With a lull in foot traffic, Dirty sees another chance to tease the King.
“Do you know what Paul said to Santa Claus?” Dirty asks, already laughing.
The King scoffs and waves Dirty off.
“He said, ‘Do you have change for a quarter?’”
The King growls.
Putting up with Dirty and other scalpers is one reason the King is getting out. He admits the online vendors, like StubHub, are cutting into his business.
“You know those sites are illegal, don’t you?” he says.
Not true.
Alison Salcedo, the StubHub head of consumer public relations, says the biggest difference between the street scalpers and StubHub is safety. StubHub offers a 100-percent guarantee on all its tickets.
“The notion of the scalper on the corner selling tickets — we’re the opposite of that,” she said.
For the 2013 and 2014 seasons, IU football has had the worst ticket sales of any Big Ten team, according to StubHub data.
So why is ticket scalping not allowed on IU grounds?
“It’s against the law,” IU Assistant Athletic Director Jeremy Gray said.
Not true, either. Scalping laws vary from state to state. The only restrictions are in Indiana Code 25-9-1-26, which says selling a ticket to a boxing or unarmed sparring match over face value is illegal. Other than that, scalping is legal in Indiana.
IU doesn’t allow scalpers on University grounds because of the issue of buying a dead ticket, IU spokesperson Mark Land said. Also, IU doesn’t want to subject its patrons to the aggressive nature of some of the scalpers.
To be boisterous and loud, they have to stay south of 17th Street.
