How Not to Fall Victim to Philly Event Ticket Scams

Thanks to online ticket scams, you might be paying way too much money for tickets to events at the Kimmel Center (pictured) and many other venues in Philadelphia. (Photo by Ajay Suresh via Wikimedia Commons)

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There was a time when getting scammed on event tickets typically meant buying some tickets from a shady dude outside a sold-out show at the Spectrum, only to find that they were fake once you got to the door. Granted, this kind of thing still happens, albeit not at the Spectrum, which no longer exists. But the more modern kind of ticket scam is far more pervasive and insidious.

A while ago, Merion resident Alan Cotler reached out to me. He told me that he had been the victim of fraud. Cotler wanted to go see the ballet at the Academy of Music. So, like most people, he went on Google to search for tickets. A very legit-looking “box office” website popped up. And he purchased two tickets.

“I bought them for $639 including taxes and fees after the box office ‘reduced’ the original price from $700 for the pair,” says Cotler. “Somebody told me that sounded expensive and that those tickets should have actually only cost me $300, which turned out to be true.”

Cotler doesn’t remember what website he bought the tickets from. But he reported the matter to the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office. Nothing ever came of it. And I promptly forgot about my conversation with him. That is until a couple of weeks ago.

When I’m not waxing poetic for Philly Mag, my second job is playing piano in the drag queen-fronted Philadelphia band The Martha Graham Cracker Cabaret. We have our 20th anniversary show at the Miller (née Merriam) Theater on May 16th. Recently, I heard rumblings and grumblings that some fans were backing off of the show because of the high ticket prices.

This had me scratching my head. When we play at the tiny and cramped Franky Bradley’s in the Gayborhood, we typically charge $40 to $55 a ticket. For this special anniversary show in a historic theater, tickets started at $25 and went up to $100. Granted, the $25 tickets sold out long ago. But a quick check of the ticket inventory showed me that there were plenty of great seats still available for $39. So how is this expensive?

I then recalled my conversation with Cotler. So I went to Google and searched “Martha Graham Cracker tickets.” The top link looked legit enough. The big print on the Google results read “Martha Graham Cracker 2025 | Miller Theater.” I clicked on that link and landed on a page that contained all of the correct information about my show. A box popped up warning me, “Inventory is Limited! Buy Your Tickets Now!!!” I clicked on “Shop Tickets” and… wow. I was astonished.

There they were. Right in front of me. Two tickets in Row L of the Orchestra section for $1,268 for the pair. With fees? An astounding $1,683.71. Granted, these were the most expensive seats listed on the site. But there were plenty of other tickets that seemed overpriced to me, especially considering that the show wasn’t sold out.

As I started to compare the tickets available on this unofficial site to the seating map on the official site, I realized something else. Many (if not all) of the seats available on this unofficial site were actually available on the official site. This means that these aren’t fans trying to resell tickets. My educated guess after talking to some people in the industry is that these unofficial sites are bot-driven, scraping the seating charts from the official sites; when you tell the unofficial site that you want to drop $500 on a ticket, their bots quickly buy the same ticket for $100 on the official site and then pull the ol’ switcheroo, charging you $500 for a ticket that you could have picked up for $100 if you had only been on the right website.

And it wasn’t just one site selling tickets to my show at inflated prices. The official website for tickets was actually the fourth Google result, after three unofficial sites. Four is a significant number to consider since research says that most people don’t go past the third Google listing. It’s completely understandable why Alan Cotler and fans of my band might get confused.

“Some people might recognize that something doesn’t seem right,” Cotler tells me. “But others won’t. And if I had to guess, this is a real problem among seniors. We might be less tech-savvy in many cases than other people.”

“I actually don’t think it’s a senior thing,” says my colleague Christine Speer Lejeune. “I’m a computer literate person who lives life online like most of us. And I’ve almost been bamboozled on more than a few occasions.”

As I was on the phone with Lejeune, she went to Google to search for tickets to see the Philadelphia Orchestra at the Kimmel Center at the end of the month. The first site that Google offered her was selling tickets with a $100 markup from those which are available via the Kimmel’s direct box office site.

Of course, this problem isn’t just about shows at the Miller Theater or the Academy of Music or the Kimmel. Metallica is playing the Linc later this month. And if you search “Metallica tickets” on Google, the actual Ticketmaster site for those tickets is several links down. The suburbs aren’t immune either. You could buy general admission tickets to see a Pink Floyd tribute band at Ardmore Music Hall in June for $26.91 if you happen to land on the Ardmore Music Hall website. But should you drift off into the wild wild west of the internet to the first Google result, you’ll pay $78.90 for the same general admission access.

What’s happening here is that the companies behind these unofficial sites are paying Google money to get their links ranked higher than other links, including the official link. It’s the nature of Google these days. You could argue that one solution would be to tell the Miller Theater to spend more on Google ads than these other companies. But keep in mind that these other companies are national or even international. They are hawking overpriced tickets to events all over the place, not just in Philadelphia. So their advertising budget is potentially huge, especially compared to the non-profit that runs the Miller.

So what do you do to avoid getting scammed on tickets to events in Philadelphia? For one thing, you need to be well aware that these scams are out there. That is a pretty good line of first defense. Cotler wasn’t aware this existed until he spent way too much on ballet tickets. Now he’s downright vigilant. If you’re googling for tickets, be a skeptical shopper.

And always be wary of Google results with “Sponsored” above them in boldface in the Google listings. This is an indication that the result is where it is because someone paid Google to put it there. Of course, venues may also sponsor their legit links, so you might have to sift through the sponsored links to figure out which is the right one. You can also scroll down and look for the first link that doesn’t have “sponsored” above it, which is more than likely the correct link.

One good rule of thumb is that you can poke around the site to see what other events the box office is selling tickets to. And if the site selling tickets to see my band at the Miller Theater is also selling tickets to Omaha Storm Chasers games, which is precisely what is happening, you’re most definitely in the wrong place.

In the case of events at the Miller Theater, Kimmel Center, and Academy of Music, the good news is the same non-profit runs all of these venues. And they have an old school box office phone number, which is 215-893-1999. Oh, and it might be nice if I include a link to their official site: ensembleartsphilly.org.

Be careful out there. And remember: let the buyer beware!