“Now is often the time we see the most action from secondary ticketing outlets,” said Lisa Japs, chief operations officer for Dayton Live. “If you’re interested in purchasing tickets to this amazing show, your best bet is to go to DaytonLive.org.”
Dayton Live officials said the best way to purchase legitimate tickets for any performance in the Victoria Theatre, Schuster Center, PNC Arts Annex or The Loft Theatre is through the Dayton Live ticket office at the Schuster Center at the corner of Second and Ludlow streets in Dayton.
Tickets can also be bought at daytonlive.org or by calling 937-228-3630.
Tickets purchased through secondary outlets can often be more expensive than the original price.
“Shows like ‘Hamilton,’ ‘A Beautiful Noise,’ ‘Six and MJ: The Musical’ are attracting totally new buyers — which is fabulous,” Japs said. “But that means they may not know where to buy tickets and they just plug ‘Hamilton tickets’ into a web browser. That web browser delivers up a list of options, many of which are ticket resellers.”
Resellers may include the theater or show name or a name that looks like the box office for the venue. They can also pay high advertising fees to have their listing come at the top of search results.
“Basically, a reseller’s only interest is in making money off the customer; Dayton Live’s interest is in the customer experience and selling tickets at a fair price, as established by the touring production’s management,” Japs said. “These ticket brokers cause a lot of frustration for us because if something goes wrong with one of these transactions, there is little we can do for the customer. We cannot re-issue, reprint or refund tickets that we didn’t sell.”
Dayton Live tries to avoid selling tickets to resellers and brokers but can’t completely prevent secondary vendors from buying tickets. Reseller tickets may be valid, but there is a risk of purchasing tickets for seats that don’t exist.
“The bigger problem is that our patrons are paying way too much for tickets — sometimes as much as 10 times the face value,” Japs said.
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