New York City Mayor Supports Scalping Repeal

The anti-scalping repeal movement is receiving support in high places. This past weekend, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg threw his political weight behind the League of American Theaters and Producers that supports the legalization of scalping throughout New York. The state’s current law prohibiting ticket scalping is slated to expire in June, and while the repeal has support, some legislators would like to see some tougher penalties for sellers of counterfeit tickets.

During his weekly radio address on WABC AM last week, Bloomberg was quoted as saying, “I don’t see any harm in it [reselling tickets]. I think the most important thing is they make the tickets available fairly to anyone who gets in line. And then if you buy a ticket and you want to resell it, you know, what’s wrong with that?”

He also said that taxation of scalpers would be a difficult proposition. While brokers pay business taxes, tracking down the individual who resells a ticket for a profit would be next to impossible.

Bloomberg said he doesn’t want to see brokers or agents buying up blocks of tickets directly from promoters and reselling them, but otherwise he supports a free market approach to pricing and scalping. He added that often brokers and scalpers lose their investment when they can’t resell tickets, for example, if the Rangers and Knicks are having bad seasons.