Scalpers sell Snowmass Rodeo tickets far above face value

Third-party ticket resellers are listing tickets to the Snowmass Rodeo for as much as $380 — 15 times the cost of their face value. 

Tickets for the weekly rodeo listed on VividSeats, SeatGeek, and TicketsCenter — all third-party ticket resellers — range from $80 to $380. But rodeo tickets sold directly by the Snowmass Western Heritage Association (SWHA) through Eventbrite are $10 for children and $25 for people 13 years or older. 

The Heritage Association does receive the money for tickets purchased by resellers, but it is worried the resellers are scamming community members and impacting ticketing operations for the rodeo, said Bill Boineau, who sits on the SWHA board of directors. 

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“As a board, we had discussed just not allowing any of these third-party people in,” he said. “But we recognize that we’ve collected our money out of Eventbrite, and if we do that, then we’re going to really hurt people who were trying to come and paid the money.”

The rodeo still lets people in who purchased tickets through a third-party because it is required by Colorado law, but it is looking at ways to crack down on third parties purchasing rodeo tickets and significantly raising the prices.

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Ticketing for the Snowmass Rodeo moved to Eventbrite in 2023 to make purchasing tickets easier and to better control the 2,000-person capacity at the rodeo grounds. Rodeo officials didn’t encounter problems with ticket resellers until this summer’s season, when the Snowmass Rodeo celebrated its 50th anniversary. 

Heritage Association board member Charlie Henderson said the advertising for the rodeo’s 50th anniversary widened the reach of the weekly community rodeo and potentially put it on the radar for ticket scalpers, who buy tickets and resell them for much higher than face value.

“We had a lot of PR around our 50th this year, and there’s the new stadium, so somehow or another, that caught the attention of these groups,” she said. 

The Aspen Times reviewed several third-party ticket resale websites that listed tickets to the Snowmass Rodeo. Every ticket sold on Eventbrite is general admission.

A single general admission ticket listed on SeatGeek for the Wednesday, Aug. 14, Snowmass Rodeo was listed for $80. A single general admission ticket listed on VividSeats for the same date was listed for $118. Another ticket listed on TicketCenter for the same rodeo was listed for $148. 

Ticket prices reviewed on Wednesday, Aug. 7, for the rodeo on the same day were even more expensive. SeatGeek listed a general admission ticket for $207, and TicketsCenter listed a general admission ticket for $378.

It is unclear who is purchasing and reselling the tickets.

Boineau, who handles rodeo ticketing, can view who purchases tickets on Eventbrite, but he has not been able to discern who is buying tickets to attend the rodeo and who is reselling them. He does not think bots are purchasing tickets because of Eventbrite software that filters for bots.

It is not impacting sales for the Snowmass Rodeo, but rodeo officials are upset that third-party resellers are attempting to scam members of the community. Henderson, who helps at the will call booth at the rodeo, said a family of four who came to the rodeo spent over $700 for tickets through a third-party site.

Boineau first became aware of the ticket resellers at the rodeo’s community night June 26.

The Heritage Association board discussed not letting in people who purchased tickets from third parties, but it would have no effect on the resellers and is prohibited under a new Colorado law.

The federal government and several local governments have taken action to target ticket scalpers, especially after Ticketmaster’s botched rollout of concert tickets for Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour in fall 2022. When presale tickets for the Eras Tour were released in November 2022, Ticketmaster experienced glitches that left fans waiting in virtual ticketing queues for hours or locked them out of their accounts altogether. As fans lamented not getting tickets to see Swift, resellers were listing tickets on third-party websites for thousands of dollars higher than face value. 

The Colorado legislature passed a bill in June that expanded consumer protections for event tickets sales. It is the same bill that prohibits operators from denying people access to an event because a ticket was purchased through a reseller.

The bill protects consumers if they purchase resale tickets that turn out to be counterfeit and requires ticket sales operators and resellers to guarantee refunds to consumers if an event is canceled for any reason. It also expands what is considered deceptive trade practice during the sale or resale of tickets to include selling a ticket without displaying the total cost or misleading the purchaser by displaying copyrighted materials. It is unclear if the resold tickets fit those qualifications of deceptive trade practice. 

Still, local venues are trying to find ways to combat resellers. In 2023, the Telluride Bluegrass Festival implemented a two-week pre-registration period that required a $10 pre-registration ticket to purchase actual tickets. Afterward, it held a one-week scalper screening period to weed out potential resellers. 

But for a small-town community event like the Snowmass Rodeo, organizers hoped it would be insulated from scalpers.

“We had no idea this was going to happen,” Henderson said. “I mean, it’s a little rodeo, and this has really not ever happened before, so it’s a first for us.”

There are two rodeos left for the 2024 summer season, on Aug. 14 and 21. Officials are urging rodeo-goers to only purchase tickets through snowmassrodeo.org, which will reroute buyers to Eventbrite. The rodeo also saves 200 tickets to be sold on Wednesdays before the rodeo in person at the ticketing booth.

“As a board, we’re going to reconvene after the season and figure out where our strategy is for next year,” Boineau said. “I think we’ve got some work to do to help address this.”

Lucy Peterson covers education and Snowmass for the Aspen Times. She can be reached at 970-429-9152 or lpeterson@aspentimes.com.