How Can Ticket Resellers Get Away with Scalping When It’s Illegal in Las Vegas?

• Reselling an entertainment ticket for more than face value is illegal in Clark County
• So how do ticket reseller apps get away with it?
• We have the answer…

A Las Vegas resident wrote to Casino.org last week, asking how ticket resellers are legally permitted to sell seats for such exorbitant prices in town.

“I should have bought my tickets weeks ago, when they were $72 each, for the Neil Diamond musical at the Smith Center,” Wayne B. wrote. “Now the tickets are in the hundreds of dollars. This is against the law in Clark County, yet enforcement turns a blind eye to it. How can this be?”

Thanks for the question, Wayne!

Clark County Code §12.38.20 indeed prohibits selling tickets for entertainment or sporting events at above face value without written permission from the venue owner, operator, or manager.

But that prohibition is meant to discourage reselling on or near the venue’s property — such as on sidewalks, parking lots or adjacent public areas where shady sellers might approach hopeful attendees with counterfeit tickets.

Ticket reselling apps — such as StubHub, Vivid Seats, SeatGeek and even the resale division of Ticketmaster — aren’t only offsite, they’re not selling you any tickets that they own.

Sweet Caroline, Bitter Markup

Ticket reselling platforms are just facilitating transactions between verified ticket owners and interested buyers, then taking a fee for the service — much like Uber facilitates rides between verified drivers and passengers who use their app.

In order to retain their business license, the platforms must adhere to all Nevada ticketing laws, such as disclosing ticket face value and seat details and ensuring ticket authenticity. These also include the laws introduced when Nevada Senate Bill 235 was signed into law in 2017, which prohibit deceptive practices such as reselling the same event ticket multiple times or using misleading event branding..

The platforms also offer guarantees — including refunds for canceled events or invalid tickets — that align with Nevada’s push for transparency and consumer trust.

And many event organizers and venues in Las Vegas permit reselling through ticket platforms, thus sidestepping the restriction against unauthorized resales at inflated prices that way.

While some regions have laws capping markups on ticket reselling, most ticketholders can legally offer and sell tickets that they own anywhere in the US via ticket reselling platforms. And they can do it for whatever insane amount they think they can get.

It sucks, Wayne B., we feel you. But it’s legal.