The process of methodically buying up good seats to rock concerts and then selling them at ten times or more than their face value is not a particularly noble profession, but it is a profitable one. Fans decry scalpers’ practices, but too many support the business. On the record, artists, promoters, and ticket agencies say they discourage scalping and profess not to know how scalpers invariably manage to come up with the best seats. But a group of Grateful Dead fans recently got a good lesson on how the process works.
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The story that follows is based on the accounts of fans who lined up on the morning of Saturday, June 3, to get tickets for the Dead’s July 8 and 9 Soldier Field shows. The scene: the Ticketmaster outlet in the Carson Pirie Scott department store at the Merchandise Mart. The rules: fans had to stop by a day or two before tickets went on sale and have a Ticketmaster employee affix a numbered band to their wrists; the day of the sale fans were to be at the store at 8:30 AM, at which time a random number would be drawn; fans would then line up according to the numbers on their wristbands (this procedure obviates long lineups before tickets go on sale). The rules also said that if you weren’t there at 8:30 you lost whatever advantage your number gave you, and you had to go to the end of the line.
The fans complained vocally, but they say they were met with hostility from the linebusters and indifference from the Ticketmaster staff. Once inside, near the actual Ticketmaster office, it was plain to the fans what was going on. Thomson says a man who seemed to be in charge had “set up shop” on a countertop, and was handing out money and collecting tickets from the people who’d gotten into line late. “They were obviously not buying tickets for themselves.”
