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Modified anti-ticket scalping rules meet resistance from Oklahoma City Council

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Proposed changes to Oklahoma City's anti-ticket scalping ordinance were met Tuesday with spirited skepticism by city council members.

The council is expected to vote next week on whether to create a 500-foot scalper-free buffer zone around event venues, officially recognize ticket exchange programs run by teams or venues and raise the limit secondary ticket sellers can charge to $20 above face value.

Oklahoma City's current anti-scalping law is 27 years old. It doesn't create a buffer zone, was authored long before ticket exchange services or Internet sales were introduced and only allows sellers to charge 50 cents more than face value.

Five of the nine members of the council voiced some level of skepticism or opposition to the measure.

“Essentially we have an unenforceable ordinance here, and we're going to make it more unenforceable,” Ward 8 Councilman Pat Ryan said.

The council members contended fraud in the secondary ticket market is a problem worth trying to solve, but that the current and proposed ordinances do nothing to address it.

“I don't think anything in this ordinance deals with the real problem,” Ward 6 Councilwoman Meg Salyer said. “I have a significant problem with this.”

Even comments by local SMG official Gary Desjardins in defense of the proposed ordinance concentrated mostly on problems not addressed by the measure. SMG is the company that runs Chesapeake Energy Arena and the Cox Convention Center on behalf of the city, which owns the buildings.

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