As I have noted, I am by nature something of a cheapskate. So is my sailing buddy, whom I will call "the Captain."
The Captain and I have made an art form of attending events at minimum cost. We have perfected our approach at Rutgers football games. Instead of paying to park, we jam a couple of old bicycles into the station wagon. We find free parking just off campus and then pedal past pedestrians as we search out a scalper who will sell us tickets below face value.
So when I read that there were a lot of extra tickets for those
Bruce Springsteen concerts at Giants Stadium, I conceived a challenge: Could we get the most coveted tickets, the floor section, for less than $20 each?
First there was the question of where to park. No problem. In researching a prior story, I had discovered a spot on the Hackensack River not far from the stadium.
The last time I’d been to this spot it had been broad daylight. As we approached on Thursday night, however, the headlights illuminated a narrow path through a swamp. This was the spot where the bullet riddled body of Genovese crime family member John DeGilio was found in 1988.
It was a perfect setting to begin a Jersey evening, in other words. We parked and before long we were flying past people who had paid $25 to park in the far lots. We soon met up with the only other cyclist on the scene, a tall guy with long hair who identified himself as "Jerry Garcia."
Jerry was even cheaper than the two of us. As we chatted, he was collecting surplus beers from fans who had to ditch them before entering the stadium. He told us he bikes to the stadium often to buy scalped tickets, and that on this evening we had a buyer’s market.
"I believe that anyone who’s out here holding a ticket is going to have to unload it for five, ten bucks," he said.
Though the scalpers often get rich off
Springsteen, this time around the Boss had outsmarted them. At first, his management had announced just three dates, prompting the usual buying frenzy. The frenzy continued when he announced two more dates. But there just aren’t all that many people who want to stand around a stadium on a cold October night.
"The scalpers got burned," said Jerry as forlorn figures walked by yelling, "Anyone need tickets?"
Soon enough we encountered a guy who was stuck with three tickets for the floor, each with a face value of $115. He said he’d take $30 for two, but he then gave us the third anyway. He headed home, but not before offering this word of economic wisdom.
"Scalping’s tough," he said. "Scalpers don’t have a 401k or a medical plan."
Once inside, I was heartened to hear that Bruce has apparently taken the advice I have so graciously offered him over the years. He’s given up on all that folksy stuff and gone back to rock-and-roll. We got our $15 worth.
The next day, I got on the phone with the man who is perhaps the nation’s leading expert on ticket scalping, Steve Happel. Happel, who is an economics professor at Arizona State University, said that if artists really wanted to eliminate scalping, they could do so by either raising their prices or auctioning off the tickets. But they don’t want to eliminate scalping, for the exact reason illustrated by this stadium stand: Sometimes it works in their favor.
"It’s actually quite clever what
Springsteen did. He’s not stupid," said Happel. "He must have made a fortune on this one. It was the scalpers who got burned."
Indeed it was. The stadium was packed, but many of those in attendance had no doubt bought tickets at a discount on secondary sites. Springsteen, however, got full face value.
When I told Happel I’d gotten floor seats for a mere 15 bucks, he responded, "That’s great! The free market works."
Well, it certainly worked for us. Having beaten both the parking fee and high ticket prices, we hit White Castle on the way home. It was a tightwad trifecta, and we arrived back at the Jersey Shore justly proud of our accomplishment.
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