<p>My son wanted to go to one of the big games in the finals, and whether his school allows mark ups on ticket prices or not, the tickets were being sold at all kinds of ticket venues at big time prices waaay above the marked price of the ticket. </p>
<p>It often comes down as to whether a school wants to put in the time,money and resources to enforce scalping restrictions.</p>
<p>re #99: Personally I don’t think anyone stopped and thought about it. I thought about it because by “trade” I’m a strategist. I have to sometimes quickly assess something and think through the possible outcomes of a decision or a pitch or whatever…I get “paid” to do that day in and day out. Sometimes I have to listen to all sides and formulate a position. Most people don’t operate that way and many are not wired to think that way.</p>
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<p>You can’t make that assumption…(that the school made the decision on ethics…)</p>
<p>I do not understand how buying an item for $A and reselling for $B ($A plus some unknown increase) is unethical. When you sell your home, do your sell it for only the price you paid? If you inherit your mother’s silverware and you don’t want it, is it unethical to sell it for more than what you paid ($0.00)? When you invest your money in your IRA, SEP or pension plan, do you hope that it can be sold for more than what you paid?</p>
<p>Some are making a big deal about the “discount” that the students receive. IMHO, at least part of that discount is merely because they bought season tickets. Additionally, at many colleges, the “student section” is not the most desirable seats in the stadium or field house and the school may not be able to sell-out if it wants full price for those tickets. Lastly, many businesses operate by buying quantities of goods at a lower unit price and reselling those in small lots. The college itself undoubtedly sells (or licenses another business to sell) soft drinks, water and food at the stadium for much more than it costs it or the business to buy the individual items.</p>
<p>Finally, what is legal is not necessarily ethical and what is ethical is not necessarily legal.</p>
<p>If I sell my home, no, Hat, I don’t mind making a profit. I hope to make a profit. I hope to make a big profit. I don’t have an ethical problem with that. No one on this thread has said profit- itself- is wrong or evil or unethical. It is not just buying/selling that is unethical. It is the conditions that one buys and sells that could be unethical.</p>
<p>As been said many times already in many previous posts, hat, but since you have asked again, it isn’t merely profit that is unethical. But it isn’t just profit that is relevant to this thread.
Let me adjust your example, Hat. Instead of selling “my home” that was bought on the open market, let’s suppose a poor family is put in a Habitat home, made cheaper, many donated products, much donated labor, in order to give the user a break on getting into the home. What if the new owner intended to sell it for a profit the day after they bought it? Law aside, Habitat policies aside, but wouldn’t that be unethical? Wasn’t the point and intent getting them the opportunity to get the discounted home so they could get in, and be a homeowner cheaper? In that example, taking the discounted home intended for poor persons that wanted to be homeowners with the intent to merely re-sell it the next day would be unethical in my view. In fact, Habitat does have specific times/rules on selling in an effort to stop those who would be so unethical. But their having such a policy isn’t what makes it unethical- their policy is in place to give rules to people that might be. I find that very similar to any student that buys student discounted tickets with the intent to re-sell. Conversely, if any ordinary business man was to buy 100 standard tickets on the open market by merely calling the ticket office then I would have no ethical objection if he intended to re-sell them for a profit.</p>
<p>As for some of your other examples, to my recollection, no one has said re-selling an item purchased on the open market, and available to all would be unethical to sell it at a profit.</p>
<p>And as for this: “Some are making a big deal about the “discount” that the students receive. IMHO, at least part of that discount is merely because they bought season tickets.” If everyone that purchases a season ticket get the same discount as student pricing then you are absolutely right, the discount is for season tickets. If students get a better price however, then the student discount is special, and you are wrong. Again, to the best of my memory, no one here has named any exact pricing for us to know actual costs.</p>
<p>In this case it’s a special price. It’s limited to enrolled students only. It’s limited to certain seats. Only enrolled students can sit in those seats. Only alternative is for student to buy a ticket somewhere else in the arena during the season ticket sales at the same rate the public pays. ID#s are matched to the ticket. A parent cannot sit in that seat of their kid (and they probably wouldn’t want to). The arena has to know the student ID numbers before the event. There are no other seats in the arena available to students at that price. It is not public domain. It is clearly one student making money off another student and sanctioned by the university. It’s total crap. The university should not be doing this.</p>
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<p>younghoss - the problem is we don’t know the exact purchase pricing or the resale pricing for that matter, but you also ignore the “less desirable seating” that is usually associated with student seats. I don’t know if that is true, but the OP has not suggested otherwise. You also don’t answer my assumed position that the resellers are selling individual tickets from a season ticket package and therefor should get some benefit for their time and expense (and risk) of obtaining a season’s worth of tickets. It would be helpful to know how much comparable seating sells for and/or the percentage discount that the public gets when it buys season tickets.</p>
<p>Whenever you give someone a gift it passes to him absolutely and he can sell it or re-gift it to someone else. You may have put a lot of thought into that gift, but once it’s his, it’s his to do with as he pleases. (BTW, I think it would be different if someone asks for a gift and then resells or re-gifts it.) If you want to restrict his right to do that, you must tell him (not unlike your Habit example). </p>
<p>According to the OP, the season tickets are issued to a specific student ID number and she has suggested that the University checks the tickets against a database to verify that the student is entitled to use the ticket. (I’m not sure how that would be done.) If a student is only allowed to get one season ticket and that ticket can only be used by a student with a student ID, then the purchasing student is “giving up” his opportunity to go to the specific game in return for some additional profit. If the student could buy any number of season tickets, then I would have more trouble with the ethics of the situation. As is, with these assumptions, I do not.</p>
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Agreed … and I would also want to know how many extra tickets were being sold. I also would find it troubling if lots of students were buying the season tickets to sell them all to make some bucks … but I have trouble seeing this as a ethical dilemma if the overwhelming student ticket resales are season ticket holders selling 1 or 2 of their overall season package.</p>
<p>PS - some of the attempts to improve the “fairness” of student ticket distribution likely increase the odds of issues about which the OP is worried. For example, making students wait for tickets ensures those who REALLY want the tickets get the tickets (this could include those who want them to sell them) … however there is a downside to having students sleep out a day or two or three to get tickets. So some schools have implemented lotteries for tickets which all but guarantees a bunch of students who don’t care much will have season tickets … are much more lucky to sell off a bunch of their tickets … (and to have more empty seats at games).</p>
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<p>I agree the purchasing student is “giving up” his opportunity to go to the specific game. Here is my problem with the scenario: not all students had that opportunity. If the tickets are first-come, first-serve and the number is limited, some students missed out on the opportunity to buy the student tickets. When the tickets are limited, some students will necessarily be left out of that opportunity. The lucky purchasing student takes advantage of a fellow unlucky student to make a profit.</p>
<p>The purpose of a student discount is to allow students to attend events at a discount. The purpose of student discount is not to allow students to make money through resale. Selling the tickets at a profit subverts the process - even if the college is allowing it.</p>
<p>IMHO</p>
<p>I don’t actually think this question is that complicated.</p>
<p>Students in NCAA sports are not allowed to profit from their participation in these sports.</p>
<p>Therefore, NO students are allowed to profit from NCAA sports.</p>
<p>The ethics, at this point, are very clear, and have nothing to do with “real world” scenarios in which everyone involved may be profitting. In the case of NCAA rules, students cannot profit from sports.</p>
<p>^Are you saying student athletes, who buy these season passes, are prohibited by NCAA rules from reselling individual tickets at all - whether they profit or whether they merely recoup their investment in a product they won’t use themselves?</p>
<p>I’m positive that there is no scenario under which a student athlete could profit from NCAA sports, tickets sales or otherwise.</p>
<p>Then permit me to address some of your comments, Hat. You are correct we don’t know actual exact pricing of tickets. That’s why I did not say you were right, or that you were wrong about the discount being because of a season-ticket purchase. You are one or the other, but at this time we aren’t 100% sure which, though post 106 is a pretty strong hint.
Less desirable seats? I don’t doubt that a bit. But is that the reason for the student discount- that we should believe the school couldn’t sell at full price? We have no reason to believe that. In fact, we have evidence for just the opposite. If tickets were going unsold, then there would be plenty of seating avail for all students, and likely this thread would never have started. But we are told that isn’t the case. Or, if the section was so undesirable every seat couldn’t sell for face, then how is it some students re-sell at higher than face? So special discounted pricing because of unsellable seat location just doesn’t fly.
As for someone’s right to re-gift a gift? This comment has absolutely no application to the dilemma in this thread, other than to say that many here have pointed out there can be a difference between a legal right and ethical behavior. A couple others have pointed out they are disappointed for those that don’t see a difference.
And as for the part you claim I have ignored, Hat, about some re-selling a single ticket- well, you could go back to my posts. Seriously? Post after post I have used phrasing about those who buy the tickets with the intent to re-sell. Clearly, that would not include a student that bought tickets intending to go, but at the last minute had other plans for one game(for example).</p>
<h1>112 Then I am pretty sure I agree with you. Otherwise some students are allowed to profit off the ticket sales and some aren’t.</h1>
<p>Then the argument becomes whether the student athletes receive some benefit that outweighs that particular disadvantage. That may become a completely different discussion.</p>
<p>A student with a theater scholarship. </p>
<p>Compare this to a student athlete. </p>
<p>I’ve done this because oldest had the one and youngest, before a major injury, would have had the second. </p>
<p>It’s really ridiculous that any student would be allowed to profit from athletics, under the current system.</p>
<p>I think the scenario is still unethical even if student athletes were allowed to profit by selling student tickets they purchased but won’t use… like the non-athletes.</p>
<p>I think the fact they are treated differently in this scenario makes it more unethical, if it is possible to have degrees in such a case. That I don’t know.</p>
<p>I agree </p>
<p>But the comparisons to professional sports ticket scenarios don’t work. That’s my only point. </p>
<p>Either way the ethics are unfortunate. But, given the NCAA prohibition on student profit, it’s questionable to me whether it is actually legal. In addition to being unethical.</p>
<p>What seems wrong about what momofthreeboys has noted, is that the university allows the secondary market rather than trying to create a fairer secondary market of its own. I am not a computer person, but I would think that the university could have its own website for resales, that built in only the actual cost to use the website to resell the ticket. Student season ticket owners could put their ticket on the site when they know that they won’t be coming to the game, and people could buy it with a service charge to cover the cost of the service. The sales could be made by a lottery type function, so that everyone listing the tickets would have an equal chance to sell the ticket in any given transaction. The website would charge the buyer and credit the seller for the tickets. It would certainly be fairer than just allowing an auction type secondary market.</p>
<p>I think a lot of university ticket sales are not done fairly. Recently my D told me of a campus concert which sold out in minutes, and where tickets then immediately appeared on facebook or craig’s list for 20 times the sale price. I don’t know if anyone paid such sums, but that seemed really wrong to me. There were not enough tickets for all who wanted them in the first place. Thousands of students all tried to buy on line at the same time, and some people could never get the website to work for them, so they did not get tickets.</p>
<p>At DD’s major-conference football crazy school, a ticket gets attached to the student’s ID card. There is no way to sell it or transfer it to someone else; if you can’t go you have to cancel it so they can give it to someone else. If you don’t show and fail to cancel the ticket, the student is not allowed to get a ticket for the rest of the season.</p>
<p>So there are easy technological solutions to prevent students from profiting from other students (which I think is unethical). The fact that OP’s school allows, if not encourages it, is unethical in my opinion. My guess is they are taking a cut of the profits, and so have no incentive to prevent it.</p>
<p>Our local professional football team prohibits reselling tickets except through their own exchange where they can only be resold for face value. A season ticket holder who is discovered to be scalping their tickets can and often will have their tickets revoked.</p>
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I’m pretty sure this is wrong. The NCAA prohibits student athletes from selling their tickets … it goes back to not paying the players. They do not want boosters from various schools bidding $100,000 for Johnny Mansiel’s tickets … to basically find a back door way to pay him. I’m pretty sure the NCAA is not worried about sales between two random non-athlete students beyond whatever general scalping laws are involved.</p>