How a Colorado music festival is cracking down on ticket scalpers

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Last year, tickets to the Telluride Bluegrass Festival sold out in less than three hours. It was the 50th anniversary festival, so organizers were expecting high demand, but when they scrolled social media later that day they found a more insidious reason for the quick sales: ticket scalping.

“(Scalpers) have systems. They have bots and things set up that’ll just go on attack during a sale. They have so much force that they’re getting in before people that are actually like waiting in line with their one computer,” said Grace Barrett, director of communication and partnerships for Planet Bluegrass, the production company behind Telluride Bluegrass Festival.

Colorado is one of a few states with a law that actually, and inadvertently, protects ticket resellers, by preventing venues and promoters from applying terms to the original purchaser of a ticket. In other words, once someone — or something — buys a ticket, they are free to do with it however they want.

In a 2023 bill, lawmakers tried to revise the lack of consumer protections by making it legal for venues to cancel tickets bought by bots or by individuals who have previously created fraudulent tickets. Gov. Polis ultimately vetoed it, but the Telluride Bluegrass team was taking notes.

“We looked at big festivals, like Coachella and Bonnaroo. But there wasn’t much there,” Barrett said. “Right now, we are wanting to do more (to combat scalping) and there isn’t a template for that.”

They ended up settling on a two-week pre-registration period, followed by a one-week scalper screening period.

Anyone who wants to attend the Telluride Bluegrass Festival in 2024 was instructed to purchase a $10 pre-registration ticket between Nov. 14 and Nov. 28. After pre-registration closed, Geoff Wickersham, sales and box office manager for Planet Bluegrass, teamed up with See Tickets to weed out any suspicious registrants.

Telluride Bluegrass mails wristbands to its attendees, so one of the easiest red flags to identify was multiple email addresses leading back to one mailing address. Other red flags were using multiple credit cards for one email address, and computers with hidden IP addresses. Everything was done manually using “Excel wizardry,” Wickersham explained.

“It’s a pain-in-the-butt week, but it makes my whole year go so much better if everybody’s happy,” Wickersham said. “So it’s worth it.”

The anti-scalping experiment

On Dec. 7, the festival launched its first round of ticket sales. Anyone who successfully made it through the screening process received a code that morning, which they used to enter themselves in the main ticketing queue.

Last year, without the pre-registration process, there were 12,000 people waiting to scoop up tickets on the first day of sales — the festival’s maximum capacity is 12,000. This year, there were just under 6,000 people waiting.

During the screening period, about 150 accounts were identified as fraudulent or suspicious. Those accounts were refunded the $10 charge and sent a notice that they would not receive a ticket queue code. If an account was flagged in error — a typo in the email address, a misunderstanding about the rules — the festival team made sure it was corrected, as long as the registrant had a good explanation.

Finally, this past Tuesday, the festival team quietly removed the password barrier from the ticketing queue. “It’s not a secret,” Barrett said, but the team is still trying to avoid any marketing blasts that a scalper or a software could pick up on.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ consumer expenditures report showed that last year, for the first time in five years, metro Denver households spent less on arts and cultural events than the national average — about 4.9% of overall expenditures, compared with the 5% national average. Attendance at cultural events has also declined from its pre-pandemic levels, down about 15% from 2019 in metro Denver, and 22% elsewhere in the state.

A variety of factors contribute to these decreases, including inflation driving higher costs of living in general, but when talking about concert ticket prices, two factors are repeatedly brought up: service fees and secondary markets. (Telluride Bluegrass doesn’t charge service fees.)

Barrett said Planet Bluegrass is happy to sell out a festival, but prefers selling out to people who care about it, “people that have made a community around it,” Barrett said. “It’s really important that the tickets are in the hands of the festivarians. So, I would love to see more festivals, concerts and people doing this, but I guess we’ll kind of just see what happens.”

HELP US: If you’ve encountered any creative models to prevent ticket scalping or huge reseller markups, send Parker Yamasaki an email: parker@coloradosun.com. She’d love to hear about other venues and festivals getting creative — and promises to forward alternative models to the Telluride Bluegrass team.

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Inflation update: Denver prices up but rising slower

If you’re still feeling a pocketbook pinch, it’s because inflation still exists. But perhaps, less so? Prices in the Denver metro aren’t going up as fast as they were a year ago, slowing to 4.5% in November.

That’s also lower than September’s annual inflation rate of 5.4%. Denver’s inflation rate is still higher than the U.S., which was 3.1% in November and down from 3.2% in October.

What does that mean for Coloradans? Try $1,206 more per month, according to Common Sense Institute, a conservative think tank in Greenwood Village that tracks fiscal policy. CSI’s measure comes from adding up three years of inflation for a cumulative total on an average household’s monthly budget. Since 2020, inflation is up 18.9%, according to CSI.

Now, many Coloradans probably adjusted their spending as prices went up — swapping chicken for beef, skipping a vacation, dining out less, etc. And the average wage has also gone up during that period by 16.6%, which means wages haven’t kept up with inflation.

But dollar-wise, that 16.6% pay raise translates into $1,820 more per month per household, CSI estimated, so rising incomes can cover the extra cost of inflated food, housing and energy bills. But it’s not quite like that, said Cole Anderson, a CSI research analyst.

“To be clear, this doesn’t mean that wage growth outpaced inflation,” Anderson said. “A household’s consumption bucket will always be less than its earnings without incurring debt. That inflation is outpacing wage growth means that the relative difference between the two is shrinking, which is eating into people’s savings.”

There’s also debt. And Colorado has the nation’s third highest median credit card debt, at $3,106, according to financial data site WalletHub. Coloradans are feeling the pain even if our average household income is at $87,598, according to the U.S. census data.

At least, Anderson pointed out, the past two months showed that prices may be dipping. The Denver area’s consumer price index dropped one-third of a percentage point since September, the first time there was a two-month decline in a year. Notably, the November report saw two-month price declines for the following:

• Gasoline, down 20%, with electricity down 0.5%
• Meat, poultry, fish and eggs were down 6.7%
• Non-alcoholic beverages, down 1.7%
• Food prices overall, down 0.6%
• Apparel, down 2.5%
• Transportation, down 3.4%

But in the past two months, these categories saw prices increase:

• Fruits and vegetables, up 6.1%
• Dairy products, up 1.3%
• Dining out, up 0.6%
• Housing costs, up 0.7% (the owners’ equivalent of rent was up 1%)

Whether this will continue, that’s hard to say, he added. The dips don’t point to any “structural changes that would allow for persistent price drops going forward,” he said. Besides, he added, “energy and household utility prices account for a large portion of the basket of goods that is used to calculate overall inflation, and these energy/household fuel prices are determined globally.”

➔ There is no Colorado inflation rate. A statewide rate doesn’t exist, remember? The BLS only calculates urban areas like Denver, though many economists believe inflation is likely higher in rural areas because the cost of living is higher when one lives farther away from grocery stores, which in turn, have higher costs to keep stores full.

➔ Economic crystal ball: Nearly two years of interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve to tame 40-year-high inflation made new mortgages, car loans and other debt much more expensive. High interest rates chilled the economy but not so much to push us into recession. The nation’s GDP is still expected to grow next year and with that, the Federal Reserve kept rates the same when they met this week — and could cut rates three times in 2024, reports The Wall Street Journal. >> Read

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Sun economy stories you may have missed

➔ Colorado’s underfunded schools may finally get funded. The state has a poor track record for per-pupil spending. Sun reporters Brian Eason and Erica Breunlin explain how a new proposal may get Colorado to the level required by the state constitution for the first time in 14 years. >> Read

➔ Xcel Energy just got $3B cut from its budget. The Colorado Public Utilities Commission scaled back Xcel’s ambitious — but costly — plan to build new green energy generation and new transmission lines around the state. Mark Jaffe has more. >> Read

➔ Christmas trees are getting expensive. Blame the Great Recession for cutting supply, which has driven up wholesale tree prices, Clare Zhang reports. >> Read

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Other working bits

➔ Why are Colorado home sales prices still rising? Simple answer: There aren’t enough houses for sale, as homeowners sit on the sidelines until they can afford to sell. Fewer houses push up prices. In November, the median sales price was up 2.6% in Colorado and Metro Denver from a year ago, the Colorado Association of Realtors said.

“And, while interest rates dipped … (it) was not nearly enough to motivate potential sellers to abandon their locked-in low rates and add to the inventory of active listings, which are down more than 20% in the Denver-metro area and -12.5% statewide over the same time last year,” CAR said in a statement. In Denver, the median-priced home sold for $600,000, and statewide, it was $1,000 less, at $599,000. At least overpaying is less of an issue: Sellers are getting 98% of what they asked for. >> See Colorado, Denver Metro data

➔ DIA begins building new aviation training facility. Denver International Airport broke ground this week on its new Center of Equity and Excellence in Aviation, a facility to train underrepresented workers for careers in aviation. It’s also a place for small businesses to learn more about working with DIA to get construction, concession and other service contracts. CEEA will be part of the airport’s Great Hall Program and occupy 38,000 square feet on level four of the hotel and transit center. The Great Hall is expected to be completed by 2028. >> More

➔ Free dental checkup Dec. 23. Ahead of Christmas Eve each year, Comfort Dental opens up its offices for Care Day and offers services to those in need of dental care. And it’s not just one location, but any of its 180-plus nationwide, which includes about 100 in Colorado. This year, the Lakewood-based dental practice is partnering with Organización Papagayo in the Denver area to reach newcomers from El Savador, Guatemala and other South American countries. Offices open at 7:30 a.m. Dec. 23 and services are provided until noon. >> Details, locations

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Thanks for sticking with me for this week’s report. Remember to check out The Sun’s daily coverage online. As always, share your 2 cents on how the economy is keeping you down or helping you up at cosun.co/heyww. ~ tamara

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What’s Working is a Colorado Sun column about surviving in today’s economy. Email tamara@coloradosun.com with stories, tips or questions. Read the archive, ask a question at cosun.co/heyww and don’t miss the next one by signing up at coloradosun.com/getww.

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