Under a law that expires in June, licensed ticket resellers may charge up to 45 percent above the face value of tickets for events at large arenas.

By contrast, he says, TicketsNow opens its site only to licensed ticket resellers, and screens them as an extra precaution.

Casual tickets however, are available in small numbers and can be bought via links from the official website, to various ticket resellers.

Prices on ticket brokering websites are determined by demand, availability, and the ticket reseller.

Although the total figure seems hard to believe, he said, it indicates interest in the show among ticket resellers, both legal and illegal.

Despite this, Google has placed adverts for unofficial ticket resellers which are breaking the law by selling London 2012 tickets to customers in the UK.

In such scenarios, those ticket resellers are actually selling forward contracts of those tickets.

Individuals who genuinely wish to attend a popular event may find themselves unable to get tickets, as they have already been sold to ticket resellers.

The New York Times reported that this could help the agency determine demand for a given event and more effectively compete with ticket resellers.

At the same time, the joint congressional committee contacted online auction operators, ticket resellers and classified listing services to block sales of the tickets.