As each week passes, the supply and demand for Ohio State football tickets can spiral in two directions, up or down. Brokers and ticket scalpers anxiously watch the process unfold, holding their breath, hoping to make a profit on their investment.The OSU ticket office is not the only seller of tickets. In Columbus, the sale of OSU football tickets is a full-time business for many ticket brokers and independent scalpers. It is a business that is legal in Columbus and the state of Ohio, but has been made illegal in other cities, like Cincinnati and Cleveland.Many Buckeye fans are counting the days until the most anticipated game of the season, against Michigan. According to Richelle Simonson, assistant athletic director for events and tickets, fans who don’t already have a ticket can expect to pay a pretty penny.”A ticket of such demand, originally sold by the ticket office for $41, will cost people several hundred dollars based on location.Matt Colahan, manager of Tickets Galore, a Dublin-based ticket outlet, said an OSU-Michigan ticket would start at $150 and the price would increase depending on the location relative to the 50-yard line.Broker companies, like Tickets Galore, are full-time businesses that specialize in the sale of event tickets, ranging from OSU to the World Series. According to Colahan, they are not required to have a vendor or peddler license to sell tickets because they are an established business and operate out of a store front.Independent ticket scalpers, according to the Columbus Department of Public Safety, is the official term for people who sell tickets outside of events. They do not operate from an established business and are required by law to have a peddler license. The license enables them to operate, meaning the act of selling, bartering, offering for sale or proposing for sale at retail or wholesale.A peddler license can be purchased from the Columbus Department of Public Safety License Section for $27. The license enables ticket scalpers, with a mobile business, to sell tickets.According to Simonson, the selling of OSU tickets by anyone other than the ticket office is more of a nuisance than anything. With the demand for tickets so high, OSU is unable to sell tickets to every person who has a right to buy them. She says this is aggrivating to people who must buy at an inflated price from scalpers or brokers.”From the research I’ve seen, most tickets change hands two or three times before going to the spectator,” Simonson said. “It’s not a problem I think we can control. Number one, because it’s so prelevent, and number two because there are no laws against it.”Bringing in over $3 million per home football game, OSU isn’t the only establishment profiting from ticket sales.Colahan wouldn’t comment on how much his business profits from selling OSU football tickets. He did, however, say Tickets Galore has no set mark-up price.”It varies greatly depending on the game,” he said. “It is more of a feel for things, how much time there is before the game date, the importance of the game, how the team was ranked before the beginning of the season, who it is they are playing, how the team was last year, the effects of the game, such as going to a bowl. Sometimes the weather, but mostly just the demand for the ticket.”All independent scalpers approached at the OSU-Michigan State game declined to provide information on their mark-up price. Though the face value of a ticket is $41, the lowest price many scalpers would sell a ticket for was $65.According to Simonson, OSU sells tickets to students, faculty, staff, donors, alumni and former varsity athletes. Though it is not illegal for brokers and scalpers to buy tickets from authorized buyers and sell them at an inflated price, OSU faculty, staff and students are held to a different standard.If OSU is able to identify a person selling their ticket on internet sites such as E-Bay, or in newspapers, OSU will flag the ticket until a meeting has been held between the person and Simonson.”We give them a chance to defend themselves,” she said. “If we find it to be a reoccuring problem, we can take the ticket away and in some cases, we do so indefinitely.”Unless a law is made to prohibit the scalping of tickets, many people other than OSU will continue to have a business and make a profit from the sale of football tickets. “Being a legal ticket broker is a full-time business. I work 9-to-7 every day, six days a week,” Colahan said. “Right after the Michigan game, we will start getting calls for next year’s season.”Simonson admits OSU does not have the manpower or the money to try and track down all the people who sell their season tickets.”Obviously there is a mark-up people will pay for tickets that perhaps we aren’t realizing,” she said. “If someone will pay $200 for a ticket, why shouldn’t they pay it to the university? We aren’t losing money (to ticket brokers and scalpers), we just aren’t gouging people like they do.”