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The Durham Performing Arts Center has been aggressive about curbing online resales.
The Durham Performing Arts Center has been aggressive about curbing online resales.
An unobtrusive notice began appearing on the Durham Performing Arts Center's website last fall. Tucked into the fine print at the bottom of most DPAC show listings is a "Notice of Prohibition of Online Resale of Admission Tickets."
North Carolina's scalping law gives venues the right to forbid anyone from reselling tickets on secondary-resale sites such as StubHub.com by filing a notice with the secretary of state (and paying a $125 fee per event).
It's still possible to find DPAC shows on secondary sites where brokers sell tickets, often marked up from the original price. But filing prohibition notices has had some effect, according to DPAC general manager Bob Klaus.
"We were quite frankly surprised," he said. "Once we file a prohibition, we send emails everywhere we see someone reselling tickets for that show. The vast majority give no acknowledgement, but we still see that show drop off their site."
This is the latest salvo in the scalping wars between venues and brokers. It's an ongoing game of Whac-A-Mole involving shadowy broker sites, many of which appear designed to fool consumers into thinking they're buying directly from a venue even though the sites are typically based out-of-state (and often charge well in excess of face value on tickets).
These sham sites have proliferated in recent years. The patrons who fall prey are often first-time buyers, and they might not be online-savvy - the audience for the Broadway shows that make up much of DPAC's schedule, for example.
Thus far, DPAC has been the Triangle's most aggressive venue about online resales, filing prohibitions for almost every show. Durham's Carolina Theatre has also done it for a few shows, including last fall's Lindsey Buckingham and Aaron Neville concerts. The Carolina has also tried to prevent online scalping by requiring front-row ticket-buyers to pick up tickets in person.
"We had some issues last season where a lot of prime seats near the stage were empty because they'd been bought for resale and brokers were unable to find buyers," said Bob Nocek, president/CEO of the Carolina Theatre. "That was embarrassing for us, and it fired us up about resales."
For now, most other venues and promoters in the area are adopting a wait-and-see attitude about prohibition notices, including Cary's Koka Booth Amphitheater and Raleigh's RBC Center and Progress Energy Center for the Performing Arts. Live Nation, which books shows at Raleigh's Time Warner Cable Music Pavilion at Walnut Creek and the Downtown Amphitheater, declined to comment.
"I like what DPAC is doing, and we might choose to follow suit," said Becky Colwell, general manager of Booth Amphitheatre. "So far, we haven't seen the issue as starkly as DPAC has. It's definitely something we're watching closely."
One reason for DPAC's proactiveness is its stature in the local concert market. Last year, 2,700-seat DPAC sold out 68 events, more than any other large arts venue in the Triangle. The 414,000 patrons DPAC drew in 2011 ranked it fourth in the nation in theater attendance, just ahead of New York City's Beacon Theater.
Along with Broadway shows such as "The Lion King," DPAC hosts high-end music and comedy acts that sell out almost immediately, including Neil Young, Jerry Seinfeld, Carol Burnett and Paul Simon. That makes DPAC shows a hot commodity on the secondary market, with tickets often changing hands for many times more than face price. And broker sites tend to come and go so fast that it's hard for concert-goers to tell whom they're buying from.
"Every week another four sites we've never heard of come up," Klaus said. "We reach out to each one about the reselling proposition. Sometimes they'll write back to say, 'We'll remove this listing but we reserve the right for the future in that we're only an advertising source and not actually selling these tickets.' It will be interesting to see if there's more push-back as we move forward."
You can probably count on that. North Carolina is one of only two states with this venue-prohibition authorization (Louisiana is the other), according to Gary Adler, general counsel for the Washington, D.C.-based National Association of Ticket Brokers.
"If anyone thinks they can legislate against the resale of tickets with a measure like this, they can't," Adler said. "All it does is take the secondary market out of the bright light of day and back to dark alleys and the trunks of cars. Even if it's well-intentioned, it's a destructive thing for consumer protection."
Asked if the NATB plans to lobby the North Carolina legislature to end this venue-prohibition provision, Adler said, "We are considering it."