Secondary Ticket Markets for Sport Events

Abstract

Resale markets for sports tickets have gone through unprecedented changes in the past twenty years. Large online resale ticket marketplaces have dramatically reduced search costs. Consumers can browse through wide ranges of ticket inventories. This review defines secondary markets, explains why they exists and how they have evolved, and discusses the legislations that restrict resale. We then present sponsored resale marketplaces and review the literature on price determination in secondary markets with an interest on price dynamics. 1 This paper was written for the Handbook of Sports Economics: SAGE Publications Ltd. I would like to thank Luke Davey for excellent research assistance and Jeffrey Cisyk for comments.