Ticket scalpers are constantly buying up tickets to events and selling them for prices that are way higher than the tickets were originally sold for. One may think that people do not give into these schemes, but some people are so anxious to see a sporting event, concert or other event that they are willing to pay the hiked up prices to ticket scalpers. This especially happens when it comes to season-long ticket packages.
One hockey team is trying to put an end to this. That team is the Boston Bruins. The Bruins are working to stop scalpers in their tracks, particularly those that buy up season long packages and resell them. On Monday March 7, 2016, the Bruins announced the action that they took in order to stop scalpers. The Bruins have cancelled the accounts of almost 200 high-volume ticket resellers. These resellers are all located outside of New England and New York, and the accounts were cancelled after they were identified through an analysis of sales data.
According to Glen Thornborough, the senior vice president of sales and marketing for the Bruins and TD Garden, the Bruins’ data analytics team used a number of techniques to determine which season-long accounts belonged to resellers. This involved monitoring how many games the buyer attended and how many different marketplaces has the same tickets listed for sale. In the end, the results showed that the number of resellers was much higher than projected, and they decided they needed to do something about this. This process has resulted in 1,000 season tickets being freed up. According to Bruins executives, tickets will go to a few of the 10,000 fans who are on a waiting list for season tickets.
It seems that justice has been served. But there is even more to the policy. New, high-volume ticket resellers within the local market will be required to pay more for season tickets than fans do. Depending on the location of the seats within TD Garden, this ticket price increase will be a premium of nine percent or higher. If any regular season ticket holders are concerned, there is no need to fear. According to the Bruins, these ticket holders will not experience an increase in prices for the 2016-2017 National Hockey League season.
Thornborough strongly believes that resellers margins are definitely high enough to deal with the price hike. A ticket bought as a part of the seasonlong package is, on average, approximately half the price of the same ticket purchased individually at the box office. Resellers have a tendency to mark the ticket up even higher than the box office price. This was a smart and admirable move made by the Boston Bruins. With the reduction of scalping, season-long passes can be sold at a fair price to more deserving fans.
The Bruins are fighting for their fans as hard as the fans fight for the team!