City may ease up on ticket scalpers

Ticket scalping is likely to be legal in Seattle soon.

City Council members quietly voted this week to reverse a 62-year-old ordinance banning the practice of selling tickets for more than they originally cost. The revised law would allow people to sell tickets on the "secondary market" at whatever price they can get.

Even near events venues, where the city's mobile-vendor law requires sellers to have business licenses, the city would not hassle someone who's "casually selling a ticket" — as long as he or she is "not out there every game and all the time," said Mel McDonald, the city's director of Revenue and Consumer Affairs.

"But a vendor who's making his living selling tickets needs a business license," McDonald said.

Scalping is selling an admission ticket for more than it originally cost. The revision would relieve sellers of the requirement to pay admission tax on amounts they receive over the face value of the tickets.

That tax element didn't make sense, McDonald said. "It was almost impossible to administer."

The council passed the proposal Monday as part of "an ordinance relating to the admission tax." The title referred to a proposal that added the Fremont Fair to events exempted from having to pay an admission tax.

If Mayor Greg Nickels signs the ordinance — which spokeswoman Marianne Bichsel expects him to do — it will take effect next month.

The City Council agreed to change the anti-scalping law after weighing enforcement costs, legal challenges, the reality of ticket sales over the Internet in general, and the fact that the Seattle Mariners in particular set up their own Web site to sell tickets at whatever price the market would bear.

The council's action doesn't mean scalpers are home free. The city's mobile-vending ordinance, passed in 2003, still blocks them from selling near ticket windows outside event venues and the streets surrounding the venues without first getting a street-use permit .

City inspectors and off-duty officers hired by the Mariners and Seahawks enforce the mobile-vending law. About 124 civil citations have been issued since the law took effect, the city says.

In January 2004, Seattle Municipal Court Judge Jean Rietschel held that two men accused of scalping Mariners tickets were the victims of selective enforcement because the baseball club was doing the same thing online and no one was bothering them. At the time, the club was paying off-duty cops to patrol streets surrounding Safeco Field and bust people for scalping. The city appealed Rietschel's ruling.

But yesterday, Allen Ressler, an attorney for one of the exonerated men, said the city has been very slow about pressing its appeal. An assistant city attorney did not return a call.

Councilman Richard McIver cited the Mariners as a reason for reform. McIver said the baseball club maintains that it doesn't sell tickets in Seattle for more than face value because servers that host the club's Web site are outside the state.

Yesterday, Mariners spokeswoman Rebecca Hale said the team did not take a position on the proposed revision.

"Our concern continues to be the protection of our fans from harassment of aggressive scalpers," Hale said. "We are going to continue to deal with that problem through existing city ordinances," a reference to the mobile-vending law.

Peter Lewis: 206-464-2217 or plewis@seattletimes.com