SCANDAL OF TICKET PIRACY

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 164, 1 October 1927, Page 12

SCANDAL OF TICKET PIRACY

THE “SCALPERS” OF BROADWAY Broadway has a scandal of its own. It is all about theatre tickets and the prices paid for them. It has revealed the New York producers in league with the “scalpers,” or ticket-mongers, to make the playgoer pay double or treble the price printed on the ticket. The all-suffer-ing public is up in arms. It seems that certain brokerages were not paying the proper amount of taxes: that is, 50 per cent, of the surcharge added to the ticket price after the usual service charge of 50 centsProfiteers Government prosecutors have investigated the tax-dodging. Their reports reveal that prices paid for tickets are ruinous if not prohibitive. Doubling of the supposed price is common; in cases of great popularity five times the printed price is not unusual. Ninety dollars have been charged for a 20-dollar seat at a prize-fight. As high as 15 dollars has been paid for a 24-dollar ticket to the fifth or sixth gallery of the sedate Metropolitan Opera. That is bad enough. But it is further declared that the theatre owners, producers and box office salesmen have been co-operating and sharing {he spoils with the ticket agencies and brokerages. In some cases the best tickets are turned over in advance to these pirates; and, if the play is a great success, every ticket in the house goes out to the Broadway corsairs. Pirates’ Big Stick This inquiry demonstrates that sometimes these piratical agencies domin-