On August 24th tickets for Neil deGrasse Tyson sold out online in a matter of minutes, then were quickly put on 3rd party sites trying to flip them for $200-$300 a piece when they were originally $5.50. The website www.gotmine.com was clearly exploited and the Civic Center even admitted to this on their Facebook page. While they do impose a 10 ticket limit per purchase, one can open up another tab in their internet browser and get another 10, add to this that when you place your order in the shopping cart those tickets are placed on "hold" for 10 min to allow you to fill in your payment info etc it's quite clear that a few organizations gamed their antiquated site for their personal benefit and the citizens of Rapid are now missing out on a spectacular guest. Its time to show the Civic Center that if they want us to fund a new arena for them then they have to prove they do not put members of Rapid's community in the back seat.

I've heard stories of people waiting in line for 2 hours before tickets went on sale only to be turned away as the doors opened because they were bought in bulk by these 3rd party sites. This only harms the Civic Center as it may deter a performer from coming back, and deter the citizens from even attempting to purchase tickets from their site. This needs to be rectified and the site needs to be updated to have better counter measures, be it through IP filtering or the use of cookies, to ensure their site is not exploited again.