Water Worked

We figured it was a great opportunity to test the city's interest in the NHL. Pro hockey has been kicked around as a possible main attraction at the Sprint Center, which is set to open in 2007. So, in the ultimate test of the market, we tried to scalp our tickets.

The event did not sell out, so every scalper was at a disadvantage. Most tickets had a face value of $40, but one scalper told us he was happy to get $30 for a decent seat.

Ticketless fans reveled in the buyer's market. "I'm light," a middle-aged man told a scalper as he approached the arena with a female companion. The man, who appeared to have means, seemed to enjoy the opportunity to barter with someone as theoretically streetwise as a scalper. "That's all I got left, dude," he told another, after lobbing a lowball in an effort to bring down the price. "I'm going to be light for beer."

Our seats were in the upper bowl in the arena, making it highly unlikely they'd fetch even three-quarters of their value. (We planned to send the proceeds of any sale to the Alternative Newsweekly Foundation, an industry nonprofit that is assisting the staff at Gambit Weekly in New Orleans.) Plus, we had no idea what we were doing.

At one point, we walked against the grain of pedestrian traffic along Genessee Street. Holding aloft the tickets, we felt like Susan Sarandon flashing her saggy peace sign at the Oscars a few years ago. "You're going the wrong way, dude," a man said as our shoulders passed in the twilight.

We decided to lurk near the ticket office. Another guy with a bad seat was there, looking for $15 but willing to settle for $10 or maybe less.

We chatted with another scalper about the prospects of an NHL team in KC. The scalper, who would not give his name, said he believed that this area would support a winner, a team "that had some dynamite behind it."

Kansas City, the scalper noted, was within driving range of Iowa and other neighboring states without major-league sports franchises.

"When your team's winning, people will drive all the way down from Nebraska, because there's nothing to do in Nebraska," he said.

At one of the ticket windows, we encountered several unhappy faces. The party of five had arrived with tickets to the 2004 NHL exhibition game at Kemper that had been canceled because of a labor dispute. (Unable to reach a bargain, NHL players and owners lost the entire 2004-05 season.) The ticket holders had failed to seek refunds, falsely believing they'd be honored when the game was rescheduled. A guy in the group, wearing a Blues jersey, took his frustration out on a cigarette, inhaling violently.

We offered him one of our tickets. He accepted with thanks. A woman in his party then passed a credit card through the ticket window and bought a four-ticket block for $100.

With the other ticket still in hand, we went inside the arena. Entire rows in Kemper's upper reaches were empty. But the people who had come seemed knowledgeable, cheering when St. Louis killed a two-man penalty advantage in the first period.

The announced attendance was 12,686, substantially lower than the sell-out crowd of 17,285 that had watched an NHL exhibition at Kemper in 2003. It was hard to believe that the owner of the Predators — one of the teams mentioned as a possible resident of the Sprint Center — would come away thrilled by the idea of moving his team here.