July 29, 2025 • 46 mins
Ep. 47 – Ticketing Chaos Explained: Bots, Brokers & Bold Claims with Joel Schwartz
What do Donald Trump, Kid Rock, and a 200% ticket guarantee have in common? They’re all part of the chaotic, misunderstood world of live event ticketing—and veteran ticket broker, founding member of the National Association of Ticket Brokers (NATB) and attorney, Joel Schwartz is here to discuss the current executive order and how it affects ticket brokers and fans.
In this high-impact episode, we sit down with one of the original voices in ticket resale to break down what’s really driving the headlines. From political theater to pricing transparency, Schwartz shares insider stories from decades in the game—starting with Lions games in the '70s and stretching all the way to Super Bowl holdbacks, Taylor Swift meltdowns, and FTC policy shifts.
In this episode, you'll learn:
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Why bots aren’t the real problem—and who actually is
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How “dynamic pricing” impact fans, travel planners, and the entire resale market
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What the new executive orders and pricing laws could mean for concerts, sports, and festivals
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How fans, brokers, and platforms can navigate an increasingly complex and competitive marketplace
Whether you're a travel professional, ticketing insider, or just a fan tired of hidden fees and vanishing inventory, this episode delivers clarity, context, and a dose of hard truth.
Follow us at @Tix2TravelPod on all platforms and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome back to Tickets to Travel, the Business of Travel Experiences. I'm your host, Mario Bwin, and today we're digging into one of the most talked about and frankly, misunderstood topics in the world of live events ticket reselling. Unless you've been hiding under a rock or behind a very expensive VIP package, you've probably seen the viral clips of Donald Trump flank by Kid Rock standing in the Oval Office to announce an executive order to protect fans from ticket scalpers and bots.
(00:01):
Yes, you heard that right? A presidential ticketing policy delivered with the subtlety of a kid rock encore. According to the press conference, bots and unscrupulous middlemen are to blame for jacked up ticket prices, inaccessible concerts, and fans getting gouged at the checkout. And while it made for some good sound bites, we wanted to get the truth, the whole truth from someone.
Who actually understands this ecosystem from the inside. So today we're joined by Joel Schwartz, a ticketing industry veteran who's been selling tickets for nearly 50 years, a founding member of the National Association of Ticket Brokers, and widely regarded as one of the foremost legal authorities on ticketing law in the United States.
Joel doesn't just break down what the executive order really means. He calls out what's true, what's political theater, and what's just flat out wrong from bots and broker myths to exclusive ticketing contracts. Dynamic pricing, and the surge of Holdbacks Joel helps us see how the ticket drives the entire travel experience and how fans are often left in the dark.
So whether you're a travel pro trying to package event experiences. Or a fan wondering why your a hundred dollars ticket turns into $300 by checkout. This episode may give you a little clarity, a few laughs, and probably a little fire in your belly. As always, follow us on all the socials at Tick two, the number two Travel Pod, and subscribe wherever you get your podcast because tickets to Travel starts now.
Welcome to Tickets to Travel, the Business of Travel Experiences. I'm your host, Mario Bwy, and today. We have Joel Schwartz. Joel, welcome to the pod. Thank you, Mario. Pleasure. Pleasure. Being here with you. Do you remember the first ticket you ever sold? What event and when? It was always a good one. I'm telling you
the first ticket, I was probably a Detroit Lions ticket in 1974.
Whoa. We're 75. And so my father was a season ticket older. He had me sell the tickets on the street. But I think the, when I think back to those days, and you asked me that question, and I think to 19 74, 19 75 was my first ticket that I sold. My first ticket that I bought to a concert was at the Silver Dome for Elvis Presley on New Year's Eve.
Come on, really? Right after I bought her, sold my first ticket, yes. I went to see New Year's Eve. I sold Elvis Presley. I was 14 or 15 at the time. My cousin drove me, and it was at the Pontiac Silver Dome, Elvis Presley. You can look it up. I believe it was 75, and I believe he died in 76. Right? It's right before, as if I saw him.
That was like my first concert ever. So I didn't sell concerts to Elvis Presley. Wish I could answer, but that was my first concert that I ever went to.
You sold the Lion's ticket to get the money to go to that concert, so just because that's, I was born in 1974, it blows my mind a little bit. What was the concert experience like to see Elvis?
Were you close?
No. What you're, who open for it? Watching? We're watching a concert in a football stadium. Okay. And I don't think that our seats were necessarily the best seats. They were somewhere in the house. I just remember an overweight guy up there, gyrating on stage, and a lot of girls screaming and making a lot of noise.
Right. I thought the music was pretty good. I didn't. I heard some of the music. If you grew up in that era, even in the early seventies. Elvis was from the fifties and the sixties to all these songs that you never really thought about, but those were Elvis Presley songs. So yeah, I had a great time. I thank my cousin and all his older friends for driving me there.
Yeah,
no, 'cause that would've been a throwback for you at that point. 'cause you're right, he was in the fifties and sixties. So then Joel, when did you figure out that this was gonna be the business for you?
Like the second weekend that I sold those Lions ticket, the first weekend I went out there, the tickets were $10 on the face.
Wow. First weekend I went out there and I sold them to the guys on the street for $5. I had like 10 tickets. I got 50 bucks. I went to the game. I was happy. I gave my dad the money, gave me half. Okay. I said, those guys bought those tickets too easily for $5. So the next week I went out there and I said, you know what?
The tickets are $10 this week. But we don't want 'em for $10. So I sold 'em, the people on the street for $10. Okay. So I know I got a hundred dollars back. Apples to apples my dad didn't have. Third weekend, I went out there, I said, you know what? Lemme sell these tickets, but this is pretty good. I can buy for five and I can sell for 10 or 15.
So one of us was down on the ramp, below the freeway where overpass was. We had assigned buying tickets for the $5, four for 20. Yeah. And then we would run 'em upstairs. So the guy on the overpass, and he would sell 'em to the people walking to the game for 10 or 15 afterwards, and we would split all the money up.
Amazing. And I figured that out at 15. It didn't take me long. And then when I got to University of Michigan, I started selling tickets outta my dorm room and we were selling hundreds of machine Ohio State
tickets right out. Oh man. How did that work back, how did you get ticket access in college for that?
(00:22):
Back in that, back in those days, that was
so easy. That was like taking candy from a be in there. I paid $10 for a sheet of a sheet of advertisement, says buying and selling Michigan football tickets. And I got a staple gun. And in those days the light posts were made outta wood. Today they're made out of aluminum.
Okay? And we just went to every post and stapled up with a little, with the little tabs on the bottom that you could rip off with your phone number. But we didn't put the phone number in the dorm room on there 'cause it was always busy. We put the pager number on there. So they would page us and then we would call 'em back.
We didn't have cell phones. We'd call 'em back from the dorm room, but they could page it, they would call so that students bought 'em for half price and we were buying, buying 'em for six and selling 'em for 12. And then we would buy the Ohio States for maybe, I don't know, 15, $20, $25. We would sell 'em for 75 or a hundred.
Wow. From the dorm room. Ama. It was just in your blood,
man,
you're supposed to do this. I didn't take any of those classes at the Michigan Business School.
I already knew marketing and sales, supply and demand, and I
got it all, man.
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Visit books.com today and make your next sports trip unforgettable. Seats your all access pass to the ultimate sports travel experience. It was very timely. We were in a conversation back at the CTFA few weeks back, and then a bunch of things happened, like it's evolved after those conversations about Donald Trump and Kid Rock and all these different things that hit the media.
I think maybe the week after we, we saw each other. Can you walk us through a bit of what they're talking about? To anybody who doesn't really understand ticket reselling, can you give us just a, a high level what that is?
Sure. So President Trump and Kid Rock, I believe it was April 1st, met in the Oval Office and Donald Trump came with an executive.
Order in regards to tickety and President Trump said that there, he signed this order to call to crack down to what he calls unscrupulous middlemen. We can get to that in a second. What those, what or who? Those are in the live ticketing industry and they wanna crack. It's gonna crack down an exploitive ticket.
Scalping and improve transparency for customers. So it sounds really good on the surface, but the gentleman that handed Trump the executive order, he claimed I listened to the audio. He claimed that bots jack up prices and don't allow fans to have access to the tickets. Kid Rock also said that bots get all the good tickets, means I guess, that the promoters don't hold any of the good tickets back.
For their people or their holdbacks, they all go to the to the bots and we know that's not true. Now, the what it's gonna really do is it's gonna have the FTC and the DOJ have a little bit more oversight along with the state attorney generals to enforce the Bots Act. You can't use bots to buy tickets.
Everybody's in agreement with this. We don't disagree with that. We just disagree with the fact that the bots buy up all the tickets. Uh, and I think that's where the discrepancy is. They also touted that the total economic impact from the live and concert and entertainment industry is 132 billion, with 913,000 jobs attached to it.
Got, it's a pretty big segment of our relatively big segment of our economy. So what that did is it basically just, it's going, he was just really reiterating what President Biden had put into effect a few months early. The FTC already filed some rules that are gonna become law in regards to price transparency.
We need all in pricing. Biden's already put that into place, right? Stronger enforcement of the bots Act, which was what President Trump asked for price transparency. And better rules regarding ticket disclosure. These all were gonna pass in December until they were yanked in, in, in lie of the continuing resolution.
So that's a basic oversight of what it is we can go into in-depth on any of those things. Got it. Essentially,
(00:43):
this is. A fan forward executive order. There's a lot of challenges in one, the language that's used. There's an association of bots squeezing out tickets from other fans or regular paying fans, and that gets associated to brokers or what they call scalpers.
Just to unwind a little bit here, Joel, what is your definition of a broker and. How do you think this has been portrayed, I guess over the last, I don't know, decade with the past administration or just things that have happened in the culture of Taylor Swift and Beyonce? So what's your take on being a ticket broker?
Having been a ticket broker for almost 50 years, it's changed quite a lot along the way. As I was on the board of directors for the National Association of Ticket Brokers. For 25 years, I'm a founding member of the NATB. So while I consider myself a ticket broker, I'm also a ticket seller. 'cause I think the lines between the primary and the secondary have blurred over the years.
I am a guy who just helps people get tickets and helps them navigate this really rough landscape that we're in with a lot of potholes. I, I'm an attorney at law, so I'm one of the foremost experts on ticket law in the country and have lobbied both state on a statewide and federal level for ticket fairness.
Really, that's what I want. Is, I want ticket fairness. I want the truth to be told. And I don't think we're getting the whole truth here. So what is the truth?
You, you talk to a primary ticketing company, you talk to various fans. There seems to be some stigma, as I alluded to earlier, around being a ticket broker or ticket seller.
And so you mentioned that it has changed, but what specifically has changed in that? How has the the reputation been tarnished for. Ticket to
resellers. I think back when I started, everything was underground. Everything was illegal. We were the one of the last states here in Michigan to make ticket brokering legal for.
Long period of time it was illegal, and I'm the guy who created the membership clubs that all these professional teams now use in their practice. I'm the guy that invented that to get around our resale laws, and now they're using that same tactic against ticket brokers and fans. In the marketplace. I guess to answer your question more specifically, I really believe that it's come full circle because in the old days we were, we were undercover and we worked for so long to build our reputation and to govern ourselves.
We started the National Association of Ticket Brokers in order to evade regulation from the federal government and modeled ourselves much the same way as certified public accountants. Ah, self-regulate and make sure that we take all the bad apples out of the barrel, as many as we can find to preserve our reputation and prevent us from being regulated in a way that would not be beneficial to us or.
The consumers. I think now that the primary market has been battling the secondary for so long, they see how much money is to be made. They've all joined up in the secondary market, and now that's ironic because now in many legislatures, they're advocating for the laws for them to be legal, but with restrictive covenants in place that seem innocuous or seem harmless.
But on further insight, our. Very detrimental to the ticket ecosphere and to the fair allocation of tickets, if that's really
what you're looking for. I think that's where the truth or the discrepancy lies is really the, the, the communication that is put out by primary ticketing.
They're coming around and they're bashing us again and making us look like the bad guys, and we're not the bad guys.
I have just as many or more customers as you have listeners. Yeah, and they're my friends and they're my associates and I want to take care of them. I'm now looking to stick it to them for, it's just, it's a joke. Everything that this guy Kid Rock said, I wrote it all down. I listened to it. It's all lies.
He said that the only thing that he said that was read truthful. Was that the ticket situation is in a conundrum and I looked up the definition of conundrum and it said confusing or difficult problem, which I agree with, but yes, yes, no. The second definition is a question asked for amusement. Isn't that ironic?
So he claims that we mark up the tickets, 400 to 500% false claim as that the bots get all the good tickets, falls. Claims that artists don't see any of that money. It's true they don't see any of the broker's money, but they see all the money from all the tickets. They, they set the prices right? They set the prices in the fee, and he admits by his own admission he admits to being a little overpaid, a little.
She said, thank
you kid
Rock.
But I think this is all, it's a bit political. It's, Hey, we're fan forward. We're making it easier. We wanna side with the fans, we want them to feel good. And I think what comes about is really what's brought this to the surface over the last few years is Taylor Swift. So I think what people are trying to figure out is that why can't they get a cheap ticket for Taylor Swift?
(01:04):
So I think that's a podcast discussion in and of itself. Yes, I think that you need to look, put Taylor Swift. Like all the way to the side and just have a discussion about that because that's a whole ecosphere in and of itself that we've never seen anything like that in the entertainment industry. And it would be unfair to compare anything else to that Fair boy, but like that is what has not, right, and that's what.
All this attention, right? The
kind of fraud and abuse that was evolved and that we can go into another time is just tremendous. It happened to me, touch me personally, and it happened to many other people that I know. Let's just talk about the average concert, the everything. That's what I was gonna say.
Let's unpack it to a regular concert. What is something that's current that you guys are selling that is, that's a good example of how we can explain how this ecosystem works.
Let's just take the show of the day, Chris Brown. Okay. Okay. Yeah. So Chris Brown had a presale last week for Mini one show in each town came, I only did my town, Detroit.
And the show came and it asked you to pre-register. For the tickets. So I pre-registered, I could get up to three venues. Okay. Yeah. The show went on sale last week and I bought my seat for that show for the three shows that were, that I did the presale for the next. It was very hard to get in, very hard.
It was 10 or 15,000 people outta me, but I got in. Wow. But you couldn't get in unless you signed up previously The next day, and this just happened yesterday. It happened twice. The next day, they put the tickets on sale on a presale to the Lions fans and or the Ford Field fans, and then the next day they put seats on sale to the general public.
By the time they got to the general public, there was pretty much nothing left. Ah, okay. So now they put a second show on sale for the night before and they Same procedure last week was the pre-sale registration. Yesterday was Monday I got, or yesterday was Thursday, Tuesday the pre-sale Our Tuesday? Or we Wednesday The presale went Thursday.
The presales going for the Lions and the Ford Field fans. In Friday, it's gonna be for the general fans again. Now there probably will be more tickets left for this one, because it's the second show. But the reason why the average fan can't give tickets is because these, in, in terms of the concert industry, is they have promotional deals with American Express, with Citibank, with cash app, with the venue, with gambling, uh, venues.
So
there's a number of sponsorship deals that come into Way Correct. Which Correct. They strategically release tickets, ticket allocations to the sponsors depending on how much they've paid.
That sort of happened. Go back to Taylor Swift. That sort of happened in Taylor Swift. They put a presale out. They had it in the stadium.
They knew that there were 60,000 fans, and they let. 30,000 girls register for four tickets a piece. Right? Based on the fact that they normally don't sell that many tickets. And that's how so many of those little girls, I'm just making the numbers up. Yeah, but you get an idea. They put out way too many presale authorizations for as many tickets as they had.
That was their negligence, and they failed to admit it. Okay. And when you say they are you, ticket Master slash Live Nation. Got it. Why? Why did all these little girls get these codes and get in there and then there's no tickets in there on waiting line for 12 hours and there's no tickets and it's all sold out.
So it's even, it's just basic inventory management. When you're looking at it, negligence, they did, yes. Gross negligence, but, okay. But that's going back to the regular concert now, you know. Now the between the first show and the second show for Chris Brown, the first show sold out instantaneously. The promoter raised the prices about 10% for the second show.
Okay, a second show is more expensive, it's gonna sell slower, but all these moves have an impact upon supply and demand. Mm-hmm. And from what I can see, this show looks pretty much on the up and up. Most of the seats were there. Most of the seats, majority of the seats were released. You see every other row or some hold seats.
But as a general rule, you could buy seats in every section on the main floor, everywhere. Of course, they're scalping their own, it's, they have hugely inflated prices. I'm selling my tickets for 200 to two 50. They're selling their tickets for 300 to seven on. Okay. And I'm a helper.
Yeah, no, you're brokers.
So let's clarify something there. So you are buying from the primary yourself, correct? You are. You might have a few accounts that you do this. You've been doing this for a number of years, right? I have people in my network. My relatives, my friends, the people that work for me, they all own one account. Got it.
You buy tickets just like anybody else? Correct. And then, then when you go, you have an existing base of clients that you've known for decades at this point, from what I gather, who depend on you to get them tickets for certain shows. How does that work? Because what I'm getting at essentially is how do you figure out how to price the ticket?
Because I think that's where people get really upset and I think. Creates the discrepancy around demand. And supplying that. Take your travel distribution business to the next level by connecting to victory. Live the platform with billions of dollars in professional sports, live events and theater inventory, including iconic Broadway productions, Las Vegas spectaculars and global entertainment experiences from chart topping concerts to the world's biggest festivals like Coachella and Tomorrowland.
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How I price my tickets, I try to price them to make a reasonable profit, but understand that I'm also in competition with not only the promoter and what's in the primary market. And what they're selling at a premium in the prime line market. I'm also in competition with the secondary market and while these politicians are out here claiming falsely claiming that the bots are charging four to 500%, I'm gonna suggest to you.
In the real world, it might just be the opposite. I'm the broker and I'm complaining. You know what I'm complaining about? I'm complaining about the prices being too low. I'm gonna tell you why they're too low. Because you have a whole crew of people out there that have these credit cards that get them too, or three points back, or they get them miles with hotels with.
Status on airlines, and they buy these tickets when they go on sale and they sell them at basically cost or one or two points above cost. And if it's a popular show where they know that it's gonna sell out, they buy 50 or a hundred or 150 seats or however many, just like what Kid Rock says, it's not bots.
People and they put 'em up just to get their points. If they run a hundred thousand through the points, they got three, two, or three free airplane tickets. So they don't, every day they get two or three free airplane tickets in a free hotel in Fiji for a week, and they just put the money through. I'm complaining about that now.
That's good for the consumer. That's great for the consumer. But the consumer needs to get up on that the day they go on sale or the day after they go on sale. 'cause these guys want their money back in two days. Right. Or three days. 'cause they wanna go for the next on sale and they only have a limited bank roll and they're only doing it for the mile.
Wow. So there are bargains out there in the marketplace. It's all supplying to ma'am. So to suggest that. All of these places mark up their tickets to exorbitant prices. We wouldn't sell them if that's what we did, because we have competition from both sides.
Got
it. So
because of what you've done for a long time, Joel, you're also an expert in ticket fraud, from what I understand to get what fraud.
So you fraud? Yeah. I'm an expert on ticket raw. I know you're buying tickets just like anybody else. You are affected by the primary pricing. You are marking it up, but you're, you have a ton of competition. And then on top of that, you have to deal with the same stuff. You have to deal with. What most bands will say is their main issue is understanding through a secondary or a broker if it's a legitimate ticket.
And so what are some of the things that you have seen kind of evolve over the past few decades of this, and then what are some of the tactics you can share with fans to say, listen, you've got your tickets, this is how you can verify it. I enjoy it. I got,
lemme give you three basic tips on fraud and then we'll move on so we don't, yeah.
Gonna meet somebody or buy tickets from somebody. You should try to meet them in person. You should. Definitely talk to them over the phone. Do not text, do not email. You must talk to them on the phone. Do not use Venmo. Zelle. Or any other alternate means, use cash in person or use a credit card or you can charge back to the bank.
The other question you asked related to that was, how do I price the tickets? Is that understand? Oh, understanding the understanding how it's changed. Yes. So here's how it's changed over the course of time. When I, when you come to me and I'm a ticket broker and I, you buy the ticket for me, I give you a 200% money back guarantee.
I need to let all the people out there know that I'm not gonna call. They're calling this the brokers and the Scalpers. Frauds. I'm gonna call out the industry on being frauds because when I bought tickets for the college football playoff whose quote unquote the verified ticket fan verified fans verified tickets.
I put the order in with the verified ticket for my customer, and two hours before the game, they came back and said, oh, I'm sorry Mr. Schwartz. We, that ticket, the gentleman didn't get row one in the club. He got general admission behind the last road. You want that one? I just want this. You can buy it online and fill the order for me.
No, we can't do that. We don't do that for you, and you're out on your own. Here's your money back. So I had to go buy the ticket. This is also something that President Trump was talking about speculative tickets. You really have no idea whether you're buying speculative tickets or not. Whether they really do exist or not, you don't know.
I don't know. Could look at the delivery date on the seat and find out from that. However. Be aware, buyer beware that when you buy a ticket from these places online, you're only getting a 100% money back guarantee. It's nothing. It's you're putting an order in and if they decide to fill it, they fill it. If they don't, they just give you your money back.
(01:46):
What kind of guarantee is that? I wanna read you something, please. From the Coalition of Ticket Fairness. Okay. We were there. They put out a statement and I think that this paragraph really sets it out. What's going on there? They applaud me, and I'll tell you what I'm quoting. They applauded the work.
They're in support of FTC coming down on bot sales, but I quote them Exclusive ticketing contracts continue to stifle competition, limit fan choice, and force consumers to buy from a single provider. These restrictive agreements reduce market transparency, drive up hidden fees that impose resale limitations that harm consumers.
A fair system should empower fans, not corporate. Monopoly transparency is a fundamental to a fair ticketing marketplace. Fans deserve full disclosure of fees, ticket availability, and resale policies before making a purchase. A competitive, open resale market is already saved. Fans $475 million since 2017.
Providing that choice and transparency directly benefit consumers, unquote. Okay. Let me break that down for you. Yeah. In, in, in language, forget about the fact that we've saved 475 million from having ticket brokers here, and I can't tell you how many hundreds of millions. The promoters have fleed the customers.
What I can tell you is that there's an overabundant to the point of illegality, in my opinion, of these quote unquote exclusive ticketing contracts, and what are exclusive ticketing contracts? That's where 18 or a venue, most likely 18, and or the artist employ a person to be their quote unquote. I'll tell you personal scalper, they're scalping their own tickets and when you attempt to buy the tickets from the team, they explain to you that they can't sell them to you as a ticket broker because they have a contract.
With another broker that prohibits them from selling too many tickets because they wouldn't want the prices to go too low. That's the reason why they come with this fancy language stifling competition, forcing consumers to buy from a single person. Restrictive agreements. This stuff is quote unquote illegal.
It can aspires to fix the supply of tickets, to manipulate the price. Illegal let the attorney Generals chomp on that for a little
bit. Okay. Wouldn't these people or organizations that are, that have these agreements with the rights holder, so teams, leagues, venues, artists, promoter, they would effectively be the.
Caveat because they paid for the rights. So I think that's what where people don't understand is that they've come in and handed them a check and said, I get the rights to distribute. And you get some say in how we're gonna price that, but I get the rights to distribute and sell this on your behalf. And if I'm a, let's say the owner of the Detroit Pistons, that's a burden in the had.
That's that I don't have to worry
about. That's a fantastic thing. That's a fantastic thing. Yes. Then leads to the beginning of that second paragraph where I read before transparency. Okay? So I don't have a problem if you own the team and you wanna go get yourself an exclusive contract. But you need to be transparent with the tickets.
You can't have a sold out Lions stadium that you claim is sold out, but yet you're holding back thousands and thousands of tickets and you drip price them out there every week and you put 16 tickets out for and every section to make people believe those are the last 16 seats in the arena. And then when they sell yesterday, 'cause I bought eight of 'em.
Then tomorrow you put another four, another eight up in their place and you offer them for a different price, more or less, based upon supply and demand. So I don't get a true picture of how many seats. I'm led to believe that it's almost sold out, and that's why I should be paying 10 times the price.
From the team when in, in actuality, if I saw the fact that they act 4,000 seats for the Pistons in that section, I probably wouldn't buy the seat until the night of the game. Wow. So they're mis misleading me. They would, I would force them into making a sale. It leads to my, it leads to my, I, I think I told you this when I met you.
Yeah. It leads to that story about even my Pistons, they had three tickets at $40 in the lower level. Okay. And they were in the old arena, and they got 120, they moved to the new arena. And they raise the price to 140 and they sell one ticket. So they raise revenues from one 20 to one 40. The salesman goes into the VP's offices.
Guess what? Boss? We raise revenues from 120 to 140 last year. He says, good job, junior. Go sell some more tickets. Forgot to tell his boss that they lost two outta three of their customers. And so now the same thing happened this year at the Super Bowl. For the first time in, I've been, I did 35. Straight Super Bowls.
Okay? I didn't go in, but my folks that went into me, there were a plethora of empty seats on the 50 yard line at the top of the stadium in rows 45 to row 47, which you barely can't see because on location sold them all for 7,500, and by the time they got around to those rows, they were only worth 2000.
And they didn't wanna discount them. They had already made eight times their money, and so they just left them empty. When there would've been people that would've filled up, but that would've ruined their market, that would've brought down the prices, and that would've allowed the consumers to really get the seats at a more favorable price.
But instead, they've created a false scarcity to charge 10,000 for Super Bowl tickets when they were only really worth 3000, but we're the bad guys. That sounds very truthful. And so that's, that's how it works, right? Problem. Here's the problem. When we talk about the bots piling up all the tickets, we already said, we already know.
That's not true. That what's dealing with the concerts, the issuer are basically this. They have artists holdbacks. Large portion of the tickets are never put available to the face value. That's the first thing. Dynamic or surge pricing. When they see the tickets are selling very fast, they raise the price often in the middle of the sale, I'll have a note that says, congratulations.
The ticket price that you bought has changed since you pushed the button. Please check the price to make sure you're okay with. And so dynamic pricing, they have tickets that, the best ones, they price 'em two or three times higher and transfer restrictions. That they put transfer restrictions on these tickets so that you can transfer them at all, which is illegal in five or six states, or that we're going to limit transfer until 72 hours before the show, right?
(02:07):
So we can help restrict resale of these tickets to real fans. I really would like to know what the difference between a real fan is and a fake fan. What is the difference between that you think? I think if it's who gets the money at the end, give it to a ticket broker, then you're just a fake fan. Wow.
But he really, we need to, I, I don't really know what President Trump talks about when he calls, when he's talking about ticket scalping, middlemen.
And that's part of the reason why I have these segments here, because I think there needs to be just more awareness in general of how this all works. And so they're trying to demonize a broker or scalper, whatever they wanna call them, but.
As I've found in my research is that it's a necessary part of the process because the Detroit Pistons were pretty horrible for a little while there, and if it didn't, they didn't have brokers pre-buying or selling these tickets on their behalf. There'd be a lot of empty seats on television. There'd be a lot of empty seats in general that didn't support the team as an entertainment venue, right?
You got a number of people who are working there, and so I don't think people understand that when they. Broadly, say it's a scalper or broker, they don't understand the benefit to that particular rights holder.
I wanna go over the benefits of buying from a ticket broker. How about that? Yeah, I'd love to hear that.
I think that's a really good thing for people to know. So we've already talked about some of these quote unquote middlemen sites that mark up the seats and that are deceptive with no guarantee. What do you get when you buy from a ticket broke? You get to talk to a live human being. Get to know what the price is all in on the phone before you make the purchase, before you give him the credit card, before you give him the email.
Often the ticket broker has insight into the venue going to, maybe he's been in that venue before, maybe he's been to the Super Bowl before in that venue. Maybe he knows the difference between. Sitting in the club section and sitting across the aisle, not in the club section. Maybe he knows the difference to the fact that row 10 is at one price and row 11 is at another price and saves you a hundred dollars a ticket by moving back one row.
Promoter would never tell you that he would encourage you to buy the 10th row that's available. Of course, right? Yeah. Why not? The ticket broker often has access to tickets with extra perks, whether it be free meals and free liquor or free parking. Most of these perks don't come along online when you buy them, right?
A person who owns them keeps them or waste them because there's no efficient way to attach them and or advertise them without difficulty to the end consumer. So we bring value like that. And then I guess most important, I give you the 200% money back guarantee if you were to buy it from me. Yep. And I beat any price that's online.
So if you go to a live human being broker, not only do you know you're getting good title to the tickets, but you say, Hey dude, I saw it up here on Stub for $450 and I want you to beat the price. Well, I can tell you that about 98 times out of a hundred. When they tell me that they saw the ticket for $450 online, first thing I say to them is impossible.
The second thing I do is take them and maneuver them through the maze of filters that they have, and I suggest they unclick the one that says recommended tickets. 'cause that's just suggesting that you buy them more expensive tickets and then click them to the one where it says Price display options.
And then you have to scroll down again and then put the price that says, show the tickets with all the fees. And I'll tell you what, that $450 ticket says it's about that 600 bucks. 600 me. I says, so I'll beat the price, but the price isn't four 50. And I think that's the next big thing people need to get in their mind is that when they see these prices on these websites, until they can get the all in pricing, don't believe it and don't put your information in there because they're gonna send you emails for the rest of your natural life.
Call a ticket broker and get the real deal and support your local economy and call your local ticket broker 'cause he, bo, likely has seats in your neck, in the woods. And if not, a reputable ticket broker like myself can get tickets anywhere in the world for you. And being anybody's price. We have bulletin boards, we have good title.
We give refunds if the events are canceled. Really honest ticket brokers and not degrade them and not put lies and falsehoods on them. We're as much for the fans and the artists as everybody else, and we know that the artists are getting, they're getting shafted as a result of what they've. Of what they've done, and I don't have to speak for it.
They, they're under investigation. Ticket Master Live Nation is under investigation by the Department of Justice, so I need to speak no further until they pass outta there. And that's been taken up by the current administration as well. Yeah,
I, I was actually expecting a better update at CTF about the status of that
particular lawsuit.
It's not really a lawsuit like they have to go and gather information. They have to do their homework. They have to get all the parties, they have to find out who's the bad, who the bad guys are. It's really hard when the bad guy is pointing his finger like in opposite directions at the wrong people.
He's saying, oh, you're the bad guy. The bots are the bad guy. Oh, the scalpers are the bad guy. They're all the bad guys. Not us. We're we're angels. Okay, so maybe we should look at the people that are pointing their finger at other people. To say who are really the bad guys here, because at the end of the day, I don't have hidden fees.
I don't have speculative tickets, I don't have misleading URL. I'm not conspiring to fix the supply of tickets. I'm not having dynamic search pricing and transfer restrictions. Who do these things really benefit all of these things? Do they really benefit the fan that you're looking out for? I think not, and I think that the overwhelming majority of people, I forget how Brian phrased this question, but I believe the overwhelming majority of people believe that when they buy a ticket.
(02:28):
Then it's their ticket and they should be able to do with it and give it to who they want. I don't think that they're happy with somebody telling 'em when they can have it or how they can get it, or where they have to use it, or what time they have to show up to the box office at to get in. If I wanna come at halftime, that's my business.
Why do you tell me what I need to do? That's not, but it's a license, a revocable license, until they resolve that issue. I think that. You're still gonna see some draconian measures being put in place to try to restrict the resale of tickets. Ask yourself the question, when you see that move next time, what is it really?
What does this really mean? What is it really designed for? Is it what they say it's for? Or is it really just to charge me more money and to and control the market?
Do you think the all in pricing piece that is also part of this exec executive order that's gonna go nationwide, I think in May. That will help the business overall.
I've heard a couple of people say they've done in California, they did in New York, and it actually didn't stop anything. People just paid the higher prices. 'cause there's so much demand against some of these events. And do you see it hampering anything? 'cause apparently that's supposed to help consumers.
It will level
the playing field between the haves and the have nots. So when I say this to you, who are the haves and who are the have nots? I think the haves control 80% of the market on the resale market. Okay. I think that the bottom guys, all these other places that I can probably name, they make up the bottom 20% and they're growing.
So at the end of the day, that 50 or 60% of market share is like a puzzle, man. It's like a 20 piece puzzle. Look at the price.
Thank you for your time, Joel. So that's a wrap on one of the more eye-opening episodes we've done yet. Big thanks to Joel Swartz, attorney, longtime ticket broker, and passionate advocate for ticket fairness.
Now, let's be clear. The views expressed in this episode are Joels, and they come from decades of firsthand experience in the trenches of live event ticketing. You may agree, you may not, but what's undeniable is that his perspective adds depth to an industry often painted in black and white. Here are a few takeaways.
First, the ticket is the driver. It's often the biggest line item in a fan travel budget. And the spark behind hotel stays, flights, and unforgettable weekends for travel pros and event planners. Ignoring that connection means missing real demand. Second, Joel challenged the common narratives around bots, brokers, and ticket platforms.
According to him, the problem isn't rogue actors. It's a lack of consistent standards around how inventory is distributed, priced, and disclosed. Third. His stories from Lions Games in the seventies to Super Bowl pricing in the 2020s. Paint a picture of an evolving, imperfect system where supply, demand and access don't always align in favor of the fan.
And of course, he had some advice for the average fan. Know who you're buying from, ask questions, and don't assume the first price you see is the final one. If you are ever buying from a broker, make sure they back it up with a real guarantee and a real person you can talk to. Whether you agree with everything Joel said or not.
We hope this episode helped you see the ticketing ecosystem a little more clearly, especially if you're in travel, live events, or just trying to score a seat to the next big show. Thanks for listening to Tickets to Travel. Follow us on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube at Tick two Travel Pod. And remember, every unforgettable experience starts with a ticket, and every ticket is a ticket to travel.
We'll see you on the next one. Attention travel and ticketing innovators. Whether you're a startup disrupting the industry, or an established company ready to take your distribution strategy to the next level. Expo Travel is your ultimate partner in online travel and ticketing distribution. We specialize in helping businesses of all sizes optimize their operations.
Ban their reach and unlock new revenue streams. And for startups looking to grow, we partnered with Top Venture Capital syndicates to help you secure the funding you need to turn bold ideas into thriving businesses. From refining businesses to scaling operations and raising capital. Expo travels here to drive your success.
Visit Expo Travel today. That's ex. PO travel.com for a consultation and let's transform the way the world travels. One innovation at a time. Expo travel because the future of travel and ticketing starts with you.
Welcome back to Tickets to Travel, the Business of Travel Experiences. I'm your host, Mario Bwin, and today we're digging into one of the most talked about and frankly, misunderstood topics in the world of live events ticket reselling. Unless you've been hiding under a rock or behind a very expensive VIP package, you've probably seen the viral clips of Donald Trump flank by Kid Rock standing in the Oval Office to announce an executive order to protect fans from ticket scalpers and bots.
(00:01):
Yes, you heard that right? A presidential ticketing policy delivered with the subtlety of a kid rock encore. According to the press conference, bots and unscrupulous middlemen are to blame for jacked up ticket prices, inaccessible concerts, and fans getting gouged at the checkout. And while it made for some good sound bites, we wanted to get the truth, the whole truth from someone.
Who actually understands this ecosystem from the inside. So today we're joined by Joel Schwartz, a ticketing industry veteran who's been selling tickets for nearly 50 years, a founding member of the National Association of Ticket Brokers, and widely regarded as one of the foremost legal authorities on ticketing law in the United States.
Joel doesn't just break down what the executive order really means. He calls out what's true, what's political theater, and what's just flat out wrong from bots and broker myths to exclusive ticketing contracts. Dynamic pricing, and the surge of Holdbacks Joel helps us see how the ticket drives the entire travel experience and how fans are often left in the dark.
So whether you're a travel pro trying to package event experiences. Or a fan wondering why your a hundred dollars ticket turns into $300 by checkout. This episode may give you a little clarity, a few laughs, and probably a little fire in your belly. As always, follow us on all the socials at Tick two, the number two Travel Pod, and subscribe wherever you get your podcast because tickets to Travel starts now.
Welcome to Tickets to Travel, the Business of Travel Experiences. I'm your host, Mario Bwy, and today. We have Joel Schwartz. Joel, welcome to the pod. Thank you, Mario. Pleasure. Pleasure. Being here with you. Do you remember the first ticket you ever sold? What event and when? It was always a good one. I'm telling you
the first ticket, I was probably a Detroit Lions ticket in 1974.
Whoa. We're 75. And so my father was a season ticket older. He had me sell the tickets on the street. But I think the, when I think back to those days, and you asked me that question, and I think to 19 74, 19 75 was my first ticket that I sold. My first ticket that I bought to a concert was at the Silver Dome for Elvis Presley on New Year's Eve.
Come on, really? Right after I bought her, sold my first ticket, yes. I went to see New Year's Eve. I sold Elvis Presley. I was 14 or 15 at the time. My cousin drove me, and it was at the Pontiac Silver Dome, Elvis Presley. You can look it up. I believe it was 75, and I believe he died in 76. Right? It's right before, as if I saw him.
That was like my first concert ever. So I didn't sell concerts to Elvis Presley. Wish I could answer, but that was my first concert that I ever went to.
You sold the Lion's ticket to get the money to go to that concert, so just because that's, I was born in 1974, it blows my mind a little bit. What was the concert experience like to see Elvis?
Were you close?
No. What you're, who open for it? Watching? We're watching a concert in a football stadium. Okay. And I don't think that our seats were necessarily the best seats. They were somewhere in the house. I just remember an overweight guy up there, gyrating on stage, and a lot of girls screaming and making a lot of noise.
Right. I thought the music was pretty good. I didn't. I heard some of the music. If you grew up in that era, even in the early seventies. Elvis was from the fifties and the sixties to all these songs that you never really thought about, but those were Elvis Presley songs. So yeah, I had a great time. I thank my cousin and all his older friends for driving me there.
Yeah,
no, 'cause that would've been a throwback for you at that point. 'cause you're right, he was in the fifties and sixties. So then Joel, when did you figure out that this was gonna be the business for you?
Like the second weekend that I sold those Lions ticket, the first weekend I went out there, the tickets were $10 on the face.
Wow. First weekend I went out there and I sold them to the guys on the street for $5. I had like 10 tickets. I got 50 bucks. I went to the game. I was happy. I gave my dad the money, gave me half. Okay. I said, those guys bought those tickets too easily for $5. So the next week I went out there and I said, you know what?
The tickets are $10 this week. But we don't want 'em for $10. So I sold 'em, the people on the street for $10. Okay. So I know I got a hundred dollars back. Apples to apples my dad didn't have. Third weekend, I went out there, I said, you know what? Lemme sell these tickets, but this is pretty good. I can buy for five and I can sell for 10 or 15.
So one of us was down on the ramp, below the freeway where overpass was. We had assigned buying tickets for the $5, four for 20. Yeah. And then we would run 'em upstairs. So the guy on the overpass, and he would sell 'em to the people walking to the game for 10 or 15 afterwards, and we would split all the money up.
Amazing. And I figured that out at 15. It didn't take me long. And then when I got to University of Michigan, I started selling tickets outta my dorm room and we were selling hundreds of machine Ohio State
tickets right out. Oh man. How did that work back, how did you get ticket access in college for that?
(00:22):
Back in that, back in those days, that was
so easy. That was like taking candy from a be in there. I paid $10 for a sheet of a sheet of advertisement, says buying and selling Michigan football tickets. And I got a staple gun. And in those days the light posts were made outta wood. Today they're made out of aluminum.
Okay? And we just went to every post and stapled up with a little, with the little tabs on the bottom that you could rip off with your phone number. But we didn't put the phone number in the dorm room on there 'cause it was always busy. We put the pager number on there. So they would page us and then we would call 'em back.
We didn't have cell phones. We'd call 'em back from the dorm room, but they could page it, they would call so that students bought 'em for half price and we were buying, buying 'em for six and selling 'em for 12. And then we would buy the Ohio States for maybe, I don't know, 15, $20, $25. We would sell 'em for 75 or a hundred.
Wow. From the dorm room. Ama. It was just in your blood,
man,
you're supposed to do this. I didn't take any of those classes at the Michigan Business School.
I already knew marketing and sales, supply and demand, and I
got it all, man.
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Visit books.com today and make your next sports trip unforgettable. Seats your all access pass to the ultimate sports travel experience. It was very timely. We were in a conversation back at the CTFA few weeks back, and then a bunch of things happened, like it's evolved after those conversations about Donald Trump and Kid Rock and all these different things that hit the media.
I think maybe the week after we, we saw each other. Can you walk us through a bit of what they're talking about? To anybody who doesn't really understand ticket reselling, can you give us just a, a high level what that is?
Sure. So President Trump and Kid Rock, I believe it was April 1st, met in the Oval Office and Donald Trump came with an executive.
Order in regards to tickety and President Trump said that there, he signed this order to call to crack down to what he calls unscrupulous middlemen. We can get to that in a second. What those, what or who? Those are in the live ticketing industry and they wanna crack. It's gonna crack down an exploitive ticket.
Scalping and improve transparency for customers. So it sounds really good on the surface, but the gentleman that handed Trump the executive order, he claimed I listened to the audio. He claimed that bots jack up prices and don't allow fans to have access to the tickets. Kid Rock also said that bots get all the good tickets, means I guess, that the promoters don't hold any of the good tickets back.
For their people or their holdbacks, they all go to the to the bots and we know that's not true. Now, the what it's gonna really do is it's gonna have the FTC and the DOJ have a little bit more oversight along with the state attorney generals to enforce the Bots Act. You can't use bots to buy tickets.
Everybody's in agreement with this. We don't disagree with that. We just disagree with the fact that the bots buy up all the tickets. Uh, and I think that's where the discrepancy is. They also touted that the total economic impact from the live and concert and entertainment industry is 132 billion, with 913,000 jobs attached to it.
Got, it's a pretty big segment of our relatively big segment of our economy. So what that did is it basically just, it's going, he was just really reiterating what President Biden had put into effect a few months early. The FTC already filed some rules that are gonna become law in regards to price transparency.
We need all in pricing. Biden's already put that into place, right? Stronger enforcement of the bots Act, which was what President Trump asked for price transparency. And better rules regarding ticket disclosure. These all were gonna pass in December until they were yanked in, in, in lie of the continuing resolution.
So that's a basic oversight of what it is we can go into in-depth on any of those things. Got it. Essentially,
(00:43):
this is. A fan forward executive order. There's a lot of challenges in one, the language that's used. There's an association of bots squeezing out tickets from other fans or regular paying fans, and that gets associated to brokers or what they call scalpers.
Just to unwind a little bit here, Joel, what is your definition of a broker and. How do you think this has been portrayed, I guess over the last, I don't know, decade with the past administration or just things that have happened in the culture of Taylor Swift and Beyonce? So what's your take on being a ticket broker?
Having been a ticket broker for almost 50 years, it's changed quite a lot along the way. As I was on the board of directors for the National Association of Ticket Brokers. For 25 years, I'm a founding member of the NATB. So while I consider myself a ticket broker, I'm also a ticket seller. 'cause I think the lines between the primary and the secondary have blurred over the years.
I am a guy who just helps people get tickets and helps them navigate this really rough landscape that we're in with a lot of potholes. I, I'm an attorney at law, so I'm one of the foremost experts on ticket law in the country and have lobbied both state on a statewide and federal level for ticket fairness.
Really, that's what I want. Is, I want ticket fairness. I want the truth to be told. And I don't think we're getting the whole truth here. So what is the truth?
You, you talk to a primary ticketing company, you talk to various fans. There seems to be some stigma, as I alluded to earlier, around being a ticket broker or ticket seller.
And so you mentioned that it has changed, but what specifically has changed in that? How has the the reputation been tarnished for. Ticket to
resellers. I think back when I started, everything was underground. Everything was illegal. We were the one of the last states here in Michigan to make ticket brokering legal for.
Long period of time it was illegal, and I'm the guy who created the membership clubs that all these professional teams now use in their practice. I'm the guy that invented that to get around our resale laws, and now they're using that same tactic against ticket brokers and fans. In the marketplace. I guess to answer your question more specifically, I really believe that it's come full circle because in the old days we were, we were undercover and we worked for so long to build our reputation and to govern ourselves.
We started the National Association of Ticket Brokers in order to evade regulation from the federal government and modeled ourselves much the same way as certified public accountants. Ah, self-regulate and make sure that we take all the bad apples out of the barrel, as many as we can find to preserve our reputation and prevent us from being regulated in a way that would not be beneficial to us or.
The consumers. I think now that the primary market has been battling the secondary for so long, they see how much money is to be made. They've all joined up in the secondary market, and now that's ironic because now in many legislatures, they're advocating for the laws for them to be legal, but with restrictive covenants in place that seem innocuous or seem harmless.
But on further insight, our. Very detrimental to the ticket ecosphere and to the fair allocation of tickets, if that's really
what you're looking for. I think that's where the truth or the discrepancy lies is really the, the, the communication that is put out by primary ticketing.
They're coming around and they're bashing us again and making us look like the bad guys, and we're not the bad guys.
I have just as many or more customers as you have listeners. Yeah, and they're my friends and they're my associates and I want to take care of them. I'm now looking to stick it to them for, it's just, it's a joke. Everything that this guy Kid Rock said, I wrote it all down. I listened to it. It's all lies.
He said that the only thing that he said that was read truthful. Was that the ticket situation is in a conundrum and I looked up the definition of conundrum and it said confusing or difficult problem, which I agree with, but yes, yes, no. The second definition is a question asked for amusement. Isn't that ironic?
So he claims that we mark up the tickets, 400 to 500% false claim as that the bots get all the good tickets, falls. Claims that artists don't see any of that money. It's true they don't see any of the broker's money, but they see all the money from all the tickets. They, they set the prices right? They set the prices in the fee, and he admits by his own admission he admits to being a little overpaid, a little.
She said, thank
you kid
Rock.
But I think this is all, it's a bit political. It's, Hey, we're fan forward. We're making it easier. We wanna side with the fans, we want them to feel good. And I think what comes about is really what's brought this to the surface over the last few years is Taylor Swift. So I think what people are trying to figure out is that why can't they get a cheap ticket for Taylor Swift?
(01:04):
So I think that's a podcast discussion in and of itself. Yes, I think that you need to look, put Taylor Swift. Like all the way to the side and just have a discussion about that because that's a whole ecosphere in and of itself that we've never seen anything like that in the entertainment industry. And it would be unfair to compare anything else to that Fair boy, but like that is what has not, right, and that's what.
All this attention, right? The
kind of fraud and abuse that was evolved and that we can go into another time is just tremendous. It happened to me, touch me personally, and it happened to many other people that I know. Let's just talk about the average concert, the everything. That's what I was gonna say.
Let's unpack it to a regular concert. What is something that's current that you guys are selling that is, that's a good example of how we can explain how this ecosystem works.
Let's just take the show of the day, Chris Brown. Okay. Okay. Yeah. So Chris Brown had a presale last week for Mini one show in each town came, I only did my town, Detroit.
And the show came and it asked you to pre-register. For the tickets. So I pre-registered, I could get up to three venues. Okay. Yeah. The show went on sale last week and I bought my seat for that show for the three shows that were, that I did the presale for the next. It was very hard to get in, very hard.
It was 10 or 15,000 people outta me, but I got in. Wow. But you couldn't get in unless you signed up previously The next day, and this just happened yesterday. It happened twice. The next day, they put the tickets on sale on a presale to the Lions fans and or the Ford Field fans, and then the next day they put seats on sale to the general public.
By the time they got to the general public, there was pretty much nothing left. Ah, okay. So now they put a second show on sale for the night before and they Same procedure last week was the pre-sale registration. Yesterday was Monday I got, or yesterday was Thursday, Tuesday the pre-sale Our Tuesday? Or we Wednesday The presale went Thursday.
The presales going for the Lions and the Ford Field fans. In Friday, it's gonna be for the general fans again. Now there probably will be more tickets left for this one, because it's the second show. But the reason why the average fan can't give tickets is because these, in, in terms of the concert industry, is they have promotional deals with American Express, with Citibank, with cash app, with the venue, with gambling, uh, venues.
So
there's a number of sponsorship deals that come into Way Correct. Which Correct. They strategically release tickets, ticket allocations to the sponsors depending on how much they've paid.
That sort of happened. Go back to Taylor Swift. That sort of happened in Taylor Swift. They put a presale out. They had it in the stadium.
They knew that there were 60,000 fans, and they let. 30,000 girls register for four tickets a piece. Right? Based on the fact that they normally don't sell that many tickets. And that's how so many of those little girls, I'm just making the numbers up. Yeah, but you get an idea. They put out way too many presale authorizations for as many tickets as they had.
That was their negligence, and they failed to admit it. Okay. And when you say they are you, ticket Master slash Live Nation. Got it. Why? Why did all these little girls get these codes and get in there and then there's no tickets in there on waiting line for 12 hours and there's no tickets and it's all sold out.
So it's even, it's just basic inventory management. When you're looking at it, negligence, they did, yes. Gross negligence, but, okay. But that's going back to the regular concert now, you know. Now the between the first show and the second show for Chris Brown, the first show sold out instantaneously. The promoter raised the prices about 10% for the second show.
Okay, a second show is more expensive, it's gonna sell slower, but all these moves have an impact upon supply and demand. Mm-hmm. And from what I can see, this show looks pretty much on the up and up. Most of the seats were there. Most of the seats, majority of the seats were released. You see every other row or some hold seats.
But as a general rule, you could buy seats in every section on the main floor, everywhere. Of course, they're scalping their own, it's, they have hugely inflated prices. I'm selling my tickets for 200 to two 50. They're selling their tickets for 300 to seven on. Okay. And I'm a helper.
Yeah, no, you're brokers.
So let's clarify something there. So you are buying from the primary yourself, correct? You are. You might have a few accounts that you do this. You've been doing this for a number of years, right? I have people in my network. My relatives, my friends, the people that work for me, they all own one account. Got it.
You buy tickets just like anybody else? Correct. And then, then when you go, you have an existing base of clients that you've known for decades at this point, from what I gather, who depend on you to get them tickets for certain shows. How does that work? Because what I'm getting at essentially is how do you figure out how to price the ticket?
Because I think that's where people get really upset and I think. Creates the discrepancy around demand. And supplying that. Take your travel distribution business to the next level by connecting to victory. Live the platform with billions of dollars in professional sports, live events and theater inventory, including iconic Broadway productions, Las Vegas spectaculars and global entertainment experiences from chart topping concerts to the world's biggest festivals like Coachella and Tomorrowland.
(01:25):
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How I price my tickets, I try to price them to make a reasonable profit, but understand that I'm also in competition with not only the promoter and what's in the primary market. And what they're selling at a premium in the prime line market. I'm also in competition with the secondary market and while these politicians are out here claiming falsely claiming that the bots are charging four to 500%, I'm gonna suggest to you.
In the real world, it might just be the opposite. I'm the broker and I'm complaining. You know what I'm complaining about? I'm complaining about the prices being too low. I'm gonna tell you why they're too low. Because you have a whole crew of people out there that have these credit cards that get them too, or three points back, or they get them miles with hotels with.
Status on airlines, and they buy these tickets when they go on sale and they sell them at basically cost or one or two points above cost. And if it's a popular show where they know that it's gonna sell out, they buy 50 or a hundred or 150 seats or however many, just like what Kid Rock says, it's not bots.
People and they put 'em up just to get their points. If they run a hundred thousand through the points, they got three, two, or three free airplane tickets. So they don't, every day they get two or three free airplane tickets in a free hotel in Fiji for a week, and they just put the money through. I'm complaining about that now.
That's good for the consumer. That's great for the consumer. But the consumer needs to get up on that the day they go on sale or the day after they go on sale. 'cause these guys want their money back in two days. Right. Or three days. 'cause they wanna go for the next on sale and they only have a limited bank roll and they're only doing it for the mile.
Wow. So there are bargains out there in the marketplace. It's all supplying to ma'am. So to suggest that. All of these places mark up their tickets to exorbitant prices. We wouldn't sell them if that's what we did, because we have competition from both sides.
Got
it. So
because of what you've done for a long time, Joel, you're also an expert in ticket fraud, from what I understand to get what fraud.
So you fraud? Yeah. I'm an expert on ticket raw. I know you're buying tickets just like anybody else. You are affected by the primary pricing. You are marking it up, but you're, you have a ton of competition. And then on top of that, you have to deal with the same stuff. You have to deal with. What most bands will say is their main issue is understanding through a secondary or a broker if it's a legitimate ticket.
And so what are some of the things that you have seen kind of evolve over the past few decades of this, and then what are some of the tactics you can share with fans to say, listen, you've got your tickets, this is how you can verify it. I enjoy it. I got,
lemme give you three basic tips on fraud and then we'll move on so we don't, yeah.
Gonna meet somebody or buy tickets from somebody. You should try to meet them in person. You should. Definitely talk to them over the phone. Do not text, do not email. You must talk to them on the phone. Do not use Venmo. Zelle. Or any other alternate means, use cash in person or use a credit card or you can charge back to the bank.
The other question you asked related to that was, how do I price the tickets? Is that understand? Oh, understanding the understanding how it's changed. Yes. So here's how it's changed over the course of time. When I, when you come to me and I'm a ticket broker and I, you buy the ticket for me, I give you a 200% money back guarantee.
I need to let all the people out there know that I'm not gonna call. They're calling this the brokers and the Scalpers. Frauds. I'm gonna call out the industry on being frauds because when I bought tickets for the college football playoff whose quote unquote the verified ticket fan verified fans verified tickets.
I put the order in with the verified ticket for my customer, and two hours before the game, they came back and said, oh, I'm sorry Mr. Schwartz. We, that ticket, the gentleman didn't get row one in the club. He got general admission behind the last road. You want that one? I just want this. You can buy it online and fill the order for me.
No, we can't do that. We don't do that for you, and you're out on your own. Here's your money back. So I had to go buy the ticket. This is also something that President Trump was talking about speculative tickets. You really have no idea whether you're buying speculative tickets or not. Whether they really do exist or not, you don't know.
I don't know. Could look at the delivery date on the seat and find out from that. However. Be aware, buyer beware that when you buy a ticket from these places online, you're only getting a 100% money back guarantee. It's nothing. It's you're putting an order in and if they decide to fill it, they fill it. If they don't, they just give you your money back.
(01:46):
What kind of guarantee is that? I wanna read you something, please. From the Coalition of Ticket Fairness. Okay. We were there. They put out a statement and I think that this paragraph really sets it out. What's going on there? They applaud me, and I'll tell you what I'm quoting. They applauded the work.
They're in support of FTC coming down on bot sales, but I quote them Exclusive ticketing contracts continue to stifle competition, limit fan choice, and force consumers to buy from a single provider. These restrictive agreements reduce market transparency, drive up hidden fees that impose resale limitations that harm consumers.
A fair system should empower fans, not corporate. Monopoly transparency is a fundamental to a fair ticketing marketplace. Fans deserve full disclosure of fees, ticket availability, and resale policies before making a purchase. A competitive, open resale market is already saved. Fans $475 million since 2017.
Providing that choice and transparency directly benefit consumers, unquote. Okay. Let me break that down for you. Yeah. In, in, in language, forget about the fact that we've saved 475 million from having ticket brokers here, and I can't tell you how many hundreds of millions. The promoters have fleed the customers.
What I can tell you is that there's an overabundant to the point of illegality, in my opinion, of these quote unquote exclusive ticketing contracts, and what are exclusive ticketing contracts? That's where 18 or a venue, most likely 18, and or the artist employ a person to be their quote unquote. I'll tell you personal scalper, they're scalping their own tickets and when you attempt to buy the tickets from the team, they explain to you that they can't sell them to you as a ticket broker because they have a contract.
With another broker that prohibits them from selling too many tickets because they wouldn't want the prices to go too low. That's the reason why they come with this fancy language stifling competition, forcing consumers to buy from a single person. Restrictive agreements. This stuff is quote unquote illegal.
It can aspires to fix the supply of tickets, to manipulate the price. Illegal let the attorney Generals chomp on that for a little
bit. Okay. Wouldn't these people or organizations that are, that have these agreements with the rights holder, so teams, leagues, venues, artists, promoter, they would effectively be the.
Caveat because they paid for the rights. So I think that's what where people don't understand is that they've come in and handed them a check and said, I get the rights to distribute. And you get some say in how we're gonna price that, but I get the rights to distribute and sell this on your behalf. And if I'm a, let's say the owner of the Detroit Pistons, that's a burden in the had.
That's that I don't have to worry
about. That's a fantastic thing. That's a fantastic thing. Yes. Then leads to the beginning of that second paragraph where I read before transparency. Okay? So I don't have a problem if you own the team and you wanna go get yourself an exclusive contract. But you need to be transparent with the tickets.
You can't have a sold out Lions stadium that you claim is sold out, but yet you're holding back thousands and thousands of tickets and you drip price them out there every week and you put 16 tickets out for and every section to make people believe those are the last 16 seats in the arena. And then when they sell yesterday, 'cause I bought eight of 'em.
Then tomorrow you put another four, another eight up in their place and you offer them for a different price, more or less, based upon supply and demand. So I don't get a true picture of how many seats. I'm led to believe that it's almost sold out, and that's why I should be paying 10 times the price.
From the team when in, in actuality, if I saw the fact that they act 4,000 seats for the Pistons in that section, I probably wouldn't buy the seat until the night of the game. Wow. So they're mis misleading me. They would, I would force them into making a sale. It leads to my, it leads to my, I, I think I told you this when I met you.
Yeah. It leads to that story about even my Pistons, they had three tickets at $40 in the lower level. Okay. And they were in the old arena, and they got 120, they moved to the new arena. And they raise the price to 140 and they sell one ticket. So they raise revenues from one 20 to one 40. The salesman goes into the VP's offices.
Guess what? Boss? We raise revenues from 120 to 140 last year. He says, good job, junior. Go sell some more tickets. Forgot to tell his boss that they lost two outta three of their customers. And so now the same thing happened this year at the Super Bowl. For the first time in, I've been, I did 35. Straight Super Bowls.
Okay? I didn't go in, but my folks that went into me, there were a plethora of empty seats on the 50 yard line at the top of the stadium in rows 45 to row 47, which you barely can't see because on location sold them all for 7,500, and by the time they got around to those rows, they were only worth 2000.
And they didn't wanna discount them. They had already made eight times their money, and so they just left them empty. When there would've been people that would've filled up, but that would've ruined their market, that would've brought down the prices, and that would've allowed the consumers to really get the seats at a more favorable price.
But instead, they've created a false scarcity to charge 10,000 for Super Bowl tickets when they were only really worth 3000, but we're the bad guys. That sounds very truthful. And so that's, that's how it works, right? Problem. Here's the problem. When we talk about the bots piling up all the tickets, we already said, we already know.
That's not true. That what's dealing with the concerts, the issuer are basically this. They have artists holdbacks. Large portion of the tickets are never put available to the face value. That's the first thing. Dynamic or surge pricing. When they see the tickets are selling very fast, they raise the price often in the middle of the sale, I'll have a note that says, congratulations.
The ticket price that you bought has changed since you pushed the button. Please check the price to make sure you're okay with. And so dynamic pricing, they have tickets that, the best ones, they price 'em two or three times higher and transfer restrictions. That they put transfer restrictions on these tickets so that you can transfer them at all, which is illegal in five or six states, or that we're going to limit transfer until 72 hours before the show, right?
(02:07):
So we can help restrict resale of these tickets to real fans. I really would like to know what the difference between a real fan is and a fake fan. What is the difference between that you think? I think if it's who gets the money at the end, give it to a ticket broker, then you're just a fake fan. Wow.
But he really, we need to, I, I don't really know what President Trump talks about when he calls, when he's talking about ticket scalping, middlemen.
And that's part of the reason why I have these segments here, because I think there needs to be just more awareness in general of how this all works. And so they're trying to demonize a broker or scalper, whatever they wanna call them, but.
As I've found in my research is that it's a necessary part of the process because the Detroit Pistons were pretty horrible for a little while there, and if it didn't, they didn't have brokers pre-buying or selling these tickets on their behalf. There'd be a lot of empty seats on television. There'd be a lot of empty seats in general that didn't support the team as an entertainment venue, right?
You got a number of people who are working there, and so I don't think people understand that when they. Broadly, say it's a scalper or broker, they don't understand the benefit to that particular rights holder.
I wanna go over the benefits of buying from a ticket broker. How about that? Yeah, I'd love to hear that.
I think that's a really good thing for people to know. So we've already talked about some of these quote unquote middlemen sites that mark up the seats and that are deceptive with no guarantee. What do you get when you buy from a ticket broke? You get to talk to a live human being. Get to know what the price is all in on the phone before you make the purchase, before you give him the credit card, before you give him the email.
Often the ticket broker has insight into the venue going to, maybe he's been in that venue before, maybe he's been to the Super Bowl before in that venue. Maybe he knows the difference between. Sitting in the club section and sitting across the aisle, not in the club section. Maybe he knows the difference to the fact that row 10 is at one price and row 11 is at another price and saves you a hundred dollars a ticket by moving back one row.
Promoter would never tell you that he would encourage you to buy the 10th row that's available. Of course, right? Yeah. Why not? The ticket broker often has access to tickets with extra perks, whether it be free meals and free liquor or free parking. Most of these perks don't come along online when you buy them, right?
A person who owns them keeps them or waste them because there's no efficient way to attach them and or advertise them without difficulty to the end consumer. So we bring value like that. And then I guess most important, I give you the 200% money back guarantee if you were to buy it from me. Yep. And I beat any price that's online.
So if you go to a live human being broker, not only do you know you're getting good title to the tickets, but you say, Hey dude, I saw it up here on Stub for $450 and I want you to beat the price. Well, I can tell you that about 98 times out of a hundred. When they tell me that they saw the ticket for $450 online, first thing I say to them is impossible.
The second thing I do is take them and maneuver them through the maze of filters that they have, and I suggest they unclick the one that says recommended tickets. 'cause that's just suggesting that you buy them more expensive tickets and then click them to the one where it says Price display options.
And then you have to scroll down again and then put the price that says, show the tickets with all the fees. And I'll tell you what, that $450 ticket says it's about that 600 bucks. 600 me. I says, so I'll beat the price, but the price isn't four 50. And I think that's the next big thing people need to get in their mind is that when they see these prices on these websites, until they can get the all in pricing, don't believe it and don't put your information in there because they're gonna send you emails for the rest of your natural life.
Call a ticket broker and get the real deal and support your local economy and call your local ticket broker 'cause he, bo, likely has seats in your neck, in the woods. And if not, a reputable ticket broker like myself can get tickets anywhere in the world for you. And being anybody's price. We have bulletin boards, we have good title.
We give refunds if the events are canceled. Really honest ticket brokers and not degrade them and not put lies and falsehoods on them. We're as much for the fans and the artists as everybody else, and we know that the artists are getting, they're getting shafted as a result of what they've. Of what they've done, and I don't have to speak for it.
They, they're under investigation. Ticket Master Live Nation is under investigation by the Department of Justice, so I need to speak no further until they pass outta there. And that's been taken up by the current administration as well. Yeah,
I, I was actually expecting a better update at CTF about the status of that
particular lawsuit.
It's not really a lawsuit like they have to go and gather information. They have to do their homework. They have to get all the parties, they have to find out who's the bad, who the bad guys are. It's really hard when the bad guy is pointing his finger like in opposite directions at the wrong people.
He's saying, oh, you're the bad guy. The bots are the bad guy. Oh, the scalpers are the bad guy. They're all the bad guys. Not us. We're we're angels. Okay, so maybe we should look at the people that are pointing their finger at other people. To say who are really the bad guys here, because at the end of the day, I don't have hidden fees.
I don't have speculative tickets, I don't have misleading URL. I'm not conspiring to fix the supply of tickets. I'm not having dynamic search pricing and transfer restrictions. Who do these things really benefit all of these things? Do they really benefit the fan that you're looking out for? I think not, and I think that the overwhelming majority of people, I forget how Brian phrased this question, but I believe the overwhelming majority of people believe that when they buy a ticket.
(02:28):
Then it's their ticket and they should be able to do with it and give it to who they want. I don't think that they're happy with somebody telling 'em when they can have it or how they can get it, or where they have to use it, or what time they have to show up to the box office at to get in. If I wanna come at halftime, that's my business.
Why do you tell me what I need to do? That's not, but it's a license, a revocable license, until they resolve that issue. I think that. You're still gonna see some draconian measures being put in place to try to restrict the resale of tickets. Ask yourself the question, when you see that move next time, what is it really?
What does this really mean? What is it really designed for? Is it what they say it's for? Or is it really just to charge me more money and to and control the market?
Do you think the all in pricing piece that is also part of this exec executive order that's gonna go nationwide, I think in May. That will help the business overall.
I've heard a couple of people say they've done in California, they did in New York, and it actually didn't stop anything. People just paid the higher prices. 'cause there's so much demand against some of these events. And do you see it hampering anything? 'cause apparently that's supposed to help consumers.
It will level
the playing field between the haves and the have nots. So when I say this to you, who are the haves and who are the have nots? I think the haves control 80% of the market on the resale market. Okay. I think that the bottom guys, all these other places that I can probably name, they make up the bottom 20% and they're growing.
So at the end of the day, that 50 or 60% of market share is like a puzzle, man. It's like a 20 piece puzzle. Look at the price.
Thank you for your time, Joel. So that's a wrap on one of the more eye-opening episodes we've done yet. Big thanks to Joel Swartz, attorney, longtime ticket broker, and passionate advocate for ticket fairness.
Now, let's be clear. The views expressed in this episode are Joels, and they come from decades of firsthand experience in the trenches of live event ticketing. You may agree, you may not, but what's undeniable is that his perspective adds depth to an industry often painted in black and white. Here are a few takeaways.
First, the ticket is the driver. It's often the biggest line item in a fan travel budget. And the spark behind hotel stays, flights, and unforgettable weekends for travel pros and event planners. Ignoring that connection means missing real demand. Second, Joel challenged the common narratives around bots, brokers, and ticket platforms.
According to him, the problem isn't rogue actors. It's a lack of consistent standards around how inventory is distributed, priced, and disclosed. Third. His stories from Lions Games in the seventies to Super Bowl pricing in the 2020s. Paint a picture of an evolving, imperfect system where supply, demand and access don't always align in favor of the fan.
And of course, he had some advice for the average fan. Know who you're buying from, ask questions, and don't assume the first price you see is the final one. If you are ever buying from a broker, make sure they back it up with a real guarantee and a real person you can talk to. Whether you agree with everything Joel said or not.
We hope this episode helped you see the ticketing ecosystem a little more clearly, especially if you're in travel, live events, or just trying to score a seat to the next big show. Thanks for listening to Tickets to Travel. Follow us on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube at Tick two Travel Pod. And remember, every unforgettable experience starts with a ticket, and every ticket is a ticket to travel.
We'll see you on the next one. Attention travel and ticketing innovators. Whether you're a startup disrupting the industry, or an established company ready to take your distribution strategy to the next level. Expo Travel is your ultimate partner in online travel and ticketing distribution. We specialize in helping businesses of all sizes optimize their operations.
Ban their reach and unlock new revenue streams. And for startups looking to grow, we partnered with Top Venture Capital syndicates to help you secure the funding you need to turn bold ideas into thriving businesses. From refining businesses to scaling operations and raising capital. Expo travels here to drive your success.
Visit Expo Travel today. That's ex. PO travel.com for a consultation and let's transform the way the world travels. One innovation at a time. Expo travel because the future of travel and ticketing starts with you.
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