Ticket scalping: Men and high earners more likely to buy from barkers

Scalpers, solicitors and barkers: they’re the unofficial ticket resellers that event-goers and organisers love to hate – often re-selling concert and match tickets for several times the face value. Despite their reputation for profit making, more than one-in-ten (13%) of Americans have been sold a ticket by a scalper at one point or another.

Men are much more likely to have bought from a barker – 18% compared with 8% of women. And the results indicate that income can be a barrier to buying tickets secondhand. While 10% of those earning less than $40,000 in a year said they had bought from a ticket scalper, 27% of Americans earning more than $80,000 a year said they had.

The most popular reason Americans bought a resold ticket is because they couldn’t find any other way of getting to an event. 38% of those who bought from a scalper said they were unable to get a ticket elsewhere. The second most common reason for buying from a scalper was chance – 31% said they happened to be outside a venue and decided to buy a ticket off the cuff. This suggests that scalpers are often opportunists, rather than out to make a profit – 17% of event-goers who bought from a scalper said that the resold ticket was cheaper than the face value.

But for the majority of Americans who have never bought from a barker, the opportunity wasn’t there. 34% said that they had never seen a scalper outside a venue before. 27% of Americans who had never bought from a scalper said that they had a moral scruple or concerns over the legality of ticket reselling.

Buying a ticket secondhand, especially if it’s from a friend who couldn’t make it to an event, might seem perfectly innocent – but US law varies over the legality of reselling tickets. Ticket scalping can be legal except for boxing matches, as in Hawaii – or scalping might be banned from public places but acceptable to do so at home, such as in Washington D.C.

The law has become increasingly complicated with the growth of online ticket retailers like StubHub, Ticketmaster and TicketNetwork. Most states allow ticket reselling as long as it doesn’t take place at the event site, but there are varying degrees of regulation – such as maximum prices and rules over getting the event organizer’s permission.

With such a confusing web of rules and regulations, what do Americans know about scalping and staying within the law?

The majority of US respondents thought ticket scalping was illegal – but with 23% admitting they were only guessing that it was not allowed, many of us are unsure whether barkers are breaking the law or not.

With 42% of Americans believing that ticket scalpers should be subject to certain regulations, YouGov asked what rules they should be subject to. The biggest group of respondents (19%) agreed ticket resale should be allowed, but made through official channels – which would prevent event-goers from buying into counterfeit tickets. Other popular options were limiting the price tickets could be resold for (12%) and designating an official area for resellers (7%).

For further information about poll results, and for details about methodology and omnibus services, please email omnibus.us@yougov.com.

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