LANSING, MI — Something didn't seem right to Rep. Douglas Geiss when he read a Detroit News article about how Detroit Tigers ticket prices were increasing on the secondary market in light of the team's recent successes and player trades.

So Geiss, D-Taylor, did some research and found out that there are no restrictions on price markups for tickets sold through websites like StubHub.com, which has contracts with Major League Baseball and other professional and college sports teams allowing fans to sell their tickets on the site.



Michigan law prohibits scalping, or selling tickets for more than face value unless granted permission by the venue.

Geiss plans to introduce legislation to limit price markups to up to 10 percent more than face value and also require online resellers to publish the original price of the ticket.

“I looked on StubHub and I saw that there were a couple infield box tickets that normally run about $100 that were up for $1,000,” Geiss said. “That seemed a bit usurious.”

StubHub spokesman Glenn Lehrman said Geiss seems well-intentioned, but that he’s misguided and misinformed.

About half of the concert, sports and other event tickets sold on the site go for less than face value, Lehrman said.

“What an open marketplace does, is it allows the market to decide what the true value of a ticket is,” he said. “We don’t put price caps on houses or cars or jewelry or anything else for that matter.”

A price cap would push more of the sales to the streets, where customers don’t have recourse for fraudulent tickets or other issues, Lehrman said.

“We’ve taken something that always seemed very untoward and unsafe and made it very safe and secure for people,” he said.

San Francisco-based StubHub, which is part of eBay, sold more than $1.5 billion worth of tickets last year.

Email Melissa Anders at manders@mlive.com. Follow her on Twitter: @MelissaDAnders.