Maryland Renaissance Festival sues ticket scalpers

Maryland Renaissance Festival sues ticket scalpers

The Maryland Renaissance Festival is suing ticket resellers to combat ticket scalping after discovering about 1,800 tickets were bought and resold by scalpers this year. FOX 5 DC's Homa Bash reports.

ANNAPOLIS, MD. - The Maryland Renaissance Festival is fighting back against ticket scalpers. The popular festival is suing resellers, hoping to send a strong message. 

What we know:

This is the 49th year for the Maryland Renaissance Festival — and this season has proven to be more popular than ever. 187,000 tickets sold in just ten hours. But not all of them to legitimate buyers.

"And we’ve initiated lawsuits against those people, restraining orders, and so we’ll keep doing that. We’ll do that all winter long if we have to," said Jules Smith, president of Maryland Renaissance Festival. 

The popular festival sold out quickly this season, with nearly 400,000 attendees over nine weekends in August, September, and October. But Smith, who helped found this fair five decades ago, says about 1,800 of those tickets were bought by scalpers reselling them on third-party sites. It’s a small percentage, but now they’re taking legal action against them.

Tickets cost $32 for adults, but are being resold for anywhere between $80 to $200. 

Tracking the scalpers 

What you can do:

Festival organizers are asking people who bought tickets on third-party sites to call them so they can track the scalpers, file lawsuits — and eventually reimburse the buyers.

"So this is our reputation. This is the 49th season of the festival. We’ve worked very hard to attract this many people, and if you read the comments, people are upset. We don’t want them to blame us. We’re taking measures to try to stop the scalping," said Smith. 

By the way, just two more weekends left in this Renaissance Festival season.