Is it really illegal to scalp?

Again, my answer is my reliable old punt (pun intended)—sometimes. Because it is fall in Louisiana, there is only one really important topic: football. My personal drug of choice is LSU football, and if you look to your left and to your right, you will probably see at least two more similarly-addicted junkies.

Nothing else meaningful really happens in this state on Saturday nights in the fall—no one would dare—and, as the Florida game a few weeks ago proved, sometimes every occupant of the state only really wants to be in one place on Saturday nights.

With big-game LSU football tickets being one of the most valuable items on the planet, the question inevitably becomes, what is one really worth? And how much can you get for one?

A friend of mine was on the LSU campus the Saturday of the Florida game, and he had the bad luck to not have tickets. He and his friend found someone selling tickets, and each purchased one for $150. My friend, being a rather experienced football game attendee, was immediately suspicious of the ticket and went to the ticket office to have the tickets checked.

As it turned out, both of their tickets were counterfeit. (This story actually has a happy ending: my friends gave descriptions of the seller to the police, the police caught him and several other counterfeiters, and my friends got their money back.)

Now, obviously, it is illegal to sell counterfeit tickets, which are worthless, for several times the face value of the “tickets.” But what about real tickets? Under Louisiana law (Louisiana Revised Statutes 4:1), admission tickets to entertainment events must have the price paid for the ticket printed on the face of the ticket.

It is illegal to sell or resell an admission ticket to any athletic contest, dance, theater, concert, circus, or other amusement for an amount that is more than the purchase price printed on the face of the ticket. The ordinary penalty for violating this law is a fine of between $100 to $500 dollars and 30 to 90 days in jail. So, in other words, not worth the extra 25 bucks you might get for selling over face value.

Also, the statute allows for certain donations or contribution requirements to obtain the ticket in addition to the face value purchase price of the ticket, but only “in connection with the sale of tickets to athletic contests of institutions of higher education.” (Hmm, I wonder to what “contests” they are referring…)

Finally, the most interesting new part of the law, and the reason for my ambivalent “it’s only illegal to scalp tickets sometimes…” A section has recently been added dealing with ticket sales online. This section provides that it is legal to sell or resell admission tickets online at any price IF two requirements are met.

First, the organizer of the event and the operator of the location where the event is held must authorize the sale/resale of the admission tickets to the event at higher than face value.

Second, the operator of the website on which the ticket is offered for sale/resale has to guarantee (with that guarantee posted on their website, which the buyer is directed to prior to completion of the sale) a full refund of whatever price is paid under certain conditions: if the event ends up being canceled, if the purchaser, through no fault of his own, is denied admission, or if the ticket is not delivered in the way the website said it would be delivered and that failure of delivery procedure caused the purchaser to not be able to attend the event.


Prior to this new law, there were lots of great stories about people selling an admission ticket to the National Championship game for $1 on Ebay. Except the ticket was only being sold together as a package deal with an old LSU sock, which was priced at $9,000. Well, as long as the two requirements above are met, this sort of charmingly devious subterfuge is no longer necessary.

The provided information is fact-sensitive and jurisdiction-dependent. Consult an attorney before employing the above legal concepts.