KC Star Fixes Prices for Ticket Scalpers

Friday morning, the KC Star noted that Big 12 tournament tickets were expected to jump from $35 (face value) to somewhere in the neighborhood of $100.......

Sure enough, multiple parties reported to me that they encountered hordes of tickets scalpers Friday outside of Kemper seeking nothing lower than $100. The Star had helped set the basement price in the ticket scalping market. Local news organizations have made no mention of the Star's successful foreshadowing of the ticket scalping market via the front page of their Friday paper................

The Star's Howard Richtman (author of the front page piece in question) has responded by saying:

"I talked to a couple people that were selling tickets, and they both said they thought tix would go for at least $100. Whether I feel the piece helped establish a minimum wage....I have no idea. My guess is the scalpers try to get as much as they can.”

The Big 12 tournament was said to be 'sold out' before games commenced Thursday. So why were so many empty seats seen during Thursday and Friday telecasts? Global Spectrum, who has been managing Kemper Arena for the past 16 months, promised the city a true sell out to the '05 tournament. The tickets are sold in the attendance friendly packages to enable Global Spectrum to declare the event a sellout (and at the same time assuring that the arena could still be half empty during the tournament's early games).