On the court things have been running relatively smoothly at the Shanghai Masters. But off the court, a problem that has plagued the tournament for years, continues - black market ticket sellers, or scalpers, seems impossible to eradicate. Zhang Ningben was at the tennis center to see how fans are dealing with the issue this year.

There were a number of people looking to buy tickets near the tennis center this morning, and even more scalpers looking to sell. But most buyers prefered to buy at the ticket office.

Rebecca Dewhurst, British tennis fan living in China, said,"I just paid 160. We're just going to have a look around and just to see what's going on at the moment."

But some buyers said they had no choice but to deal with scalpers.

Zhang Ningben, Shanghai, said,"The cheapest ticket is 60 yuan, which allows you watch the matches on Court Two. But as we can see, such tickets are all sold out. The only solution is to turn to scalpers, who are charging 80 yuan."

In response, one visitor says he has booked tickets online before coming to the stadium.

Han Chao, tennis fan from Wuhan, said,"Last year, the tickets were all sold out at the ticket office on the spot. So I turned to scalpers and the price was a little bit cheaper because they were selling complimentary tickets."

ATP organizers say more than 30 percent of the tickets are given away for free to sponsors every year, and many of those end up in the pockets of scalpers. Last year, organizers bought back 300 tickets for semi-final and final matches from the public and re-sold them at the ticket office. But they say they won't be doing that again this year.

Yang Yibin, organizer of Juss Event, said,"We have made some preparation before we started selling tickets. We reserved some tickets to sell on the spot for those who want to watch the semi-finals and finals."

However, one visitor suggested organizers should do more to stop scalpers.

Chen Hong, tennis fan from Sichuan, said,"First, they should reduce the number of gift tickets as many people will sell them to scalpers because they just don't watch tennis. Besides, they should put a cap on how many tickets one can buy at one time. For example, each one could only buy at most five tickets."

But organizers say they're already doing better than other tennis events in China. They note that 60 percent of the tickets for the just concluded China Open in Beijing were given away for free to sponsors. That is double the proportion of free tickets for the Shanghai event. And they say so far more than 80 percent of the tickets have been sold, and they are expecting more than 110,000 visitors during the whole tournament.

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