I remember years ago at his annual Super Bowl press conference, R. Stokoe Goodell was asked by a reporter about the unfair practice of legalized Super Bowl ticket scalping and whether the league should take measures to halt it. He said it was a good thing because without the secondary market, many average folks never would be able to attend a Super Bowl.
I think they're separate things.
I agree that people should be able to sell/re-sell their tickets for whatever they want. Maybe the NFL could do a better job of distribution so not as many fall into the hands of scalpers, but I don't have a problem with someone selling a ticket, or paying a lot of money for a ticket to the game legally.
My issue is with ticket sellers who don't actually have tickets trying to sell them and game the market. When stock brokers do it, they get penalized for it. There are regulations about how much money they must keep on hand to cover their potential losses and at a certain point, they can be forced to take the loss and cover their bet.
When ticket resellers do it, the fans get penalized for it. There's no real rules on it. There's very little disincentive to not give it a go. You have a ******** disclaimer and give back fans their original money and send out a sorry letter. However, its the fans who get hit the hardest. If they knew you didn't have real tickets, they could have been out trying to find other actual tickets. And because you're holding their cash, it may limit them or stress them in securing those other potential tickets.
The more I talk about it, the more I think I'm encouraging people to do it next year. There really doesn't seem to be much of a downside other than you're a soulless scumbag. Still, you're a notch above lawyers and most sports writers.
