Is it wrong to sell tickets on for a profit?

Simple question really. Is it wrong to sell tickets on? We may as well just keep this to rugby. I have bought and sold tickets many times on auction sites or from touts/scalpers paying and earning far more than face value on several occasions.

I suppose there are a few angles to this. For example putting a ticket up for sale on an auction site at the last minute due to somebody pulling out would be quite different from purposely purchasing a high value ticket in order to sell it on.

Personally, I have done this a few times for example on the 2005 Lions tour to NZ it pretty much paid for my trip including Test tickets (from Oz). I also paid a small fortune for France v England tickets a few years ago so it works both ways.

My view is, if somebody, myself included, is willing to pay the price then what’s the problem?

Will I burn in hell for this?

If the demand is high and you sell at a profit, then good on you. That is the capitalistic way the world works.

I have two comments on this,is it wrong YES,BUT if you are desperate for a ticket NO.Depends on the size of the mark up,as an example if you have a
£10 and you sell fo r £ 20 thats reasonable[just] £100 up sheer exploitation.

its wrong if it provides a means oF "fencing" stolen or counterfeit tickets......

emack2 wrote:I have two comments on this,is it wrong YES,BUT if you are desperate for a ticket NO.Depends on the size of the mark up,as an example if you have a
£10 and you sell fo r £ 20 thats reasonable[just] £100 up sheer exploitation.

I understand your point, but on an auction site a) you don't always choose a minimum and b) you're not forcing anybody to pay what they don't want to. Therefore it's not strictly exploitation.

I think it's unfair because you buy them at face value or whatever the box office supply them at, and then add a ridiculous amount of profit on them. However, more fool the people who are willing to buy their tickets at such prices. I'd rather go without than pay an extortionate amount for a ticket that I know was much less originally.

I think what you are doing is also illegal now.

It is not right to sell a rugby ticket for profit. Unless you award that profit to your local club, or national governing body so that the PROFIT goes where it is intended.

Think of it this way, for every buck you make, you are preventing your local u9s team from getting new rugby balls or other kit they need.

maestegmafia wrote:I think what you are doing is also illegal now.

It is not right to sell a rugby ticket for profit. Unless you award that profit to your local club, or national governing body so that the PROFIT goes where it is intended.

Think of it this way, for every buck you make, you are preventing your local u9s team from getting new rugby balls or other kit they need.

I do not agree with touting in any shape or form but I cannot agree with your comment. The club sets the face value. If someone is selling on, then the club has already made the money it has deemed acceptable to fund the club. Its not depriving them at all. The only possible deprivation is that the person paying the extorted price might have spent that money on merchandise.

However, its equally as likely that the tout could go and buy the merchandise with his profit.

Hobo wrote:

maestegmafia wrote:I think what you are doing is also illegal now.

It is not right to sell a rugby ticket for profit. Unless you award that profit to your local club, or national governing body so that the PROFIT goes where it is intended.

Think of it this way, for every buck you make, you are preventing your local u9s team from getting new rugby balls or other kit they need.

I do not agree with touting in any shape or form but I cannot agree with your comment. The club sets the face value. If someone is selling on, then the club has already made the money it has deemed acceptable to fund the club. Its not depriving them at all. The only possible deprivation is that the person paying the extorted price might have spent that money on merchandise.

However, its equally as likely that the tout could go and buy the merchandise with his profit.

If a club or union new they could make that profit they would. And it would benefit the team you support. I can't see how you can disagree with supporting your club or union over putting the profit in your own pocket.

If you spent your profit on something else that benefitted the club/union like merchandise, I can see your reasoning.

Most importantly though I think the re-sale of sports tickets is about to be made illegal. I know that football tickets are illegal to re sell but I think I heard that it is sweeping across the board.

Karma buddy. It’s all about Karma.

It is wrong to sell tickets on for a profit and can be illegal. In the case of the RFU, they own the ticket and if they find a ticket for sale on eBay or other such sites, they can and will cancel the ticket, reissue the ticket and sell it again at face value.

I sometimes have spare tickets but always sell them on at face value. Selling for more than face value makes you a ticket tout, which I despise.

maestegmafia wrote:

Hobo wrote:

maestegmafia wrote:I think what you are doing is also illegal now.

It is not right to sell a rugby ticket for profit. Unless you award that profit to your local club, or national governing body so that the PROFIT goes where it is intended.

Think of it this way, for every buck you make, you are preventing your local u9s team from getting new rugby balls or other kit they need.

I do not agree with touting in any shape or form but I cannot agree with your comment. The club sets the face value. If someone is selling on, then the club has already made the money it has deemed acceptable to fund the club. Its not depriving them at all. The only possible deprivation is that the person paying the extorted price might have spent that money on merchandise.

However, its equally as likely that the tout could go and buy the merchandise with his profit.

If a club or union new they could make that profit they would. And it would benefit the team you support. I can't see how you can disagree with supporting your club or union over putting the profit in your own pocket.

If you spent your profit on something else that benefitted the club/union like merchandise, I can see your reasoning.

Most importantly though I think the re-sale of sports tickets is about to be made illegal. I know that football tickets are illegal to re sell but I think I heard that it is sweeping across the board.

I am not disagreeing with the morals of reselling.

What I am saying is that its not effecting the bottom line. They make a commercial decision of what they need to run the club and set the price. The only way that touts sell for profit is if the ground is sold out. In which case the club has made (and most probably exceeded their needed income to fund for U9 rugby balls).

If they feel that they know the game is going to be a sell out, they should raise their prices (as they do with the huge games etc). I dont agree with it, but thats the simple facts of the matter. Touts arent taking money away from the clubs - they are doing that themselves through their pricing.

Touts only sell at a profit if tickets are scarce.
Tickets are scarce if there is demand.
If there is demand, then club should put up prices.

The system that various touting websites have to sell on tickets is a good system, though obviously taking potential profit out of the game.

But the internet selling system is easy to use and successful.

Maybe Unions and clubs could adopt a similar system to get better prices for their tickets.

This is all that Ticketmaster do!

Whenever I have had spare tickets I always try to sell them within the Rugby Community at face value first off.

If all else fails then yes I have sold them at a higher (but not overly high) price.

I remember the GS match in 05 and said I would pay up to £150 for a ticket if I could get one, the cheapest I came across was £250 so spent the day in the pub lol

I am ashamed to say that in my youth I was part of a group that would "physically discourage" anyone we came across selling tickets in Cardiff over face value. That's a lot of years ago and times have changed - it seems to be part of the culture surrounding international rugby matches now.

It rather depends on why you bought the ticket. If you simply couldn't go and so have a spare then sell it on and if someone offers you a lot for it fair enough. The problem is when you get @rses like my old flat mate who would buy tickets to events he didn't even want to go to solely so that he could sell them on for a profit. That is frankly immoral as you are deliberately stopping someone from being able to buy at face value so that you can sell them marked up.

Anybody got some tickets at face value they want to sell to me?

I´ve bought concert tickets from ticket touts but never to a rugby match. Generally it´s because when I did travel to games I used to travel such big distances so preferred to have everything organized well beforehand. At such an event, it´s difficult to organize everything as tickets sell so fast and are much more limited.

If you have a burning desire to see your team play live then I can fully understand why someone would pay way above face value. But in terms of selling it at a profit, I find it a pretty despicable thing to do buying up big blocks of tickets preventing individual punters from getting their own. There are limits on how many tickets you can buy but I just don´t think it´s cricket. Or rugby.

offload wrote:I am ashamed to say that in my youth I was part of a group that would "physically discourage" anyone we came across selling tickets in Cardiff over face value. That's a lot of years ago and times have changed - it seems to be part of the culture surrounding international rugby matches now.

Offload,

Years ago we always use to go to this one pub in Cardiff which gone now but somewhere by Toys R Us was (began with a P I think) as it was known as good rugby pub that was always used by fans from various rugby clubs and any spare tickets were always at face value nothing more maybe a pint for the person selling it.

Ticket prices are artificially low, as to not price out too many fans. Look at the Olympic tickets, look how many people didn't get the tickets they wanted. They could have increased the ticket price and still sold out twice over. But they don't, so all fans can come to matches, not just the richest ones.

It's not that the clubs or national unions are unaware that they can sell tickets at a higher price, it's that they don't. And buying tickets just to sell them at a higher price is ethically wrong in my opinion.

If you buy 4 tickets and a couple of your friends can't make it, then you should definitely recoup your money and charge face value, and if the buyer then wants to buy you a pint or a program (if you go into the ground together) or whatever, then I have no problem with that. But there is a difference between selling an unwanted ticket and buying a ticket to make a profit. If it isn't, I think it should be made illegal.

robbo277 wrote:Ticket prices are artificially low, as to not price out too many fans. Look at the Olympic tickets, look how many people didn't get the tickets they wanted. They could have increased the ticket price and still sold out twice over. But they don't, so all fans can come to matches, not just the richest ones.

It's not that the clubs or national unions are unaware that they can sell tickets at a higher price, it's that they don't. And buying tickets just to sell them at a higher price is ethically wrong in my opinion.

If you buy 4 tickets and a couple of your friends can't make it, then you should definitely recoup your money and charge face value, and if the buyer then wants to buy you a pint or a program (if you go into the ground together) or whatever, then I have no problem with that. But there is a difference between selling an unwanted ticket and buying a ticket to make a profit. If it isn't, I think it should be made illegal.

Completely agree to all that - and in particular the first point . The RFU could sell England tickets for much more than they do against the big SH teams and some of the 6Ns games but they don't as they want to encourage a diverse supporter base to grow the game - selling tickets on for a mark up undermines attempts by Unions to grow the game in that nation.

Yes, it is wrong. You're really disadvantaging your fellow fans and making it more expensive to be involved in international rugby (or whatever other event we are discussing) as a supporter

All for a quick buck for yourself.

If it's not wrong, it's certainly selfish and puts you in a very bad light personally.

Also, the buyer of the scalped ticket could legally be refused entry to the ground.

I've sold on sports tickets at times, but I've never dreamt of asking for more than face value.

If you want face value tickets for gigs and things check out scarlet mist (google it). People put their unwanted tickets on there for face value. I don't think it does sports events though (yet).

screamingaddabs wrote:If you want face value tickets for gigs and things check out scarlet mist (google it). People put their unwanted tickets on there for face value. I don't think it does sports events though (yet).

Leinster have a pretty cool ticket exchange service. You can put your season ticket up for use by another fan if you can’t make it to the game, your season ticket is a credit card but they just get a printed version of the ticket so it can all be done online.

Mickado wrote:

screamingaddabs wrote:If you want face value tickets for gigs and things check out scarlet mist (google it). People put their unwanted tickets on there for face value. I don't think it does sports events though (yet).

Leinster have a pretty cool ticket exchange service. You can put your season ticket up for use by another fan if you can’t make it to the game, your season ticket is a credit card but they just get a printed version of the ticket so it can all be done online.

Sounds like a good thing...!

nottins wrote:It is wrong to sell tickets on for a profit and can be illegal. In the case of the RFU, they own the ticket and if they find a ticket for sale on eBay or other such sites, they can and will cancel the ticket, reissue the ticket and sell it again at face value.

I sometimes have spare tickets but always sell them on at face value. Selling for more than face value makes you a ticket tout, which I despise.

Gibson wrote:

nottins wrote:It is wrong to sell tickets on for a profit and can be illegal. In the case of the RFU, they own the ticket and if they find a ticket for sale on eBay or other such sites, they can and will cancel the ticket, reissue the ticket and sell it again at face value.

I sometimes have spare tickets but always sell them on at face value. Selling for more than face value makes you a ticket tout, which I despise.

More

Yes it's wrong, if you are a rugby fan, and are selling your ticket to another rugby fan then it should always be at face value.

There's more to life than making a few quid, I personally think the values of respect and friendship shared between rugbyl fans are worth respecting and worth more than any profit you might make. (oh and that means the person who gets your spare ticket should definately buy you a cople of pints!)

logie28 wrote:Yes it's wrong, if you are a rugby fan, and are selling your ticket to another rugby fan then it should always be at face value.

There's more to life than making a few quid, I personally think the values of respect and friendship shared between rugbyl fans are worth respecting and worth more than any profit you might make. (oh and that means the person who gets your spare ticket should definately buy you a cople of pints!)

Again, brilliant comments

Particularly the bolded part. Sums up my views on the matter- and my views on the OP!

Yep. Some real rugby fans filtering thro here. I always thought it was what separated us from other sports. Not being a knob about it, but its been my experience of it over the years. So many people have helped me with tickets & lodgings and I will always pass that ethos on. Well said Logie. Beautifully put sir.

BTW Pints being bought by the new ticket-holder, is one of the unwritten Laws of the Game.

I had tickets for the 2 Munster HC victories.

Couldn't go to either (don't ask) so passed on my tickets at face value.

I have since been to numerous 6N/HC games with tickets sourced from the guys who got the Munster tickets from me. This is what rugby is meant to be about......

FYI, tickets were going on Ebay for €800 EACH!!!!

Tickets have always been sold on for profit. I find it hard to say one way or the other whether it's wrong. Nobody likes ticket touts but those keen enough will buy. So whilst the touts make money their customers do see the game. Yet it's great on the rare occasions when the tables are turned.

I witnessed such an occasion decades ago in Westgate Street outside Cardiff Arms Park. It was Wales v South Africa and there were hundreds of ticketless fans an hour before kick-off. A tout was offering a pair of tickets at about 8 times their face-value. People hesitated at such a big outlay but someone would surely have forked out up to, say, 5 times face-value before long and helped the seller make a nice profit.

Suddenly there was an off-duty copper showing his warrant card and offering the tout just face-value for the tickets. The guy could probably have held his ground and refused to sell, then left it a few minutes and quietly sold them round the corner somewhere, but he seemed to be so shocked that he agreed and sold the tickets to the copper at the price printed on them.

The copper then sold the two tickets for the same correct price to a couple of fans who this tout had been laughing at when they'd offered him only double the face-value a minute or so before. The copper showed the tout that he himself already had a ticket and told him ; "In future don't be so greedy", before heading for the entrance gate!

Lovin that copper. Sounds like LDCPete.

Just thought I'd mention a few points to any interested non New Zealand residents that intend trvelling down this way over the next couple of months.
a few years back NZ passed a piece of legislation called the "Major events management act 2007.
In short it allows for the following
You can transfer a ticket to someone you know at the original value.
you can legally sell a ticket overseas.FOR A PROFIT..
You CAN NOT sell aticket for a more than original cost in New Zealand...

On Friday there were 27 tickets listings on Australian ebay,50 on Canadian ebay,50 on American ebay for the Rugby World cup.

If you purchase a ticket on NZ's internet site "traede Me' for more than the cost of the ticket,then please dont be disappointed if you travel here, turn up to the venue and find that your ticket has been cancelled.

Official tickets are sold through 3 sources.The rugby World Cup 2011 website,travel agents offering travel and ticket packages and corporate hospitality agents selling accomodation and ticket packages....

So, what you are saying here is, take care of the Kiwis and rip-off the tourists?

Yeah, Ive been reading & hearing, about rip-offs on hotels, food and travel.

NOT good for NZ's image imo. They will pay for it in the long-run. Making a fast buck. Tourists wont forget this. Not clever.

gibson
You are quite right in saying that about the Accomodation, some of the attempts at price gouging are so over the top that most of us (Kiwis) see them as nothing short of embarrassing,
Most people trvelling would expect tp pay a premium during the course of the cup but they shouldn't expect be victims of price gouging.
It is expected that on average people travelling for the cup will stay on average 23 days,more than enough time for them to form a binding opinion,if they feel ripped off ,they will not come back and probably tell friends and relatives also to never come here..
In so far as the protection of rugby tickets is concerned,it was the intention of the organisers to try and make attendance at games a possibility to for as wider cross section of the rugby supporting community as possible. For people to use this as justification to criticise by saying that the tickets were too cheap in thre first place are completely missing the point..

Illucidating my friend. My son was there. So were so many of his friends. All reports were massively positive. They said it put Oz in its place as a country. Loved it. But they did it on the cheap(students) and it was grand. As were the people. Couldn't praise it enough.

A missed opportunity mo chara?

Yes it is wrong. No way about it, it's just wrong.

Ticket scalping is illegal so yeah of course selling a ticket on for a profit is wrong. Face value is grand though.