With professional and college football seasons underway and major league baseball pennant races filling fall calendars, the BBB is warning sports fans to be on the look out for fraudulent sellers when shopping online for hard-to-get tickets.
1. Give us some background on this growing problem . . . It's a secondary ticket market with professional brokers, speculators & season-ticket holders. It's a $10 billion industry with online accounting for 1/3; growing 15-20% per year. The internet is a playing field to unload or buy tickets and fans risk putting their trust in a bad seller through online auctions, online classifieds, and bulletin boards.
2. How are sports fans being taken advantage of? Either paying for counterfeit tickets or tickets that never arrive, tickets not for seats advertised, tickets not next to each other, in the nosebleed section, or obstructed view.
3. Give us some advice when searching for tickets online. Look for BBBOnLine seal and choose seller with long history of satisfied customers. Pay with credit card or PayPal. If tickets pictured on site, scrutinize closely for inaccuracies or alterations and cross check seat assignment with venue map.
Contact the Better Business Bureau 24 hours a day to get a reliability and ratings report on companies you are considering . . . at (409) 835-5348 or (800) 685-7650 or online at bbb.org.