Brokers and Van Halen

Here's the other side of ticket-brokering: Sometimes the market fools brokers or second-hand-ticket sellers (aka scalpers).

Over at Stub Hub, they're offering a variety of seats to the Van Halen show at the Sprint Center on Oct. 27.

You can get a floor seat for as low as $169 -- not a bad price and a sign, maybe, that demand is soft.

You can get an lower-level seat in Section 105 for $180 each. The problem with that: Ticketmaster still has similar lower-level seats for $149.50. Even more, um, curiously: Stub Hub (which is a middle-man, not a ticket-seller, per se) is offering upper-level seats for as much as $140. Now the upper-level seats are sold out, but only because they were the cheapest seats -- $49.50. Who's going to want to pay $140 for those when you can get lower-level for $149.50?

It's not much different at TIcketsNow: "second-hand" tickets for lower-level seats are going for more than $200, even though you can get them for face value through Ticketmaster.

It's a speculative business. Some bets are surefire; others aren't.

| Timothy Finn, The Star