The Droids vs. the Straights : The Ticket Brokers Get Rich. The Promoters Sell Out the House. The Scalpers Make a Fast Buck. And You Get Fleeced. Welcome to the California Ticket Hustle.

AT FIRST LIGHT, THE Bruce Springsteen fans begin to gather in a knot of bedrolls and camp chairs outside the ticket outlet on Westwood Boulevard. By 7 a.m., their ragged line of 150 or so stretches to the corner and turns east along Weyburn Avenue. Most are in their 20s and 30s, clean-cut, middle-class. They leaf slowly through newspapers or talk quietly. Their faces are anxious, tense.

Even those camping in front are grim--perhaps just realizing that being first doesn’t matter. Because this isn’t the ticket line. They’re waiting to draw numbers to determine where they’ll stand in line when the ticket office opens at 9 a.m. Those who pick lucky numbers can buy four concert tickets at face value, with prices starting at $25 each. The rest will pay scalper rates--most likely two or three times higher. The drawing is designed to discourage scalpers.

A young man moves slowly down the line. His face is earnest. His voice is hoarse, pleasant, rhythmic: “Excuse me, folks, are you buying all four? I’ll buy your ticket if you buy two for me. Excuse me, folks, are you buying all four? I’ll buy your. . .” His voice fades.

He returns minutes later to his own place in line. He looks disgusted. He leans close and whispers: “A total nightmare. The line’s ‘stacked.’ Counted seven other scalpers. I saw them ‘on the walk’ at the Lakers the other night.”

A station wagon pulls up. A big, beefy man wearing a beeper and an Army fatigue jacket with bulging pockets gives folding chairs to four young women. Then he speeds away. A four-door sedan follows. The scalper watches with admiration. “Wholesaler,” he whispers.

He explains that the wholesaler hired the four women--in the ticket business they’re sometimes nicknamed “droids”--to buy tickets for him. “Probably got 30 droids stacked in other lines. Sells directly to a big ticket agency--a major broker.” The scalper pauses and is encouraged to continue. “Scalpers are tied into brokers. We feed on each other--need each other to move tickets, create a market, keep prices up. That’s what makes the ‘ticket hustle’ work. Only difference, he’s legal--I’m not.”

In California, if you hustle tickets at prices above face value on public or stadium property, you are a scalper, and guilty of a misdemeanor. If you sell tickets on private property or through a ticket agency, you are a broker. Perfectly legal.

At 8 a.m., a woman and a plainclothes security guard emerge from the Tower Records store that houses the ticket outlet. He wears handcuffs on his belt. She carries a cardboard box filled with numbered plastic bracelets. The line files past, each person pulling out a bracelet that the guard fastens tightly around their wrists, droning over and over, “Computer picks the number at quarter to nine.”

When the guard appears again, the crowd grows still. “Five sixty two,” he yells. “Line up numerically behind 562.” A new line forms, with the person wearing bracelet 562 in front followed by 563; and so on. The scalper groans. His number is 530. He is eliminated. But his companion has bracelet 612. The scalper grins. Generally the first 50 or 60 numbers are good before outlets across town sell out. The scalper’s companion buys four $25 tickets. The scalper gives them to a small-time broker who operates a ticket agency in West Los Angeles. The broker buys the $25 tickets for $50 each. Two days before the concert, he sells the four tickets for $75 apiece, the going rate.

CRITICS CALL THIS THE CALIFORNIA ticket hustle. Brokers say it’s the purest form of free enterprise. Business is brisk. Nearly 30 ticket brokers are listed in the Beverly Hills/Westside Yellow Pages alone, up from 16 a decade ago. Bidding among them can be frenzied when tickets are released for sale. Ticket prices can jump 10 to 20 times for fans who want to see stars such as Springsteen, Madonna or Neil Diamond or to attend the World Series, NBA Championships or Super Bowl. Fans paid $600 for an end-zone seat at Super Bowl XXII in San Diego or for a $30 ticket to see Madonna. They pay a scalper $45 for a $9 field box in Dodger Stadium. By most accounts, professional street scalpers can earn $40,000 to $60,000 a year--cash. And they say the brokers they work for make much more.

It’s a simple matter of supply and demand. And brokers control the supply. The morning of the Bruce Springsteen ticket sale, for example, a small army of scalpers, brokers, or their droids converged--not just on Westwood--but on outlets across Los Angeles County to snap up available tickets either by drawing good numbers themselves or by offering fans more than face value for their tickets.

“Real fans--the average fan--doesn’t have a fair shot,” says Bill Graham, one of the country’s leading concert promoters and, perhaps, the music industry’s most strident critic of scalping.

Graham says only a handful of stars try to discourage scalping (with only partial success) by setting up systems like the one Springsteen used. More often, both for music concerts and sports events, promoters hold back blocks of tickets to sell to brokers for more than face value. “It’s unfair, immoral, unethical,” Graham says.

Last year he formed Californians Against Ticket Scalping and hired a Sacramento lobbyist, former state senator Dennis Carpenter. The group has persuaded Sen. Bill Lockyer (D-Hayward) to introduce legislation that would make it illegal to sell tickets for more than face value (plus a service charge) without the consent of the promoter. That’s a significant toughening of the current law, passed in 1987 with the endorsement of the ticket brokers, which includes a truth-in-advertising clause and requires brokers to refund deposits made for canceled shows but does not regulate prices.

“There’s a genuine problem,” Lockyer says. “It’s very unfair to have these broker/scalper middlemen. They get their hands on an unfair number of tickets and jack up the price.” Lockyer, chairman of the Senate’s Judiciary Committee, claims that brokers use “fraud and unfair business practices. They acquire the tickets basically by lying, and they inflate the prices in unconscionable ways and in effect rip off the public.” Lockyer plans a hearing before his committee in the next few weeks.

Such characterizations don’t ruffle Brian Harlig, president of the 27-member California Assn. of Ticket Agencies, which speaks for brokers. He’s resigned about this newest attempt to regulate his industry. “It’s not surprising,” he says. “It seems like every few years when somebody needs publicity, this seems to surface. This is not a real pressing issue.

“Most states don’t even address the issue,” says Harlig, who operates Good Time Tickets in Los Angeles. “They see it as trivial, unenforceable.” He says that New York’s anti-scalping law, which prohibits agencies from selling tickets for more than $2 above face value, “is regularly flouted.” Brokers, New York officials say, have gotten around the law by moving their operations to neighboring states and letting customers charge tickets by phone. “New York has more expensive tickets than here,” Harlig says. “If there wasn’t a demand for our services we wouldn’t be in business. . . . That’s why Mister Graham is pissing in the wind. Print that. I don’t care.”

“We have nothing to gain” from battling scalpers, says Jerry Pompili, head of Graham’s group, who’s been associated with Graham for 23 years. Scalping restrictions wouldn’t affect promoters’ profits, but, says Pompili, “this is our living. You have a responsibility to your fans--to your customers. We don’t just want their money. We want them to come back . . . to have a good time . . . to think once in a while they can get a good seat--not just the guys who drive Ferraris.”

Brian Murphy, a major Southern California promoter, agrees. “The loyal fan buys the product, stands in line outside the event on Saturday morning. That’s the person the artist would like to see,” says Murphy, president of Avalon Attractions, which presents about 300 musical concerts a year in Southern California and grosses about $30 million a year. Many fans, he says, see only a few shows a year and “don’t know the ins and outs. Brokers know how to manipulate lines and people, know how to get better seats than the fans. It becomes unfair. We’re trying to find a system by which the fan who stands in line, calls, goes to the box offices has as fair a chance of getting a quality ticket as the insiders and brokers have had for years.”

Pompili says he has received letters of support and about $25,000 in donations from groups including the San Francisco 49ers, the Giants, Oakland As, Golden State Warriors, Sacramento Kings, San Diego Padres and numerous promoters and stadium operators. Pompili, of San Francisco, says he has received the least support from the Los Angeles area, where “the problem is really bad. We don’t want Northern California to become a ticket broker’s paradise like Southern California,” says Graham, also of San Francisco. “It’s out of control in L.A. Just count the newspaper ads. They (brokers) own that town . . . It’s a racket,” he says.

Aside from Harlig, brokers didn’t want to respond directly to Pompili and Graham’s criticisms. Three other major Southern California brokers either refused to be interviewed or to speak for the record. “It’s a ‘no win’ situation,” says one. “We’re the heavies.”

IN THREE HOURS, THE LAKERS play the Portland Trailblazers in their first home game of the 1990-91 season. It’s a Tuesday night. “It’ll be a bomb,” predicts the young scalper who worked the early-morning Springsteen ticket sale. (“Just identify me as Tom,” he says.) “There’s no (championship) ring ceremony and the Lakers play the Knicks (New York Knickerbockers) on Sunday. Lot of fans only got money for one game a week. They’ll wait for the Knicks.”

Tom is a professional, one of perhaps 40 scalpers that he and other hustlers estimate are working illegally in Los Angeles and Orange counties. Like most professional scalpers, Tom hustles mainly baseball, football, basketball and rock concerts. His workweek usually begins Friday and ends Sunday night. An average peak season weekend schedule looks like this: Friday night concert at Universal Studios, Saturday morning ticket sale, afternoon UCLA Bruins or USC Trojans game, Saturday night Kings hockey, Sunday afternoon Rams or Raiders, Sunday night Lakers. This is Tom’s fourth year. He owns a $20,000 car, lives in a $1,500-a-month rented house and has banked more than $10,000--all, he says, from scalping. He also has a “rap sheet” with four scalping arrests, but no convictions. His girlfriend says he frets constantly about the Internal Revenue Service. Illegal income isn’t something you record on a Form 1040.

Tom prepares to leave for the Great Western Forum. He wears top-quality sneakers, a Lakers shirt and loose-fitting pants with deep pockets. Almost all the scalpers are men, most in their late 20s. Like Tom, they have friendly faces, pleasant voices. “Fans don’t want some mean-looking dude coming up in the parking lot,” he says.

Tom is beeped. It is Steve, a Hollywood-area broker. He has eight unsold Laker tickets--all $90 loges. At this late hour, fans usually buy from scalpers at the game. Would Tom “go on the walk and blow these out?” The deal is standard. They split what Tom gets--even if it’s below face value.

“Brokers would rather have scalpers secretly sell their tickets at the game for face, or below, than drop their prices at the ticket agencies. They (brokers) don’t want the fans to think they can get them cheaper,” Tom explains.

His beeper sounds again. Another broker wants to unload tickets. Tom declines.

“Everybody’s got extra tickets when games bomb ‘cause brokers control so many season tickets,” Tom explains. They either own them outright or purchase the rights from season ticket holders. “That’s why all the Laker games--the good seats, season seats--are always sold out--even if it’s the worst bomb of the year and the joint’s empty,” he adds. “It’s called a ‘broker sellout’ on the street. They create it to create a market, which, of course, they control. From what I see and hear, brokers and scalpers control 30% of the (better) seats.”

Forum officials see that as an inflated number--and even if it is accurate, they don’t complain as long as scalpers don’t bother their customers.

Claire Rothman, general manager of the Forum, says that complaints about brokers and price gouging don’t come from “our loyal fans who are with us year after year (for season seats)” but more often from the “casual fan” who only shows up when the Lakers are winning. “It’s not fair to lay it at the door of the brokers. It’s supply and demand. They’re a legitimate service business. I avail myself of brokers. I don’t want to stand in line.” Robert Steiner, Forum public relations director, explains further that brokers buy up tickets because “they have to dry up the primary market. I don’t know what we do about that.”

Besides, Rothman says, the estimate that brokers control 30% of the Forum’s best seats seems “inordinately high . . . the greatest number of seats belong to individuals.” The bulk of the choice seats are approximately 3,800 loges called VIP Senate Seats. They cost $8,150 each per year and are good for virtually all events, which include the Lakers, Kings hockey, boxing and concerts.

Rothman says it is not the Forum’s concern--or fault--if a Senate Seat holder doesn’t like boxing and “sells the boxing tickets to a broker. We sell tickets. What people do with them . . . The Forum does everything it knows how to do to make an equitable distribution of tickets.”

Rothman says high ticket prices don’t offend her as much as the presence of scalpers hustling at the Forum. “I hate to see a parasite operating on my lot . . . accosting people . . . standing in aisle ways where cars are driving. I find them generally unscrupulous.” Rothman was told that many of the “parasite” scalpers she dislikes are supplied--kept in business--by the ticket agency brokers she defends. “If that is true,” she replies “I certainly frown on that.”

The Inglewood Police Department is in charge of controlling scalpers. Sgt. Ken O’Steen, a Forum “event comander” since 1976, says he tolerates them in small doses and if they behave, which makes the Forum a place that Tom and other scalpers consider a “live-and-let-live” venue. But brokers are another matter.

“You know what does bug me,” O’Steen says. “A person can’t get a good seat through normal channels and has to go through a (broker) and pay dearly.” He leans forward. He’s angry. “Brokers are dirty,” he blurts. “They’re dishonestly conducting an illegal business. They’re dirty, and I don’t care if they confront me on this. You no longer see mom and pop or the kids . . . or kids alone . . . or the average working class. Now it’s VIPs, doctors, lawyers, movie stars. What’s paying $35 or more over face value to them?”

TOM PICKS UP THE LAKER TICKETS from the broker and arrives at the Forum two hours before game time to catch any early action. He carries $200 in small bills, which he’ll use for making change, and a Forum map if customers want to see where their seats are located. Tom confesses that he shows them a map of Forum seating for hockey--not basketball--games. He grins sheepishly. “The (hockey map) makes seats look closer because the ice takes up more rows.”

The Forum is quiet when Tom arrives. The only other scalper is Teacher--the man’s former occupation. Scalpers answer to nicknames and first names. Last names are nobody’s business.

Teacher is working his favorite spot, Manchester Boulevard and Prairie Avenue across from the Forum. He is short, rumpled, dour, 40ish. Tom is respectful. Teacher is senior among scalpers--a familiar sight since the 1970s. “I’ve heard his (Teacher’s) name since the day I got here,” says Rothman, Forum general manager since 1975. “People tell me they see him all over--at Super Bowls . . . There’s obviously a hard-core group. Professionals.”

Police and prosecutors know Teacher, too. “Teacher was here when I first got elected in 1977,” recalls Inglewood City Atty. Howard Roston. His office prosecutes scalpers but has filed only a “handful” of cases the past few years. Roston considers scalping a low priority, an attitude shared by Alice Hand, who oversees the criminal division in the Los Angeles City Attorney’s office. “It (scalpers and high ticket prices) doesn’t outrage me as a prosecutor,” Hand says, “but outrages me as a consumer.”

Roston says: “I’m not concerned if somebody makes money selling Laker tickets--whether rich people sit on the floor (front row). But I am if he stands in the street causing a traffic jam. Teacher knows the rules. He stays on Manchester by that liquor store.”

Teacher huddles with Tom. Teacher stiffens. He is uneasy, wary. Tom has a stranger with him. A curious stranger. Teacher leaves.

Fans are arriving. Tom strikes out across the parking lot in a long, easy, ground-consuming gait. He counts 14 scalpers crisscrossing the lot. “You can always tell scalpers by their walk, and they’re the only ones not heading for the gate.”

He zigzags between the cars to encounter as many fans as possible. “Need tickets? Got two down in front. Need tickets? Got . . .” He is met with cold stares. “I got a big ticket for ya,” a fan snickers, cupping his crotch. “I’ll give you a buck apiece,” another fan remarks. His friends giggle. Tom is oblivious.

La Mirada Bob approaches. Tom groans.

“Where ya been, Bob?”

“On the road . . . working the (Sacramento) Kings. I killed ‘em.”

“Really? . . . There’s a market? That’s a ‘good ticket’ up there?”

“Yea. A great ticket. “

“Uh huh. How’s the heat?’ ”

“No problem. It was beautiful” Bob leaves. Tom mutters: “Bob’s a big talker.”

Tom is beeped. A regular customer from Newport Beach is calling from the Days Inn Park Plaza hotel next to the Forum. He needs two $90 loges. Tom says the price is only $80 a ticket because the client is such a “first-class guy,” and a good customer. The client has never paid below face value before. He is delighted.

So is Tom. He says the broker who consigned him the tickets doesn’t expect a split on sales to regular customers and will be happy if Tom brings back $20 a ticket. Tom has made $120.

TOM HAS BEEN AVOIDING THE Sports Arena, but this night the Los Angeles Clippers open their season against the Sacramento Kings and Tom needs to check the action. He parks across the street. Without apparent dissent, scalpers consider the Sports Arena their most difficult venue. “I don’t like this place,” Tom grumbles. “LAPD. Tight asses. They got this big sergeant, ‘Robocop.’ He gets off busting scalpers.” Tom mumbles: “Maybe he retired or something.”

Tom has broker tickets on consignment. He leaves them in the car without explanation. Two scalpers work the parking lot entrance. They stay outside the Sports Arena fence and cup tickets in their hand so that they are visible only to those in an oncoming car. The sidewalk to the arena entrance is packed with fans. Four police officers stroll among the crowd. They work in pairs about 50 yards apart.

Tom’s companion studies the crowd and asks, “Where’s the scalpers?” Tom smiles grimly. “Oh, they’re here. You don’t dare work against the flow. You stand out. You walk with the fans to the door, circle around and make another run.” Tom steps on to the sidewalk. It is brightly lighted. “These lights suck,” he mutters.

Tom hears a low terse whisper: “Tickets? Need tickets?” A short, chunky scalper moves alongside. His head is lowered, his lips barely move. His eyes dart from side to side. Tom shakes his head. The scalper scoots ahead. Tom laughs. He hears a high-pitched whine. “Robocop,” he grunts, without turning.

Robocop cruises by on a small electric cart. He is big, husky, unsmiling and in his 40s. He scans the crowd, spots Tom, does a double-take and circles. “He knows me,” Tom says nervously. “He busted me before. I gave him some (lip). Mouthed off.” Tom is reminded he’s carrying no tickets. He relaxes. Robocop trails Tom for a minute and leaves. “I’ve seen enough,” Tom says.

Robocop parks near the entrance and stretches. He is Sgt. John Green, with 18 years on the force--the past 10 at the Sports Arena. “Kids gave me that name (Robocop) some years ago when I got the cart. I can really move around.” Green is told that scalpers fear him, that he makes their lives miserable. He shrugs, face expressionless. “It’s nothing personal. I know a lot of these guys. See ‘em year after year. But if they want to scalp, they have to do it across the street. Otherwise, we confiscate their tickets. They don’t like that.”

Green guesses he got his reputation when he first worked the Sports Arena. “I’d hang out at a ticket agency that used to be across the street . . . before I put my uniform on. The scalpers would come in and I’d get a good look at their faces. They couldn’t figure how I was on to them so fast.”

TOM ARRIVES AT THE FORUM TO work a hockey game between the Los Angeles Kings and Edmonton Oilers. Business is slow--the annual lull between the World Series and the beginning of football and basketball.

The scalpers working the curb on Manchester Boulevard spot Tom’s car as it swings into a parking lot. They run over to him. These are not-so-successful scalpers. A decent crowd is expected. Tickets are scarce. The scalpers know Tom has broker tickets to wholesale. They swarm around the car.

Tom lowers the window. Hands reach in, waving money, tugging at his shirt. “Whatcha got--cheapies, loges? What’s the face?”

Tom strikes a deal with Doc, a sometimes scalper who’s a bit rough around the edges. Doc pulls at the tickets in Tom’s hand. Tom hangs on until his other hand gets the money. Doc is indignant. “Don’t you trust me?” Tom grins. “Would you trust you?” Doc thinks. He laughs.

The tickets are gone.

The game is starting. Tom stands outside the VIP entrance watching fans try to unload extra tickets. “Let’s see the game,” he proposes. “I’ll get a couple Senate Seats for 10 bucks each.” He refuses an offer of two $90 seats for $20 each. He turns down two loges for $15 each.

The game is on. Stragglers hurry inside. The crowd cheers. Tom’s companion is irritated. “I know my business,” Tom says. “Some don’t come out till the game starts. Embarrassed.” A man and woman in their late 20s appear. She hangs onto his arm. He holds tickets. “Sweethearts,” Tom whispers. “This’ll be easy.”

“How much?” Tom asks.

“Twenty each . . . behind the glass.”

“Twenty for both. Take it or . . .”

“No way! . . . a matter of principle.”

“See any other buyers?” Tom asks. “Bet those are comps.’ ”

“His father’s season seats,” the woman volunteers. She shivers. It’s chilly.

“No way. I just can’t . . .

Tom’s voice is soothing, sincere. “We only got twenty. Is the extra twenty so important . . . making this pretty lady stand out here . . .” She squeezes her boyfriend’s arm and nuzzles his shoulder. Tom plucks the tickets from the boyfriend’s hand and stuffs $20 in his shirt pocket. Tom walks with them. “I’d like to meet your dad,” Tom says. “You and him can make some easy pocket money--cash money. Strictly on the up and up . . .”