KENTUCKY HUSTLER: THE TERRY HATTON STORY

A man describes his life as a legendary ticket scalper in this debut memoir.

Before he was a notorious hustler in the secondary ticket market, Hatton was just a Kentucky Wildcats fan. The son of a Wildcats basketball hero, the author and his brothers grew up in a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints family only a few miles from the University of Kentucky campus. In fact, it was at a Wildcats football game that 14-year-old Hatton and his brother Jeff were introduced to the world of ticket scalping: “We’re walking into the stadium to watch the game when a man stops us and says, ‘Will you take fifty dollars each for those two tickets?’ Now, I’m in eighth grade. I don’t have any money. I’ve never had fifty dollars all to myself. We sell him the tickets….We’re freaking out—this is so much money!” A talented basketball player in his own right, the author saw his sports career at UK end when he tore his ACL. His basketball days over, the freshly married Hatton tried a number of jobs—racehorse salesman, car salesman, movie extra—before landing himself a gig as DJ Terry “the Hit Man” Hatton on Lexington’s WFMI radio. But once his son was born, the author knew he needed to start making some real money. He threw himself back into the ticket scalping game, learning quickly what to do and (after getting arrested for running from a cop) what not to do. With his brothers involved, the Hatton ticket scalping business soon branched out into non-UK events: Super Bowls, Bruce Springsteen concerts, the Summer Olympics, and even World Cups in Paris and Berlin. In this memoir, Hatton recounts his ups and downs in the international ticket scalping game, one of the most colorful, high-stakes hustles around.

The author is a natural storyteller, and each anecdote feels as though it has been spun many times over drinks at a bar or a pregame tailgate. He inflects his rise with all the drama and intrigue of a classic underworld tale: “We spent the rest of that season improving our craft. There were four main guys who controlled the market: Red, Ducksy, Irv, and Harold Duvall. They were the guys at Rupp Arena, and the cops left them alone. I got to know all of them pretty well, and we became their primary suppliers.” Hatton—who describes himself as an “innocent Mormon boy” —makes for an unlikely kingpin, and even though ticket scalping is a crime, many readers will still root for his success. He’s clearly delighted in his image as the “Kentucky Hustler,” and there’s a fair amount of myth polishing that goes on over the course of the book. Even so, Hatton makes the world of 1990s and 2000s sporting events feel like a far-off time and place: a milieu in which duffle bags of paper tickets and armoires full of cash were everyday items. It’s an episodic story, but it’s never boring. Readers will leave these pages with the urge to go score some tickets to a college basketball game.

A spirited, engrossing, larger-than-life account of a career ticket scalper.