The online world has become a major playing field for purchasers and sellers of entertainment event tickets in the very competitive $10-$12 billion entertainment event ticket market -- especially for sold-out sports games and terribly popular music concerts and shows. Called the secondary event ticket market, this is the part of the entertainment event ticket market that includes tickets bought by professional ticket brokers as well as extras that season ticket holders can't use. People guesstimate the size of the secondary entertainment event ticket market to be about $2 billion although the estimates of its size vary widely.

A huge market with tons of small players, the entertainment event ticket market as it originally existed was a match for the online world around 1999, and as we fast-forward to 2007, many types of online venues  now resell secondary event tickets. While many of these are smalltime vendors, a few chief players also exist.

As one would expect, eBay members are also in on the act and in a huge way. In fact the biggest players of all in the secondary entertainment event ticket market are the members of eBay, which as a group sell more than $300 million in entertainment event tickets annually and boast by far the biggest community of purchasers and sellers. But members of eBay also offer the biggest potential for fraud. Like everything else sold on eBay, stories abound of people getting ripped off by buying phony event tickets. Although buyers can check out how others have rated a given seller, eBay is largely operated on an honor system and offers fertile ground for potential ticket fraud.

To work around this ticket fraud problem, some secondary entertainment event ticket brokers offer 100% guarantees. If you get a bad ticket, they replace it for free. Other secondary event ticket sellers take possession of the entertainment event tickets and verify them before listing them as being available for sale.

Internet entertainment event ticket sales are growing as consumers become more and more comfortable shopping online. One source estimates that Internet entertainment event ticket sales will grow by 27 percent this year.

Even professional sports teams are in on the secondary event ticket market. The demand for Chicago Cubs tickets is so high that the team created their own secondary event ticket market with a team-owned ticket broker.

Reselling entertainment event tickets, otherwise known as “scalping,” is not against the law. Reselling entertainment event tickets, however, is often against the law where the tickets are sold in the immediate area of the event.

Thirty-eight states including California have no meaningful restrictions on the resale of entertainment event tickets. In twelve states the resale of entertainment event tickets is controlled. In about half those states, ticket brokers who take inventory must register with the state. In the remaining six states, concert event tickets cannot be resold above a maximum price premium. In these states a broker might be permitted to charge 20 percent more than the event ticket’s face value at a maximum.