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Bucs

Bucs blitz scalpers on Web site

Ticket holders were using a message board on the team's official Web site for their illegal sales.

By GRAHAM BRINK
Published January 6, 2006

TAMPA - A Buccaneers' playoff game always brings out ticket scalpers. But this week they showed up in a unusual location:

The Bucs' official Web site.

An electronic message board titled Ticket Mart had several postings from ticket holders hoping to sell tickets for inflated prices.

In Florida, that's illegal. Selling tickets for more than $1 higher than face value is a misdemeanor.

At about 5:40 p.m. Thursday, soon after answering questions from a St. Petersburg Times reporter, the Bucs removed the message board from the site.

Jeff Kamis, the team's director of public relations, said they had not decided when the board would be re-established.

"We have determined that one of its primary uses this week was for ticket scalping," he said. "This organization does not want to promote any kind of illegal activity."

Before the Bucs intervened, the site was a bastion of free enterprise, with sellers not even attempting to conceal their intentions.

One poster, hoping to sell two club seats and six second-level seats for a tidy profit, went so far as to plead with other fans not to send him hate mail about his prices.

"I just lost my job and I too want to go to the game," wrote the poster, using the moniker Techsector. "I'm selling the (tickets) . . . to pay for my crappy nosebleed corner (seats)."

A few used the site to direct viewers to their ticket sales on Ebay, an online auction site where the starting prices for some tickets was more than double face value.

Others were less obvious, asking potential buyers to "make an offer" or "call with your best price." The prices for some were "negotiable."

Some sellers agonized over profit versus home team advantage.

They wanted Raymond James Stadium filled with Bucs' fans, but they also wanted some extra cash in their wallets. A few posted that they would "only" sell to other Bucs' fans. The less fanatic wrote that they would "prefer" to do so.

The requirements prompted one Redskins' supporter to retort that Bucs' fans were too cheap to pay anything more than face value. The observation was met with creative suggestions about what the Redskins' fan could do with his opinion.

A handful of Bucs' fans tried to discourage the scalping.

"Give me your address and I will have my dad come buy these from you," wrote Bsegg04 in response to one poster trying to sell tickets for a profit. "Did I mention he works for (Hillsborough) county police? Don't try to scalp tickets here loser."

The scalping revelations came just a few days after a password that enabled season ticket holders to purchase additional tickets to Saturday's playoff game was posted for all to see on the same Ticket Mart message board.

The password foulup and the overt ticket scalping caught Tampa resident and season ticket holder JR Dupont's attention. He wanted to do what he could to make sure legitimate Bucs fans wouldn't have to to pay excessive prices for tickets.

Dupont convinced Ebay to discontinue three online auctions for overpriced Bucs tickets.

He did not have as much luck with the Bucs.

Dupont sent several messages to the board's moderator about the scalping to no avail.

"It's embarrassing," Dupont said. "It's like they weren't even trying to stop it."

Dupont eventually lost his member privileges on the site. The moderator also deleted all of Dupont's antiscalping messages on the Ticket Mart board but curiously left up the posts from scalpers.

Kamis said Dupont was banned for "berating" the moderator. Dupont said he did no such thing and said the Bucs should prove it or offer him an apology.

"I expected the Bucs to take me seriously and Ebay to blow me off," he said. "The exact opposite happened."

Kamis told the Times the Bucs appreciated Dupont's efforts to highlight the scalping problem. By the end of the day, the team had reinstated Dupont's member privileges on the site.

Graham Brink can be reached at 727 893-8406 or brink@sptimes.com

[Last modified January 6, 2006, 01:03:09]