The Internet has become a major playing field for buyers and sellers of event tickets. One industry that's arisen as a result of this is the secondary ticket market worth an estimated $10-$12 billion. A huge vibrant market with tons of players ranging from global to the local, everybody's getting into the act. Anywhere there are people with disposable income; there is a secondary ticketing market.

The overall industry is mostly driven by season ticket holders who can't use all their tickets. In the past, these people would sell the extras to individual brokers, who in turn would sell them, sometimes for far more than a ticket's face value. Before the Internet, zealous fans who'd do anything to see Led Zeppelin or U2 could end up paying far more than the market value, as there was no easy way to compare prices.

The growth of the web sales channel for tickets, and the opportunities to be a player in the secondary market have profoundly changed the face of ticket selling. For event tickets, industry experts estimate about 70% are sold in the primary market and 30% in the secondary market. There are more than 1,000 licensed secondary market event ticket brokers in the country. A few years back, the majority of tickets were controlled by a couple companies. The Internet has helped new players build a presence and acquire more and more tickets from those companies; it has enabled more competitors to take root in the market and grab market share. Now there are many players battling against each other and consequently becoming extremely efficient.

Advantages like giving consumers access to better seats, more personal customer service and the ability to resell tickets they cannot use are giving secondary market sellers, many of which are web-only, an edge over the more established primary market ticket brokers. People seek websites like TicketMy and TicketNest hoping for a last minute deals, even if it's at a higher rate, as they get hard-to-find and previously sold-out tickets that are no longer available through the official box office and a storefront to return to if there is any problem with their transaction. Now the super-fan doesn't care what it costs. Price isn't the object, it's the seat location and time saved. Estimates for the secondary ticket market for concerts, sports and other events range from a conservative $2.5 billion to a high of $10 billion annually.

Online event ticket sales are growing as consumers become more comfortable shopping on the Internet. One source estimates that online event ticket sales will grow by 27 percent this year. Even professional sports teams are involved in the secondary event ticket market. The demand for Chicago Cubs tickets is so high that the team set up their own secondary event ticket market with a team-owned ticket broker.

There was and to some extent still is a strong criticism by some on the existence of the secondary ticket market. In the past many laws were also passed against ticket reselling. But recently, more and more states have been repealing "anti-scalping" laws. The justification for anti-scalping laws has been the desire to prevent fans from paying exorbitant amounts for tickets. But if people want to pay $5,000 for a ticket to see the Rolling Stones, they should be able to do it the way they want it. There's really no economics-based justification for anti-scalping laws. The middle man everywhere has always made the market more efficient.

The convenience and the immediacy, and later on benefits like online display of venue seating and other web tools, are recognized by consumers. This made the existing ticket retailers become aggressive in the early development of their web channels and simultaneously created opportunities for entrepreneurs in the secondary market. There is no question that all signs are pointing to the online world of reselling tickets to meet the clearly huge consumer demand. The trend has been established!