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Scalping a whisper of former self

Hushed desperation is heard in Jacksonville, where demand outstrips supply and faces the law.

JACKSONVILLE - Anthony noticed the man in the red sweat shirt holding a sign that said "I need tickets" as they passed by one another outside the Jacksonville Landing entertainment complex.

"How many do you need? I've got one," said Anthony, 28, a Jacksonville resident who didn't want to be further identified because scalping is illegal in Florida. The ticket seeker rejected the $5,000 asking price for the ticket, which had a $500 face value, as too much and walked away.

All over the streets of Jacksonville, in hotel lobbies and outside restaurants, visitors are asking one another in hushed tones tinged with desperation, "Got any tickets?"

Many Super Bowl fans arrived ticketless with the expectation they would be able to find scalpers to supply them. But tickets have been hard to come by on the secondary market because of demand from Philadelphia Eagles fans, whose team hasn't been to the Super Bowl since 1981, and the Florida law prohibiting scalping.

"It has been horrible," said Dave Johnson, a 36-year-old real estate investor from Orange County, Calif., who flew to Florida hoping to purchase tickets from a scalper for himself and his wife. "Nobody has them and everybody wants them."

Florida law prohibits selling tickets for more than $1 more than their retail value and makes scalping a second-degree misdemeanor punishable by a $500 fine. By late Friday, the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office had arrested two people accused of scalping tickets and another accused of selling counterfeit tickets at the Adam's Mark hotel.

"Beware," said Chief Alton Kelly of the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office. "We encourage folks not to go out and buy these tickets from these individuals because we do know for a fact that a number are counterfeit and once you buy them, they're yours."

Deputies in street clothes were working on antiscalping details during Super Bowl weekend. The threat of enforcement created an atmosphere of caution for the scalping trade, which has thrived in past Super Bowl host cities where it's allowed.

"This is the toughest Super Bowl I've ever gone to in the past decade," said Jay Lindsey, a 32-year-old longshoreman from Los Angeles as he stood outside the Adam's Mark hotel, asking passers-by if they had tickets. Last year in Houston, he said he paid a scalper $1,200 for a Super Bowl ticket.

The price of Super Bowl tickets on the secondary market in past years resembles a bell curve, with prices reaching a peak and then slowly descending the closer to kickoff time. But this year, ticket prices haven't decreased, said Anthony Rodio, vice president of marketing for StubHub, an eBay-like company that specializes in ticket sales.

The average price for a ticket sold on StubHub's Web site was $2,700 and expected to rise to $3,000 before game time, Rodio said. "This is a unique Super Bowl in that prices are rising up until the event," Rodio said. "The supply is so tight."

Anthony, the prospective scalper, said he had also posted his ticket on eBay in hopes of finding a buyer. If he ended up selling his ticket to someone he met on the street, he said he intended to throw in an item, such as an ink pen, in the transaction to circumvent the scalping law.

[Last modified February 6, 2005, 00:21:17]