Thats interesting. For many years the Shuberts ran this scam out of their offices in the Sardi's building. The took tickets from the box office and gave them to brokers/scalpers. At the end of the day the Shuberts either got a piece of the markup - or they took the tickets back. The box office managers were all in on the tackle as well, so that they wouldnt say a word. Needless to say the producers didnt get any of the extra action.
There is no requirement that you have to make all of your tickets available at the box office. Producers today of a big hit could sell 100, 200, 500 tickets to each performance directly to re-selling empires, in exchange for a % of the markup. And my understanding has been that some are doing this regularly.
Take a sold out show like HAMILTON. A producer could make life easier for a reseller and sell them 50-100 tickets to each performance for 2-3-4 months, in exchange for 40-50% of the markup. This is a win win. The reseller has a guaranteed stream of tickets, the producer gets extra money. But they arent going to disclose this to investors. They have sold the tickets at the price investors expect - the extra $ go directly into the producers pockets. NOTE I am not saying that HAMILTON does this - I'm saying that shows that sell that well could, and most likely have, done that.
So its the old 'ice' scandal of Shubert days - now its the producer getting the rake off, rather than the SHuberts |
