Ticket scalping has been an ongoing issue that has affected several entertainment venues across the area, including the Owensboro Convention Center and Sportscenter, the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame and Museum and the RiverPark Center. Officials said they have seen customers pay extra through third-party ticket vendors and that they encourage customers to purchase tickets directly through their organizations instead.
Websites like VividSeats and StubHub have long been part of the online ticketing business, but Spectra General Manager Laura Alexander said she has seen more and more people trying to scam customers through these sites.
“For example, we have one event — Kraftucky — that I am seeing people post about having tickets for and trying to sell them. But we only sell at the door, so there are no tickets even sold yet,” she said.
Alexander noticed people on social media who were selling Kraftucky tickets for $10 each when those $3 tickets aren’t even available until customers arrive at the event in-person.
RPC Executive DIrector Rich Jorn echoed similar worries, saying he’d seen third-party “ticket brokers” overcharge customers many times during his career.
“It’s a big deal when it happens,” Jorn said. “These ticket brokers are legal. They get away with it legally because of a ‘convenience charge.’ Every artists’ fan club is made up of ticket brokers. They get tickets first, then they sell them for five times what they bought them for. You trust names like Stubhub. With some other [sites], people haven’t even bought their tickets yet, but they’ll sell them before buying the tickets.”
Jorn called ticket scalping a “dishonest” venture that far too many people have fallen victim to over his years in the entertainment business. Even when those seeking tickets Google “RiverPark Center,” a list of third-party ticket brokers is oftentimes the first companies to pop up in the search engine, he said.
“There are a number of measures you can take to prevent this,” Jorn said. “You can call the RPC box office. We actually just switched to Ticketmaster, so you can purchase tickets there. Ticketmaster is reliable and they are affiliated with RPC [unlike the others].”
Alexander said ticket scalping — and even ticket fraud, wherein fake tickets are sold for events — happens all the time in Owensboro.
“All over the country, they’re dealing with the same kind of stuff,” she said. “We would never want our attendees to feel misinformed. There’s been instances where someone spends $150 a ticket, but that ticket — which should cost $49 a ticket — didn’t come from us.”
Alexander recommended always going to the venue’s website to buy tickets directly.
Jorn agreed, saying he would consider putting up signs at RPC to warn people of the ongoing issues with third-party ticket brokers. At a past venue where Jorn worked in Illinois, he put signs on the back of chairs that informed people they’d been scammed if they’d paid more than the venue’s cost of admission, and provided information about how to purchase reliable tickets in the future.
“There’s nothing I can do when it happens,” Jorn said. “Sometimes it really breaks your heart.”
