Springsteen Tickets Hit $10,000, And Wall Street Gets Scalped

We ain’t in Asbury Park anymore: prime tickets to "Springsteen on Broadway" are now going for as much as $10,000 on StubHub.

Even a cheap seat will cost you $1,400. Never mind that it says $75 on the ticket.

Sure, those $2.50 tickets, circa “Rosalita,” disappeared in the ’70s. But The Boss’s run at Broadway’s Walter Kerr Theater is just the latest example of how today’s ticket resellers, AKA scalpers, help drive prices to you’ve-got-to-be-joking levels.

No wonder Wall Streeters want in on this action. Tickets, whether to Bruce, Adele or “Hamilton,” seem like a sure thing -- as safe and liquid as T-bills, only a lot more lucrative. Talk about price inelasticity. And the business is huge: an estimated $15 billion a year.

That, anyway, is the thinking. Because now a few big-money types, including Paul Tudor Jones and Michael Dell, were allegedly snookered like out-of-towners in Times Square.

The pitch is an old one. The supposed fraudsters typically tell their marks they have the inside track on an investment, in this case, hot tickets. The marks hand over money and -- poof! -- it’s gone.

The latest case involves Craig Carton, the popular New York sports radio shock jock. He was arrested earlier this month, accused of taking part in a multimillion-dollar scam involving tickets to Adele, Barbra Streisand and Justin Bieber.

Carton got Doug Pardon, an important partner at hedge fund Brigade Capital Management LP, to persuade colleagues to lend $10 million to Carton’s ticket resale business. The firm, which had invested in the privately held Vivid Seats LLC, reasoned Carton had the connections needed to buy blocks of tickets cheaply for resale, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. But Carton used some of Brigade’s money to pay off his gambling debts, prosecutors said.

Carton has pleaded not guilty and vigorously denied the allegations. Brigade and Pardon declined to comment.

It’s not the first time supposedly sophisticated investors have been lured in with promises of lofty returns and celebrity connections. Money managers are particularly susceptible nowadays as they prowl for investments in a low-interest-rate world.