Those at recent Egyptian Theatre shows may have noticed something new: before the curtain lifts, there’s an announcement about third-party resellers.
Theatre operations director Jen Silva said they are urging visitors to call their box office or go to the Egyptian’s website to purchase tickets. While reselling has been a problem for years, she said the third parties are getting trickier to identify and stop.
“There's no way to block it. They put different emails, different phone numbers, and then they'll put it on StubHub and sell you a ticket that hasn't even been purchased through our system yet … which is very odd,” she said.
Third-party selling site Event Tickets Center, for example, marked up Park City Follies tickets by almost $200.
Silva said the Egyptian has been tracking different sellers, including StubHub and Ticketmaster, but it’s hard to prevent scams.
Park City Performing Arts, which hosts a winter series and Concerts on the Slopes in the summer, has had similar issues. Executive Director Ember Conley said third-party sellers bought large amounts of tickets for summer programming last year and resold them at almost triple the price.
“People would come in and say, ‘Hey, I bought this off of … StubHub, and I can't find my seat anywhere,’” she said. “We would then have to say, ‘Well, this isn't a legitimate ticket and we can't do anything about your ticket because it wasn't purchased directly off of our website.’”
The problem came to a head at the last summer concert of the 2025 season at Canyons Village. Conley said several resellers that hadn’t sold all the tickets they’d bought called their banks and said the purchases were unauthorized.
The banks then issued chargebacks to Park City Performing Arts and reversed the transactions.
Conley said the nonprofit reported it to the Summit County Sheriff’s Office, which opened a fraud investigation.
“Most of them were either out-of-state or out-of-country. We did have a few local people that were part of this as well,” Conley said. “In the end, what it led us to do is look at all of our systems and put in advanced fraud detection settings.”
Those include blocking large ticket purchases and certain IP addresses. The nonprofit also no longer issues tickets immediately upon purchase. Instead, online buyers get a receipt of purchase followed by tickets emailed 24 hours before the event.
Conley said Park City Performing Arts purposefully keeps lawn seats affordable, so if locals see abnormally high prices, it could be a scam.
Silva encourages people to purchase tickets directly from arts organizations to avoid added fees and potential issues if shows change.
“If we have to cancel a show, the third-party ticket holders don't get our notifications. So that's another issue,” she said.
Silva said years ago, the Egyptian joined forces with other Utah arts organizations in support of a bill that would have outlawed third-party resellers. The measure died in the legislature.
Until more can be done, Silva and Conley urge locals to beware and to purchase directly from host websites.
