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That's the Ticket!

Denver's pro-sports scalpers got game.

A A A Comments By David Holthouse Thursday, Nov 27 2003

Some of the sign holders are members of scalping crews, where labor is divided. Ticket buyers score tickets from motorists; ticket runners shuttle tickets, cash and pricing information back and forth between the sign-waving buyers on the perimeter streets and the ticket sellers on scalpers' corner.

Some scalpers are lone wolves, handling all aspects of the business themselves. Others work in pairs, like Terry and Dan, ticket hustlers who moved from Milwaukee to Denver earlier this year. "We've been working tickets in Denver off and on for three years and decided to make this our home base for a while," says Terry, a heavyset white kid in his mid-twenties who's wearing a furry red Kangol visor. "This is a bigger sports town than Milwaukee, and Denver's more centrally located, so we can road-trip to big games."

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Terry's nervous about media exposure. "We just don't want some article coming out that gives everybody's grandmother and sister and her cousin the idea that anybody can come out here and be a ticket seller," he says, "because that's not right."

His partner, Dan, is working the corner, waving an "I Need Tickets" sign. A car pulls up and idles. Dan leans through the open window, negotiates, then pops out and runs over to Terry. "Give me a 20," he says.

Terry's reluctant to expend any more capital on investments. "It's getting late, yo! Ten minutes to game! We need to be selling, not buying," he tells his partner.

"I'm buying two lowers for 20," Dan replies. "These are $63 seats, man. We'll sell them for 40 each, you watch."

Two minutes later, Dan turns a quick profit of $60 on the two-stage deal.

"A lot of people have wrong ideas about ticket sellers, that we're shady characters," says Terry. "The truth is, with ticket sellers, we make money saving you money. We're professional middlemen, saving you money over what you'd pay at the box. We're not out to scam anybody. We're just out to make an honest living."