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A scalper who used bots to buy millions of tickets, now wants to stop them

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Re: A scalper who used bots to buy millions of tickets, now wants to stop them

#11

Post by knz »

jstanley wrote: post #8

> The scourge of ticket bots and the immorality of the shady ticket scalpers using them is conventional wisdom I very much disagree. If I am willing to pay the asking price for tickets, I should be able to buy them. If you're offering them so cheaply that I will happily buy all of the tickets then you're offering them too cheap and you can't really complain if I buy them. If it weren't for ticket-scalpers, die-hard f…

There is a middle ground of letting legitimate buyers purchase tickets and then selling them on the secondary market if they are unable to attend.

Automated bots/teams of people buying many tickets purely for the sake of profit doesn't benefit anyone other than the scalpers.

Re: A scalper who used bots to buy millions of tickets, now wants to stop them

#12

Post by tomtoise »

jstanley wrote: post #8

> The scourge of ticket bots and the immorality of the shady ticket scalpers using them is conventional wisdom I very much disagree. If I am willing to pay the asking price for tickets, I should be able to buy them. If you're offering them so cheaply that I will happily buy all of the tickets then you're offering them too cheap and you can't really complain if I buy them. If it weren't for ticket-scalpers, die-hard f…

> Everyone's a winner.

Except perhaps those die-hard fans who do not have the extra money available to see what may be a once-in-a-lifetime show.

Perhaps a more correct ending would be "Everyone who has enough disposable income is a winner."

Re: A scalper who used bots to buy millions of tickets, now wants to stop them

#13

Post by number6 »

jstanley wrote: post #8

> The scourge of ticket bots and the immorality of the shady ticket scalpers using them is conventional wisdom I very much disagree. If I am willing to pay the asking price for tickets, I should be able to buy them. If you're offering them so cheaply that I will happily buy all of the tickets then you're offering them too cheap and you can't really complain if I buy them. If it weren't for ticket-scalpers, die-hard f…

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Re: A scalper who used bots to buy millions of tickets, now wants to stop them

#14

Post by rubber_duck »

knz wrote: post #11
jstanley wrote: post #8

> The scourge of ticket bots and the immorality of the shady ticket scalpers using them is conventional wisdom I very much disagree. If I am willing to pay the asking price for tickets, I should be able to buy them. If you're offering them so cheaply that I will happily buy all of the tickets then you're offering them too cheap and you can't really complain if I buy them. If it weren't for ticket-scalpers, die-hard f…

There is a middle ground of letting legitimate buyers purchase tickets and then selling them on the secondary market if they are unable to attend. Automated bots/teams of people buying many tickets purely for the sake of profit doesn't benefit anyone other than the scalpers.

>Automated bots/teams of people buying many tickets purely for the sake of profit doesn't benefit anyone other than the scalpers.

He just told you - it benefits people who want to pay more but would otherwise have to rely on luck to buy the tickets - this is the entire reason the system works.

Re: A scalper who used bots to buy millions of tickets, now wants to stop them

#15

Post by OJFord »

tomtoise wrote: post #12
jstanley wrote: post #8

> The scourge of ticket bots and the immorality of the shady ticket scalpers using them is conventional wisdom I very much disagree. If I am willing to pay the asking price for tickets, I should be able to buy them. If you're offering them so cheaply that I will happily buy all of the tickets then you're offering them too cheap and you can't really complain if I buy them. If it weren't for ticket-scalpers, die-hard f…

> Everyone's a winner. Except perhaps those die-hard fans who do not have the extra money available to see what may be a once-in-a-lifetime show. Perhaps a more correct ending would be "Everyone who has enough disposable income is a winner."

If they're too cheap, then it would be everyone with enough disposable time to sit in queue and grab them before they sell out.

Re: A scalper who used bots to buy millions of tickets, now wants to stop them

#16

Post by jkoebler »

jstanley wrote: post #8

> The scourge of ticket bots and the immorality of the shady ticket scalpers using them is conventional wisdom I very much disagree. If I am willing to pay the asking price for tickets, I should be able to buy them. If you're offering them so cheaply that I will happily buy all of the tickets then you're offering them too cheap and you can't really complain if I buy them. If it weren't for ticket-scalpers, die-hard f…

I was saying that artists and ticketmaster and politicians are happy to sell the narrative that "ticket bots and scalpers are the problem and we can't do anything about it" when that is very much not the case. Lots of fans buy this, because they don't know any better. As a journalist, the writing I've seen about the ticket industry the last year has been so, so bad and so simplistic and so infuriating, so I decided to do this piece to fight a lot of these misconceptions

Re: A scalper who used bots to buy millions of tickets, now wants to stop them

#17

Post by jstanley »

tomtoise wrote: post #12
jstanley wrote: post #8

> The scourge of ticket bots and the immorality of the shady ticket scalpers using them is conventional wisdom I very much disagree. If I am willing to pay the asking price for tickets, I should be able to buy them. If you're offering them so cheaply that I will happily buy all of the tickets then you're offering them too cheap and you can't really complain if I buy them. If it weren't for ticket-scalpers, die-hard f…

> Everyone's a winner. Except perhaps those die-hard fans who do not have the extra money available to see what may be a once-in-a-lifetime show. Perhaps a more correct ending would be "Everyone who has enough disposable income is a winner."

Sure, but some fan wasn't going to make it either way.

Why should the fan who is willing to pay more money have to miss out, in favour of a fan who is paying less money?

Re: A scalper who used bots to buy millions of tickets, now wants to stop them

#18

Post by Retric »

jstanley wrote: post #8

> The scourge of ticket bots and the immorality of the shady ticket scalpers using them is conventional wisdom I very much disagree. If I am willing to pay the asking price for tickets, I should be able to buy them. If you're offering them so cheaply that I will happily buy all of the tickets then you're offering them too cheap and you can't really complain if I buy them. If it weren't for ticket-scalpers, die-hard f…

Because bands make less money they produce fewer shows which is another net loss.

Further, it's not die hard fans that use scalped tickets it's people with disposable money. If anything fewer die hard fans get tickets because a fan will showup at 12:00 to buy tickets but they don't build a bot to get them in the next 0.1 seconds.

Re: A scalper who used bots to buy millions of tickets, now wants to stop them

#19

Post by itchyouch »

conjectures wrote: post #10

I'm still trying to understand why they don't just auction tickets.

Because it is about being equitable to middle and lower-income fans. Otherwise, only the richest fans would outbid everyone else and the artists don't want to alienate a large majority of their fan base by making their shows unavailable to only but the folks with the means.

Re: A scalper who used bots to buy millions of tickets, now wants to stop them

#20

Post by NLips »

jstanley wrote: post #8

> The scourge of ticket bots and the immorality of the shady ticket scalpers using them is conventional wisdom I very much disagree. If I am willing to pay the asking price for tickets, I should be able to buy them. If you're offering them so cheaply that I will happily buy all of the tickets then you're offering them too cheap and you can't really complain if I buy them. If it weren't for ticket-scalpers, die-hard f…

This is incorrect. There's a false equivalence between the fans who want to see the gig the most and the fans who are willing to spend the most. The current system means that people with lots of money who aren't super interested will out compete raging fans on low incomes.

I'm not suggesting that basing it on first come, first served is ideal, but I think it's probably fairer.

If an event organiser/ticketer wants to use dynamic pricing, that's up to them. Sometimes they don't want to be cause they'd rather build or reward loyalty. Maybe they want to make sure that low income households have a decent chance of getting tickets.

The system above is advocating for efficient markets over everything else.

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