The other night I had an opportunity to watch the New Orleans Hornets basketball team host the Orlando Magic in downtown New Orleans. I’m not a fan of either team (I’m a Celtics fan), but I had never been to an NBA game before and I thought it would be an interesting experience.
The game was exciting, but the highlight of the evening was the actual process of buying the ticket from one of the “ticket scalpers” patrolling the area outside of the arena gates.
For some reason I thought that scalping tickets outside of a venue was illegal, but after seeing 50 or more “scalpers” outside the New Orleans Arena that night, I guess it really doesn’t matter.
A coworker and myself hired a cab from our hotel and were dropped off about a block from the arena. Almost immediately we were inundated with offers to purchase Hornet’s tickets at “deep discounts”. I was under the impression that I could just purchase tickets from the box office, but the scalpers assured me the game was sold out and tickets were hard to come by.
Here is how my transaction went down…
“You be needing some tickets” said one of the men.
“Ah, gee, I’m not really sure. I just got here and am planning on buying from the ticket both.” I said.
“Man are you whacked? You ain’t gonna be gettin’ no tickets to tonight’s game from no ticket booth!” said the man. “Tonight’s game is sold out, every game is sold out here man.” he looks back to his partner and they both have a good laugh at my expense.
The scalper shows me two tickets that he has with a face value of $60 each.
“Make me an offer for these two tickets.” he said.
“Man look, I haven’t got that kind of money, we just want to get in and check the place out.”
“No really man, make me an offer” he demanded. “I tell you what, you give me 60 bucks for the pair”.
This was a little bit better but I wasn’t even sure the tickets were real. My biggest fear was that I was about to buy a couple of tickets that were forged. I almost bought the tickets for my buddy and I but we quickly thought better of the idea.
“No thanks man, we’re going to keep walking and see what else is out there” I said.
The guy wasn’t going to let us go…
“I tell you what man, you wait just a minute.” he then calls over another guy who is standing nonchalantly nearby. “Yo Leroy. Man come over here with a couple of them nosebleeds, we gots some cheapskate over hear.”
By now we had attracted quite an audience of other would-be customers who were curious how one of these off the book ticket transactions went down.
The scalper then addressed us with his final deal.
“Look man, if you wanna get into the building, buy these tickets. They’re way up there man, but they’ll at least get you through the door. I normally ask $20 for these, but I’ll give them to you for $10 each.”
Honestly, we didn’t care where we were sitting as ling as we could see the game in person.
“You got yourself a deal man.” I said.
I handed over the cash and my buddy and I headed to the admissions gate. I was a little anxious that the tickets were forged, but my fear quickly subsided when the ticket collector scanned my ticket and told me to enjoy the game…
