[jedberg]

Ticket scalpers used to provide significant value. They provided liquidity in the market. If you wanted to get rid of some tickets you bought because you couldn't go anymore, you could sell them to scalpers. If you wanted last minute tickets to a popular event, you could buy them from scalpers.

But now that the venues manage their own secondary sales, the scalper is just extracting rent.

[fsckboy]

it is not extracting rent to sell something at the market price. They are engaging in almost riskless arbitrage because the OEM for the music or sports event sees some value in nominally pricing the event below market.