WASHINGTON — Tickets for the 2017 presidential inauguration are being sold on ticket reselling websites for thousands of dollars, and lawmakers are trying to make it stop.
“These are free tickets — [I] emphasize, they are free of charge,” Judy Kurtz, the In The Know columnist at The Hill, told WTOP, meaning you should not be spending anything if you want to see the inauguration.
“Scalpers online are looking to make a quick buck by selling them for big money on the internet. The tickets can range anywhere for $1,000 for a standing room ticket. We found others for $7,000 for coveted prime seating sections.”
Some tickets were being sold for $15,000.
It’s legal, but lawmakers from both political parties are not happy.
They have been asking resellers to take listings for inauguration tickets off their websites. An eBay spokesman told The Hill that it will remove any such listings from its site, though some still occasionally appear.
Scalping was an issue for the 2013 inauguration, and officials then were calling on sites to remove such ads.
While many are scalping these tickets to make some easy money, others just don’t realize that reselling them is very much frowned upon and discouraged, Kurtz said.
“One of the listings for these tickets just said that ‘Our gal didn’t win,’ as they put it, ‘so we are going to give the experience to someone else who wants to see their candidate up there during the inauguration,’” said Kurtz.
If you want to go to the inauguration for free, as politicians and event organizers intended, you must get them from your congressional office, which usually distributes their allotment through a lottery system.
