The Mysterious World Of Ticket Brokers...

Taylor Swift is coming to Vancouver in September, and I wanted to buy tickets for a very special little girl who is turning 12 in April. I thought it would be a nice surprise to slip the tickets into her birthday card, and perhaps she would like to take one little friend with her, along with her Mom. That would mean three tickets. Not a big deal, right? Wrong. I haven't bought concert tickets lately, but the process seems to have turned into a huge scam. Ticket brokers -- and I use the term loosely -- buy up all the tickets, and then sell them for hugely inflated prices, sometimes for up to ten times what the tickets are worth depending on the seat locations.  And purchasing an odd number of tickets is impossible.  Three?  Out of the question.

I spent yesterday morning negotiating with several ticket brokers, trying to get the best tickets for the best price. The prices they were charging were all over the map, and I managed to get some good seats for a fairly reasonable price, as far as ticket brokers' prices go.  So then I trundled off to meet the robber ticket broker at Metrotown so we could make the drop.  He turned out to be a rather nice young man who was using this as a business to pay his way through university.  I asked him what he was studying, and he said "I'm in the School of Commerce at the University of British Columbia, majoring in marketing".  I told him he was going to go far.  He said he buys whole blocks of seats and then sells them, but sometimes it's risky, depending on the concert.  Taylor Swift was a sure thing, however, and all the brokers made a lot of money.  None of it, of course, goes to Taylor Swift.

I was amazed at the demographic of people I was dealing with yesterday -- one of them was a young Chinese girl.  I told her I am obviously in the wrong business, going to a nine-to-five job every day.  However, I find the practice of "brokering" tickets appalling; it is legalized thievery.  I don't mind paying the extra money for the tickets for Marigold.  She is a very special young lady, and she is worth it.  But I can't imagine the millions of dollars that are being siphoned away from the performers, and there's absolutely no way to stop it.

In my conversations yesterday, I learned all about stage set-up, sight lines, row heights, seat placements -- things I never knew before -- and Marigold and her Mom have very good seats.  But the main thing is, they will have a wonderful time, I hope.  Besides, the best part of any concert is the excited anticipation of it, don't you think?