Until you’re buying tickets to a music live performance or sporting occasion that’s anticipated to promote out, shopping for ADA accessible seats direct from the field workplace may find yourself costing you some huge cash.
Nearly all of ticketed occasions don’t promote out, and enormous numbers of ticket holders flip to third-party resellers like StubHub to dump surplus tickets at deep reductions. For practically each Main League Baseball recreation this season, you’ll discover a thousand tickets or extra listed on resale web sites — for no matter cause, the house owners of these tickets can’t attend or make use of them, and need to recoup a portion of their funding. You need to take the low cost.
I do know, I do know, you employ a wheelchair and the tickets being offered on StubHub in all probability aren’t for ADA accessible seating areas. 9 instances out of 10, that doesn’t matter.
To make sure the disabled followers have an equal alternative to learn from resale markets, the U.S. Division of Justice requires sports activities groups and live performance venues to trade customary tickets for accessible ones. In its accessible seating and ticket gross sales reality sheet, the DoJ advises that “a person who has bought a non-accessible seat via the secondary market however wants an accessible seat should be permitted to trade the ticket for a comparable accessible seat, if one is on the market.”
Earlier than buying a ticket via a web-based resale market, it’s necessary to ensure that the staff or venue has ADA accessible seating obtainable in the identical or higher part — you don’t need to purchase a excessive ticket (even at a reduction), solely to be relocated to the bleachers.
I buy most of my occasion tickets via StubHub and this was the case throughout my latest journey to Fenway Park, the place I watched the St. Louis Cardinals tackle the Boston Pink Sox. By way of StubHub, I discovered a fantastic deal on a ticket in part 164 — the worth was $43 together with all charges. To buy an ADA accessible seat in that very same part from the Pink Sox ticket workplace, I might have needed to pay $91 plus a ticketing price — greater than double the worth.
I bought a ticket via StubHub, then visited the visitor companies desk at Fenway Park to trade it for an accessible seat — inside a couple of minutes, I had a brand new ticket for an ADA accessible wheelchair area in the identical part and loved an thrilling baseball recreation whereas saving greater than 50% off the ticket’s face worth.
Disabled followers have an equal proper to make the most of the reductions supplied within the resale ticket market, and I encourage you to pursue that chance! Don’t pay full value until you need to.