Smith Center President Myron Martin gives ticket scam alert
EDITOR’S NOTE: It’s that time of the year again when Robin takes off for his monthlong family trip to Europe. He’s already visited Athens and Santorini in Greece and has spent the week in the beautiful Cinque Terre area of Liguria, Italy. Now, he’s headed south to explore the delights of Tuscany from a tiny village between Cortona and Montepulciano where Frances Mayes wrote her best-selling book “Under the Tuscan Sun,” which went on to become an all-time favorite movie starring Diane Lane.
In his absence, a great number of showbiz entertainers, celebrity VIPs, chefs, restaurateurs and our Vegas dignitaries have stepped forward to write their guest columns.
Perhaps no bigger change to the Las Vegas entertainment scene in the past five years has been brought about by the arrival of the Smith Center for the Performing Arts, a stunning concert performance facility to rival that of New York’s Lincoln Center. A half decade ago Broadway producers still looked down on Las Vegas but, today, they insist their touring productions book the Smith Center into the schedule. Its success has surprised — and surpassed — everybody’s expectations. It’s all thanks to an extraordinary group of supporters and volunteers led by its incredible president, Myron Martin.
But with success always comes problems. Will the coming year be as great and grand as previous ones? Will audiences love the Broadway shows making a Vegas tour stop and sell-out the venue? Now a new problem has arisen as the result of those sell-outs: ticket scams! It’s becoming a problem not only for the Smith Center but also for Cirque du Soleil. In today’s guest column we welcome Myron who has some “buyer beware” advice — in advance of the expected extraordinary demand for the “Hamilton” musical tickets! And take careful note if you think you already have secured your “Hamilton” tickets they actually haven’t even gone on sale yet.
Are you buying your tickets directly from the venue?
My friends know that along with being an arts and entertainment guy, I am a huge sports fan, as well. This year, I purchased about a dozen tickets for out-of-town games in; Dallas, Oakland, Chicago and San Francisco from the Stub Hub and Ticketmaster secondary ticketing sites for prices above the face value. Why? Because I like the convenience of buying online and knowing that I will have a ticket before getting on the plane. Many ticket brokers in Las Vegas provide a similar service to visitors looking for this same type of assurance.
However, there are some ticket sellers who engage in deceptive sales practices, all of which should not be tolerated. For example, when a dishonest person buys a pair of tickets, each with a specifically assigned seat number, and then sells the same tickets multiple times on one or several classified ad websites or other places, they are fraudulently selling the tickets which leads to a large number of unsuspecting ticket buyers holding the same seat number. Unfortunately, these guests would be turned away, upon entering the venue, for holding invalid and fraudulent tickets.
Others create websites that masquerade as the “official ticketing” site for the venue, leading people to think that they are buying directly from the venue itself. When I hear people say that they paid too much for a ticket it is usually because they visited one of these sites.
The Smith Center was built for the people of Nevada and continuously strives to keep ticket prices affordable. Prices for many shows start at just $29 and for that reason, ticket sales only cover 75 percent of our costs. Your ticket to “The Phantom of the Opera,” for example, went to pay for 21 18-wheel trucks filled with scenery, as well as the cast, transportation, local hotels, the union orchestra, the creators, the ushers, security, parking, electricity, etc. However, someone could have purchased tickets on SmithCenterReynoldsHall.box-officetickets.com, which is not the official site, for $280, and none of that markup would have gone to the performing arts center or the show. It would have gone to someone who had no investment in the production, its fans or its employees. To make it worse, some websites are offering tickets to shows that have yet to go on sale, including for example “Hamilton,” which is coming next year. A recent online search found tickets starting at $695 and going much higher, even though The Smith Center has not even announced an on-sale date — much less sold any tickets! These websites are misleading to the consumer.
For years, ticket brokers have employed the use of internet robots, or “bots” to buy up all the good seats within the first minute of a concert going on sale, and they employee people to stand in line and purchase the maximum number of seats possible for shows that offer an onsite ticket on sale. By buying up all the tickets, they then control the price and can mark them up before true fans even get a chance to purchase them at face value. In December, the federal government passed a bill outlawing the use of bots, and now the Nevada Legislature has made it illegal to employ these tactics in our state. Our citizen legislators, who do yeoman’s work in Carson City, also made it illegal to impersonate someone else’s intellectual property and website or sell multiple copies of the same ticket. Please join me in thanking our legislators for doing their part to protect consumers in our state.
These laws will help, but it is still up to all of us to be aware of potential unfair trade practices. We should be careful not to quickly click on the first website we see. Now, thanks to the Legislature, consumers will have a place to file a complaint. Always start with the official venue site where tickets are sold at face value and with the assurance of authenticity. And stand by for “Hamilton.” These tickets are not yet on sale. Really.
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Be sure to check out our guest columns on Sunday (July 23) from architect Leonard Bergman on how our city manages to keep on reinventing itself to stay “leader of the pack” and the fascinating story of how the Sugar Factory American Brasserie has grown from a Vegas flagship to more than 20 locations across the globe. And follow along all next week with more guest columns as Robin begins to wind down his Italian travels with a truffle hunt outside of Rome followed by a tour of the Vatican and the Sistine Chapel.
