Officers on watch for ticket scalpers
Posted on Saturday, March 22, 2008
Sure, it was early, but Ferelin Scott was starting to think he drove down from Memphis for nothing.
Scott’s been scalping tickets since he was 9. That was 40 years ago. A James Brown concert at the old Mid-South Coliseum was his first, hustling under-12 tickets that cost him 99 cents each.
But standing early Friday afternoon on the corner of Fourth and Main streets in North Little Rock, he couldn’t sell his NCAA Division I men’s basketball tournament tickets for as little as half-price.
“Man, I paid $ 40 a piece for these tickets, and I can’t sell them for $ 20,” he said.
First he bought two tickets for the early session and sold them easily, he said. So he bought six more. Hours later, he still had four of them.
“I should be able to make $ 300 in a weekend, easy,” he said. “Come on, Little Rock, help a brother out.”
Scott was hopeful that the evening games — one featuring Mississippi State, the other featuring Memphis — would provide his bounty.
Of course, as long as Scott and his fellow scalpers can’t so much as break even, they haven’t broken Arkansas law. Illegal scalping in Arkansas means selling tickets to concerts or school-related sporting events for above face-value. To break the law is a violation, similar to a traffic ticket, with each sale or offer for sale punishable with a fine of $ 25 to $ 500.
North Little Rock Police Department spokesman Sgt. Terry Kuykendall said before the tournament started that officers would likely confiscate scalped tickets as evidence.
Whether police could confiscate tickets not specifically up for sale is cloudy: Someone could, for example, offer to sell three tickets but have 40 more.
“I’m not sure just how that would work,” North Little Rock City Attorney Jason Carter said last week.
He said the city has no ordinance that relates in any way to scalping tickets.
Another problem has been apparent since the law prohibiting scalping was first passed 53 years ago.
A brief article in the fall 1955 issue of the Arkansas Law Review and Bar Association Journal noted that “Difficulty of enforcement an interpretation as to what constitutes a violation will, however, prevent the complete abolishment of scalping at such events. What would prevent a party from selling some other article, at an exorbitant price, along with the ticket ?”
The fines then were essentially the same as they are now, ranging from $ 5 to $ 500. Adjusted for inflation, that $ 500 in 1955 would be $ 3, 949. 50 in 2008, according to the U. S. Department of Labor.
Scalping was also originally considered a misdemeanor, more severe than its current classification as a violation, on par with a speeding ticket. The Arkansas Legislature changed that classification in 2005.
North Little Rock police prepared for the sold-out tournament by assigning uniformed and plainclothes officers to hunt for people selling unlicensed merchandise and too-expensive tickets.
As the day’s second game was getting started about 2 p. m., North Little Rock police Sgt. Ragan Hernandez said things had been quiet. Officers had found two people offering tickets above face value, “but we just gave them fair warning and told them to move along,” he said.
Officers kept their eyes open, asking fans at crosswalks where they were stationed what prices scalpers quoted.
Alltel Arena’s policy of barring from the property anyone selling tickets moved most of the scalpers to street corners closer to City Hall.
Not everyone complied. Walking around the arena, and especially in front of the main entrance, a few people would mutter “Tickets ? Tickets ?” as they walked past.
The end of the first game — Miami beat St. Mary’s 78-64 — meant some fans were already trying to ditch their remaining tickets and go home. At the corner of Main Street and Broadway, in front of City Hall, a middle-aged man walked up to a scalper and made him an offer.
“I’ll sell you my tickets at a discount,” he told the scalper, “if you want to try and hustle them.”
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