptive,” Jepson said. “Under Connecticut law we did an investigation and eventually settled in a way that Ticket Network was required to not use words like official, not use pictures or symbols that would suggest that they were an official site and the disclosure that they were a secondary resale market had to be prominently displayed.”
Breyault says New Mexicans are getting a raw deal.
“The resale market and scalpers are out to get tickets, as many as they can and resell them for a profit,” Breyault “And for New Mexicans, unfortunately that means you spend a lot of time online or on the phone trying to get tickets for a fair price and you can’t get access to them.”
Today, Popejoy’s inventory of “Book of Mormon” tickets are sold out. However, ticket scalpers are still selling top-dollar non-existent seats in the orchestra pit.
Davis says he is not sure how Popejoy Hall can put the scalpers out of business.
“The only way for us to shut it down is to appeal to the public and say, stop buying from them,” Davis said. “Because if you keep buying from them, they will keep selling them.”
