The laws on this will vary city by city.  In San Diego, it is perfectly legal to sell tickets for whatever somebody will pay as long as you don't do it on the stadium grounds.  That's why ticket brokers exist in SD.

Scalping isn't out and out illegal. Scalping laws vary by state and, in some cases, municipality. In my neck of the woods the laws differ in the city and surrounding counties. It is not illegal to sell any ticket at face value in the city, but if you want to sell more than four tickets to the same game you have to be at least a mile from the stadium. It is illegal to sell the ticket for an amount above face value in the city. However, in surrounding counties you can sell the ticket for whatever you can get for it.

So, a person in an office building less than a mile from a stadium would be breaking the law if they sold the ticket to an office-mate for above face value. So would a person hawking tickets within the one-mile perimeter. Care to guess which one gets busted more?

Depends on whose doing the scalping.....

The sale to a friend is one thing but some of these ticket brokers are flat out thieves...UNSCRUPULOUS!

I remember reading a great article on it cause I felt the same way you did...so I enjoyed reading it at the time.
I was able to locate it.Here's the link below.

Cheers!

Event ticketing is a heavily regulated industry. There are all kinds of rules that vary by state, county, if the buyer/seller live in the same state as the event, etc.. I can't explain why they have all the rules, probably because without rules there is chaos! eBay has some info regarding the laws of each state. They used to delist auctions that would go over the face value of the tickets but I haven't seem them do that in a while.

In a nutshell, you can sell at face value and nobody will give it a second thought. But the scalpers are trying to sell at several times face value. This is where you could get 20 lashes with a wet noodle from LE.

As everyone has said, the laws, as well as enforcement, vary greatly. Here in New England, where purity is a long-standing tradition- a couple of years ago, a long time [ie thru all the bad years] Patriots season ticket holder [2], who even went to a few away games each season, knew he would be unable to attend a particular Sunday game so went on eBay to sell his tiks for that game only. At this point the Pats were winning so the bids were considerable. The Pats saw the eBay ad and immediately revoked both tickets, dropped him from the season ticket holder list and sent a cheack for the remainder of the games. There was litigation in Federal Court and the Pats won. Escorting is also illegal and season tickets are difficult to come by. Enforcement is also selective, with particular attention paid to SWs and MPs.

It is illegal for bicyclists for ignore traffic laws (i.e. ride through stop signs and red lights), but they do it in front of cops all the time.  Selective law enforcement - all cities do it, but The Machine really is obvious about it.  When I lived in San Francisco, the vice squad arrested street walkers once a year as a token gesture to the law.  Must be a nice job to work a couple days out of the year and get paid for the whole year.  Personally I'm happy knowing the donut shops of America are safe.

Say middleman A buys up whole blocks of tickets to a popular event.  He marks up the ticket prices when the venue is sold out.  But, instead of selling them on the street, he sells them to middleman B, who marks them up, then you have middleman C....

Now, say middleman C misjudges what the market will bear.  He can't unload the tickets at a profitable price.  

Or say he doesn't.  But by the time the tickets actually filter down to the public, they've paid so many middlemen who added no value that they are angry with it.  

So, what you really end up having is a sold out venue of mostly empty seats, and a very angry, disgruntled public, who will probably give up on such venues.

/Zin