Establishing legitimacy in the secondary ticket market: A case study of an NFL market

As a result of the occasional unethical business practices of its members, such as price gouging and ticket fraud, the secondary ticket market for sporting events has struggled to gain legitimacy from the perspective of leagues, teams, and consumers. However, as this industry has grown exponentially in the past decade with the advent of the Internet, entities that resell tickets have implemented several strategies for improving the negative images resulting from these unethical practices. As primary and secondary ticketing operations continue to merge through secondary market sponsorships, teams and other sport properties must carefully consider public perceptions of this market before determining their own level of involvement with it. Understanding what strategies the members of the secondary market use to repair and enhance these perceptions is the first step in making that judgment. The purpose of this study was to examine the legitimacy-building strategies in a National Football League (NFL) market for each segment of the secondary ticket market (scalpers, licensed ticket brokers, and secondary ticket market websites). Additionally, a new strategy for legitimacy-building (legitimacy acquisition) is also presented.