Taxpayers support publicly financed arenas and concert venues for several reasons. They believe that the facilities are good for the economy: creating jobs, bringing visitors to town and occasionally prompting regional and national attention.
Taxpayers also support the facilities because they hope to enjoy them -- maybe seeing a ballgame or attending a concert by a top band. Unfortunately, tickets for topflight events may not always be available -- at least not at retail prices.
After an examination of ticket sales for top-drawing acts in North Carolina, McClatchy Newspapers has reported that the average Joe can often get tickets only through a commercial ticket agency and at much-inflated prices.
North Carolina law used to protect the public from these commercial scalping agencies. The law forbade ticket resale for anything more than $3 above face value. That kept ticket-resale agencies at bay.
But the law no longer protects us. In a classic sellout to big-money special-interest lobbyists, the General Assembly changed the state's ticket-scalping laws several years ago. Now, the newspapers reported, the number of tickets available to the public at the box office or online is often very limited. And when the tickets are available through a ticket agency, the prices are often astronomical.
At the time of the legislative debate, proponents of the bill said that the change would increase the public's access to tickets. If a dad wanted to take his son to a college basketball game, but didn't have season tickets, he could buy tickets through an agency. It sounded so sweet and pro-family.
But it was a specious argument because the bill didn't create a single new seat in any sports or entertainment venue. And it totally discounted the fact that the tickets dad would try to buy would never go on a very limited public sale and would really only be available at an exorbitant price.
Rep. Pryor Gibson, D-Anson, a sponsor of the ticket-scalping bill, says he's troubled by what McClatchy found. He says that the law may need changing.
That's stating the obvious. The law needs to be repealed, and the old law reinstated. Maybe the $3 limit should be raised a few dollars, but no more. Also, the people who stage events at public venues -- and thus enjoy the benefit of the public's tax investment -- should be required to report publicly just how many tickets were for sale and how many were made available to the public through the box office and online or through season-ticket sales. If the public is going to pay to build a facility, then the public should have a fair chance to attend events there at retail prices.
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