Psst! Need Tickets? Brokers’ Memo Gives Advice on How to Get Them

Here are a few tips on how to buy concert tickets if you plan to resell them at a profit.

1. The object is to go through the line at your local ticket outlet as quickly as possible and, if you can, go through the line again. Every second wasted makes a difference.

2. Be discreet in your dealings and remain as inconspicuous as possible. The reason for this is that there may be fans in line who feel you are cheating them out of better seats. Also, store employees may become irritated with you.

3. Don’t buy obstructed or single seats, because they are difficult to resell.

This advice comes from a list of instructions from Metro Entertainment, a Connecticut ticket broker that hires temporary employees in Southern California and across the nation to buy concert tickets. While the memo, obtained by The Times, calls for nothing illegal, it gives a rare insight into the highly organized business of ticket brokering.

The memo was faxed last week to a temporary employment agency in Kalamazoo, Mich., as part of Metro Entertainment’s plan to acquire tickets for an upcoming Garth Brooks concert. It contains three pages of very specific instructions detailing the kind of tickets to purchase and where to ship them, and includes an 800 emergency phone number and Federal Express return air bill guidelines.

Metro Entertainment executive Sean Fischer declined to comment, but acknowledged that the firm obtains tickets for clients from Connecticut to Los Angeles.

Disgruntled fans have long complained that the best seats at rock concerts and sporting events invariably end up in the hands of ticket brokers.

Indeed, concert-goers intent on purchasing good seats at sold-out events in the Southland can expect to pay three to four times face value for a ticket--10 to 20 times the face value for an especially hot show.

“This new practice highlights just how bad” ticket brokering has become, said Bradley Stillman, executive director and legislative counsel for the Washington-based Consumer Federation of America, which is made up of 240 nonprofit consumer organizations representing 50 million members. “You’ve got these slick, professional operations out there who buy all the prime seats and jack up the price. Just because it’s legal, that doesn’t mean consumers aren’t getting ripped off.”

Legally, scalping is defined as selling tickets on or near the grounds of an event without a license, and it is against the law in California and many other states. But no law prohibits anyone from buying up blocks of seats and reselling tickets for profit off grounds.

To prevent brokers from buying up huge blocks of choice seats, concert promoters and facility owners often set limits on the number of tickets individual consumers can buy. For particularly hot shows, the maximum is usually six tickets per customer.

Brokers, however, have devised a variety of ways to circumvent these restrictions.

They buy tickets from fans who purchase them through regular ticket outlets and they also pay their own employees to stand in line at the box office and at ticket outlets.

In addition, sources say brokers sometimes purchase tickets from record company employees who are fronted complimentary passes to concerts. Allegations have arisen over the years that agencies obtain tickets under the table from promoters, artist managers and rogue box-office and ticket company employees.

Ticketmaster, the nation’s largest ticketing company, has frequently spoken out against ticket brokering and even sued one Encino broker who was caught buying tickets on the sly from a Ticketmaster employee.

In recent years, many Southland brokers have taken to purchasing tickets from a new layer of local middlemen called “wholesalers.” These firms hire students, much as Metro Entertainment hires temporary employees, to stand in line at ticket outlets and then sell blocks of seats to brokers, who in turn resell them to consumers.

Brokers have long defended the practice of reselling tickets for profit as a function of free-market economics. They say there is no shortage of customers looking for choice seats.

California legislators have tried several times to pass laws to set a ceiling on ticket agencies, but failed after heavy lobbying from the California Assn. of Ticket Agencies. New York, Hawaii and Illinois enacted stiff brokering measures years ago, but the laws have been largely ineffective.