HUBBUB: Bruce Springsteen and other megastars will play the Garden, and scalpers are taking advantage.
Shameless scalpers are cashing in on a Hurricane Sandy benefit concert by hawking tickets online at overly inflated prices.
The star-studded concert at Madison Square Garden sold out within minutes — and tickets instantly popped up on the secondhand market by greedy sellers who have no interest in helping storm survivors.
The most expensive tickets on StubHub sold for $3,700 way up in the nosebleeds for Wednesday’s show dubbed “12-12-12”, which features A-list rockers like Billy Joel, Bruce Springsteen and Paul McCartney.
The face value of the show’s tickets ranged from $150 to $2,500.
There were more than 900 tickets available on resale sites, according to Chris Matcovich of TiqIq, an aggregator Web site for tickets on the secondary market.
The lowest price for a ticket on those sites last night was around $560 — 273 percent above the minimum face value, he said.
StubHub is donating its share of the profits to the cause through the Robin Hood foundation, a New York-based poverty fighting non profit.
Individual sellers are not obligated to do the same — but Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) wants to change that.
“Every dollar spent for these concert tickets should go to help the victims of Superstorm Sandy — not to line the pocket of unscrupulous scalpers,” said Schumer, who wants ticket Web sites to only sell tickets if profits go to charity.
But a StubHub spokesman said that’s not possible.
“Technologically, we don’t have the ability to. We don’t ask people right now to type in the face value of the ticket, so there’s no way to track the difference between the face vale of the ticket and what they sold it for,” said Glen Lehrman. “Our choice is either to take down the listings or continue our resale and donate the proceeds.
“Our feeling was that people were going to sell these tickets [on the secondary market] regardless. At least by enabling it and donating our proceeds, we felt that we could raise money for the charity and do the right thing.”
StubHub is donating its 25 percent share of each ticket sold — and had raised $300,000 for the cause as of Wednesday.
The company provides an option for sellers to donate the sale price.
The highest listed price for a ticket was $60,000 for the second-level promenade — though it’s unlikely a ticket would be sold at that price, Lehrman said.
State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman also demanded that the company clarify how money will be diverted to those in need.
“Your Web site states that ‘StubHub will donate 100 percent of the profits from this event to the Robin Hood Relief Fund,’ ” he wrote in a letter.
“It is unclear to the public what is meant by ‘profits’ and how much will in fact be donated from each sale, especially since the producers of this concert have committed to donating 100 percent of ticket sales to the Robin Hood Relief Fund.”
Lehrman said StubHub is changing the Web site to make it more clear.
A spokeswoman for TicketMaster, the official ticket agent for the concert, said that its resale Web sites blocked scalpers from selling tickets to charitable events.
The concert is being produced by Harvey Weinstein — and will also feature Bon Jovi, Alicia Keys, Eddie Vedder, Kanye West and The Who.
It will be broadcast live on IFC at 7:30 p.m.