Ticket scalpers are finding a new enemy besides the men in blue -- the Internet. As online technology and security continue to improve, a growing number of sports teams are turning to the e-world to help season ticket holders unload unwanted or unusable tickets.

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The Pittsburgh Pirates are the latest to join the fray. The team recently unveiled two services, My Pirates Tickets and Pirates Replay Ticket Window. Accessible on the Tickets drop-down menu at pirates.com, the services allow season ticket holders either to transfer tickets to friends or sell them to unknown buyers, all online.

The new services are based on technology developed by tickets.com, an online ticketing company owned by Major League Baseball Advanced Media (MLBAM -- pronounced M-L-BAM). The key to the technology is the integration of the Web site with the ticket scanning machines at the ballpark -- in this case PNC Park.

When you reach the turnstile, those machines scan a printed bar code on your ticket to make sure they are authentic and then deactivate the bar code so it can't be used by others trying to enter the park. In a sense, your ticket is no longer that piece of cardboard; it's that bar code, which is stored electronically in the club's database.

The bar code is the reason My Pirates Tickets works. When you decide to give your tickets to a designated buddy, the system deactivates your bar code and creates a new, valid bar code for your buddy. Then, it e-mails your buddy a new electronic ticket that he can print on his own laser or ink-jet printer.

The bar code on this new ticket will work at the turnstile just the way your original ticket would have worked. So you don't have to hassle with the question of how to get that ticket to your buddy at the last minute.

Recently, I had the luxury of using this concept when I bought tickets to a Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim game through Ticketmaster.com. I printed the ticket -- actually a full page PDF document -- at home, then brought it to the stadium with me where it scanned successfully.

Less risky proposition

Normally, when you buy a ticket outside the stadium, you're taking a risk. The ticket might not be valid, and when you get to the turnstile, you'll be turned away.

That happened to friends of mine at last year's Big East Basketball Tournament in New York.

You shouldn't have to worry about that with legitimate brokers and online ticket marketplaces, including team Web sites.

With Pirates Replay Ticket Window, season ticket holders (in the high-priced near-dugout seats for now) can offer their tickets for sale, with the Pirates as an intermediary, using self-printed tickets with bar codes just like the electronic tickets you offer to your buddies.

When the tickets are sold, the season ticket holder actually gets a credit to his or her Pirates account for the face value of the tickets.

Jim Alexander, the Pirates' senior director of ticket sales and fan development, says such online transactions take away the "buyer beware" aspect of buying tickets that had already been sold because the sale is endorsed by the Pirates.

Other legitimate ticket selling resources also provide guarantees. At StubHub, a large online ticket reseller marketplace, the company guarantees authenticity and delivery.

For the Pirates, authenticity is easy to guarantee.

While anybody can buy, only season ticket holders of record are allowed to sell, so they already have the seller's name on file -- and have already collected a substantial sum from that person. (Groups that purchase season tickets and then split them up among members would have to deal with the person designated as the season ticket holder on the account).

StubHub does it differently.

If a buyer doesn't get the ticket, StubHub will get it from a different source. So if the buyer gets to the ballpark and the ticket is invalid, he can call StubHub's customer service number, and it will get a new ticket for him while he's on the phone.

The company protects itself and its buyers by registering the credit card number of the seller as well as the buyer. If the seller doesn't produce as promised, he doesn't get the cash, and he must buy the make-good tickets. So he has no incentive to not come through.

Pricing also is handled differently.

When a ticket holder sells through the Pirates, he sells at face value. When he sells through StubHub, he chooses his price. StubHub doesn't even know what the face value is.

If he sells through an independent ticket broker or agency, he makes a deal with the broker, who then makes an independent deal with the buyer. So the broker typically sets the price.

A national trend

The Pirates are not the only team that offers to act as an intermediary when fans sell tickets to one another, although browsing the Steelers and Penguins Web sites turn up no reseller programs.

Tickets.com co-president Andy Donkin said he had put similar programs in place for the Boston Red Sox, St. Louis Cardinals, Chicago Cubs, San Francisco Giants and Texas Rangers, too.

Four of those baseball teams, like the Steelers, sell out a large number of their games. So helping ticket holders resell their seats is an easy decision. There are no more seats to sell.

But the Pirates, near the end of their 13th consecutive losing season, don't sell out every game.

Even so, Donkin suggests that there are benefits beyond the simple seat sale, such as letting the club learn more about the behaviors of its season ticket holders. Each team sets its own parameters based on the needs of the club and its fans.

Alexander, of the Pirates, says that allowing season ticket holders to sell their tickets through the Pirates Web site helps make season tickets more valuable. It offers them an outlet for games they can't attend, so they're not stuck with the tickets.

The theory is that if a potential season ticket buyer knows he can get rid of tickets he can't use, he'll be more likely to buy a season ticket.

That makes sense to Robert Mazzie, president of Prime Time Tickets Inc., a ticket broker in West Virginia. Mazzie says that even the most ardent season ticket holders let 10 percent of their tickets go to waste.

The ability to resell tickets will reduce the waste. Although the Pirates lose seat revenue by not selling an unsold seat, they create a happier season ticket holder -- plus they can collect a transaction fee for a seat that was already sold, though the fee structures are a bit complicated and some are waived.

As an experiment, I sold two sets of tickets through my Pirates season tickets account. One set sold in less than two hours, the other in 9 hours, 25 minutes. For the season ticket holder, that's rapid turnaround for only a few minutes worth of work.

Jeff Berman, vice president of business development for StubHub, agrees that it is healthy for the industry to have the teams offer these services -- even though they compete against him.

The online ticket buyer, he says, is looking for choice. Knowing he can go to the Pirates for certain types of tickets and to his Web site for others is good.

He also recognizes that the Major League clubs must put restrictions in place. The Pirates currently allow only near-dugout seat holders to sell, though they plan on opening it up to other season ticket holders next year.

StubHub and ticket brokers allow anyone with a valid ticket to sell.

And they list other teams, sports and entertainment tickets, including the Steelers and Penguins.

Neither the Pirates nor StubHub charges anything to list tickets for sale. Fees come into play only if the tickets are sold.

Does this all mean that nobody loses? Alexander, Berman and Mazzie all suggest that it's better for the industry because it helps distance ticket reselling from the shady reputation of ticket scalpers.

But it doesn't guarantee that your tickets will actually sell. According to Mazzie, about 80 percent of the time, the tickets are resold before game time.

Still, it remains risky to sell them on the streets, which is why you can often get discounts if you buy what's left at the last minute from a street vendor.

Mazzie adds: "You can't throw money after a bad product," meaning if the team you put on the field doesn't draw a crowd for normal tickets, it's not going to help the reseller market.