On a sunny Wednesday evening outside the Rogers Centre, that familiar deep tone continues to ring out.“Baseball tickets? Buy, sell, upgrade!” shouts a tall, imposing man, waving a stack of slightly crumpled pieces of very expensive paper. Despite the last-place Blue Jays’ ongoing struggles, it’s one of the final marquee series of the year. The New York Yankees are in town.And two hours before game time, there they are — scalpers — dressed in rugged clothes and smoking cigarettes on three of the Rogers Centre’s four corners.On its south-east corner, opposite Bremner Blvd., one group of men (there are no women) manage the busiest gates, handing off their cash to a slightly-better-dressed manager who shakes hands and greets his minions as they arrive for work. On the north side of the Rogers Centre, two teams of scalpers man the bridge and steps that run off of Front St. and over the railway corridor. By 5:30 p.m., an hour and a half before the first pitch, they’ve already sold their entire inventory and have begun trying to acquire more tickets.“I’ll carry on, thanks,” says one man, shaking his head and laughing as a scalper tries to offer him half of face value for his set of outfield seats.“Name your price then!” responds the scalper, the man now a few metres away.Most others, too, blow past them. But some stop, already dressed in Blue Jays jerseys, convinced they’re going to the game and willing to pay top price for mediocre seats. So the scalpers keep coming back.Even as massive online third-party sports ticket retailers such as StubHub, Fan Exchange and Vivid Seats take over a larger share of the market, Toronto’s wealth of small regional scalpers and brokers are surviving — and growing.The Canadian Ticket Brokers Association lists 23 of its 27 members as headquartered in the GTA. The brokers, ranging from independent online retailers to family-run ...
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