Mike Janes, founder and CEO of Fansnap, a new search engine that combs the Internet for tickets on the secondary market at dozens of sites including StubHub, RazorGator, and TicketNetwork, cited simple economics as the reason behind plummeting prices: supply and demand. 

“People have a lot of choices on the secondary market,” Janes says. “With the economy taking a hit, there’s downward pressure on market prices. Fewer people – both business and personal – are willing to shell out big bucks and pay large amounts of money.” 

Even many of those who did take the plunge and plunked down a small fortune on, say, baseball season tickets, are more than a little anxious to recoup their investment. As a result, says Janes, who used to be the chief marketing officer for StubHub, the secondary market has been flooded with an unprecedented number of tickets, which, in turn, has driven down prices, sometimes below face value. Indeed, when I checked FanSnap for tickets to a host of events there were plenty of bargains. They may not be the best seats or the hottest games, but I found tickets to the see the Redsox in Boston for as little as $15, and seats at the new Yankee and Busch stadiums in NewYork and St. Louis for $8 and $3, respectively.

Reasonably priced tickets were available to other events as well, though you might have to travel to Fargo, N.D., Columbus, Ohio, or Charleston, West Va., to score the knockout deals, such as $20 to go country with Keith Urban, $22 to see Elton John and Billy Joel tickle the ivories, or $33 to get your scream on with the Jonas Brothers.

A big reason for the drop in the price of concert tickets, ironically, stems from poor sales of recorded music.

“Today, artists get rich by touring,” Janes explained, noting that he’s never seen so many bands scheduled to hit the road as he has this spring and summer. When you have so many bands touring and so many willing to add extra performances, prices drop, giving consumers a better chance to catch their favorite group without breaking the bank.

We published an in-depth report on ticket resellers last August, and it’s a subject that generated a lot of passion both pro and con.

Like it or not, resellers are here to stay, now that most states have eliminated restrictions on “scalping.”  On the upside, buying from a regulated resellers like StubHub and TicketsNow beats forking over your money to some guy in a trenchcoat lurking outside a stadium, arena, or concert hall. They’re safer, more reliable, and offer greater consumer protection from ripoff artists and counterfeiters, and they give the average fan the opportunity to buy seats that are usually unavailable to the general public.

Of course, there’s a downside, too. “Deregulation”  -- a euphemism for charging whatever the market will bear – encourages deep-pocketed speculators to scoop up all the best seats as an investment, thus making them unreachable to all but the wealthiest fans. 

The whole issue of secondary ticket sales reached a fevered pitch in February, when Bruce Springsteen ripped Ticketmaster, which sells tickets at regular prices, for redirecting fans to TicketsNow, even though face-value seats to his concerts were still available. For our story on the brouhaha, click here.