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Why You Can’t Get a Ticket to the NBA Finals

theringer.com

41–47 of 47 posts

Re: Why You Can’t Get a Ticket to the NBA Finals

#41
post #28

A few years ago Louis CK started selling tickets for his shows exclusively from his website. His post announcing the process is worth a read. I bought tickets for that show from him and the process was as simple as he describes it. https://louisck.net/news/im-going-on-the-road

He certainly doesn't still exclusively do that. Tickets for his current tour are sold through Ticketmaster.

I was not aware, but this is true. I looked through his latest tour and ticket prices vary, tickets are sold from various ticket outlets, and (depending on the outlet) additional fees may inflate prices. It seems like the only tenet that remains is that about ticket resale.

https://louisck.net/tour-dates : 'Regarding ticket resale: we take great efforts and have many methods of finding out what inventory is being sold on "broker" sites like Stubhub and Vivid Seats and immediately invalidating those tickets.'

Re: Why You Can’t Get a Ticket to the NBA Finals

#42
post #38

> A couple of my friends are scalpers. You have bad friends. Edit: Aren't scalpers viewed as the scum? Why the downvotes?

Probably because it wasn't substantive. There's also something uncivil about reducing a complex thing like lutefisk's comment to the most-easily-denounced bit, then denouncing it. It shuts down conversation instead of taking it in an interesting direction. We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11837077 and marked it off-topic.

Thank you

Re: Why You Can’t Get a Ticket to the NBA Finals

#43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't relate to any of the arguments in this thread! Why does it need to be fair? It's a private business putting on an event that nobody needs to go to except as a luxury entertainment. It's not access to food and water. We don't expect that other limited luxuries should be available to everyone, so why concerts and sport events? Surely tickets going to the people who'll pay the most is fair?

Wouldn't this be case-by-case? That argument makes perfect sense if we're talking about a bar hosting a band, but I can't apply that same logic to a stadium whose cost was largely borne by taxpayers with the promise it would enrich public life.

Sure, but we're talking about the finals here, not a regular season game. Of course a huge number of people want to go. During the regular season I have no problems getting tickets. Demand is huge, so the price goes up.

Re: Why You Can’t Get a Ticket to the NBA Finals

#44
post #36
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the demand for hamburgers exceeds the supply, then the market will hopefully do its thing and supply more hamburgers. On the other hand supplying a few more copies of your favorite band or sports team is not going to happen any time soon. Whether a lottery would be more fair depends on your point of few. Many would certainly say no because the artist or sports team would make less money than they could and people…

I'd suggest that a lottery is less fair even to the poor — it doesn't account at all for how badly someone wants a ticket, and to whatever extent it might be gameable, the poor will always be the least well-equipped to game it. Also, while you can't clone Taylor Swift and put on 10 shows at once, if the full market value for popular tickets went to the people creating that value (instead of resellers), there are actu…

[...] it doesn't account at all for how badly someone wants a ticket [...]

Only given that there a lot less rich than poorer people it seems pretty unlikely that badly wanting a ticket would correlates with being able to spend a lot of money on a ticket. And I would actually suggest that the extend to that people would like to buy anything is mostly independent of their wealth. Why would a poor guy be less interested in owning a private island than a billionaire? There are just a lot more things in front of an island that they have to take care of first.

[...] and to whatever extent it might be gameable, the poor will always be the least well-equipped to game it.

Certainly true but that is not an argument against a lottery because it applies to most if not all systems.

Also, while you can't clone Taylor Swift and put on 10 shows at once, if the full market value for popular tickets went to the people creating that value (instead of resellers), there are actually lots of ways the market could respond to increase supply. Taylor Swift could do more shows per city. Or more shows per day. Or livestream to multiple venues. Or build extensions on the venue. Or build new venues specifically for this kind of thing. The list goes on.

As far as I can tell being on tour is a really tough job. They could maybe have two or three sets of the equipment with separate crews and cut down the time between shows but that will take you only so far. Also being close to the stage is very different from being a hundred meters away or only looking at a screen. There is certainly some room but I don't think it is that much. And in the case of sports events it is certainly even worse, you can't have games every day or so.

Besides that, the argument that a smaller share for resellers and a larger share for the artists could help in the way you mentioned is not limited to any specific distribution strategy and applies as well to a lottery-like scheme.

A giant band can't be duplicated exactly, but they do have lots of competition. They compete with other bands, the movie theater, a quiet night in, the bowling alley, etc. It's entertainment. So if floating ticket prices put the tickets out of reach of most fans, the market will find a way to increase supply.

Sure, you can always do something entirely different, but we are discussing ticket allocation for a specific event. Doing something else if you can't get a ticket is not a solution to the problem.

Otherwise the average fan goes bowling, and long term you lose your core fan base. The supply will increase to meet the demand. Maybe via one of the ideas above, and maybe via something that we can't even think of right now (and which someone will get rich for figuring out).

As said before, I am not convinced that the supply side is elastic enough in this case. Personalized tickets and lottery-like sales are actually things that quite a few bands and events do in order to keep the price under control.

Re: Why You Can’t Get a Ticket to the NBA Finals

#45
post #32
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's no different than now, except the money will go to the artists and producers and not some useless middleman with a fast web scraper.

Now I am bit confused. Yes, on the consumer side there will be no big difference as compared to the current situation but don't we agree that the current situation is not good or at least not optimal?

We're disagreeing on why the current situation is not good.

I'm mad that there's a class of a parasites getting rich off the backs of the artists and workers that create the value in the concerts.

I have no issue with poor people being unable to see live shows.

Re: Why You Can’t Get a Ticket to the NBA Finals

#47
post #2

Well this explains a lot. I recently bought NBA tickets to Game 3 of the Western Conference Finals (Oklahoma City Thunder vs. Golden State Warriors), and I was absolutely pissed off at the whole process. I went on a small Twitter rampage to vent about it, with a picture that shows NO TICKETS available LITERALLY THE SECOND they went "on sale" (10AM Thursday May 19, 2016), and then beside it another screenshot of ALMOS…

i was able to see an on broadway, original cast, performance of book of mormon.. for free

my sister had a friend from college who grew up on the upper east side who in turn had a friend from childhood who 'invests' ~10,000$ every year by buying tickets to broadway shows and reselling them

when we went looking four tickets were offered to us for free because 'i've made 4000x on this show already'

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