Selling Panthers Tickets Could Be Illegal

CHARLOTTE, NC —  If you want to go to the NFC Championship game, and you don’t have a ticket, it’s going to cost you big time! Tickets are selling for hundreds of dollars above face value on the secondary market. And that may be illegal. But it all depends.

“People need to remember that in North Carolina it’s actually a crime, it’s a misdemeanor, to resell a ticket in person for more than face value,” says CMPD Officer Chris Kopp.

In fact, state law prohibits people from selling tickets for more than $3 over face value. But that is only in person: in the the traditional ticket scalping scenario, purchased from a hustler in the parking lot for two or three times what the scalper paid for them.

“The regulations are a little bit different selling tickets online, because the person selling the ticket can actually charge a sur fee,” says Officer Kopp.

The law regulating how much a ticket can be resold for does not apply to online transactions, where there is no cap. Social media sites like Facebook, and private vendor sites like Craigslist, have made it easier for individuals to buy and sell tickets.

You can buy scalped tickets without fear of being arrested, but you have to be careful you don’t get scalped: paying for tickets in advance, or outside the stadium, and having no way of confirming whether they’re real.

And tickets for Sunday’s NFC Championship game are being sold way above face value, with some PSL owners making their money back for the whole season with this one game.

“It’s going to be a sold out game with visitors and people traveling here,” says Officer Kopp. “We’ve upped our forces. CMPD will be out, whether it’s uniformed or undercover, we’ll be out in full force for the game.”