Let me ask you a question.

When you buy tickets to a big concert or a professional sports event or a hot Broadway

play on a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate the ticket buying experience?

Think about everything from the price to the availability of tickets to the transparency

of the whole transaction.

Okay, now say your number.

Ooh, it's even worse than I thought you'd say.

Alright, now, rate the experience of the last non-ticket purchase you made, clothing

or groceries, maybe a piece of furniture.

Now, how would you rate that experience?

Yeah, that sounds about right.

Most markets these days are pretty transparent and predictable and sensible.

But the ticket market?

This is a market that's been screwed up for a long time.

It's Eric Budish, an economist who's written a paper on the ticket market.

And when he says it's screwed up, well, you already knew that, didn't you?

You already knew that the hotter the event is, the more likely it'll somehow be sold out,

the minute tickets go on sale.

You also know that scalpers somehow always get plenty of tickets and they charge prices

that could send a kid to college.

You know all about those service fees, too.

Our investigation found that the venues like, and ticket vendors like ticketmaster and tickets.com

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