Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

motherboard.vice.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 328 posts

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

#131

Post by lmm »

mattnewton wrote: post #75
amelius wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solution: when buying a ticket, you pay an additional amount in deposit, which you receive back when you actually arrive at the venue.

That adds a lot of overhead (who is responsible for marking attendance? How is the refund managed, especially in the case of cash payments?), opens up new forms of abuse around how you count attendance, but most importantly doesn't prevent scalping from finding an equilibrium above the ability of a demographic to pay, and I am not even convinced it will stop scalpers from finding price points that have profit for the…

> I mean, should you need a staff economist to price your concert tickets?

If you want to avoid your tickets going to the people who are willing to pay the most for them then yes you're going to need an economist, and even then you will likely fail. (As you should, IMO)

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

#132

Post by vertex-four »

jstanley wrote: post #31
vertex-four wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? The only reason to believe this is to believe that having more money means you're inherently more deserving of things, no matter the wishes of the people providing those things.

It's not about deserving in any sort of moral sense. If I offer you $1000 for something you're selling, and someone else offers $2000, who are you going to sell it to? He obviously is willing to give you more, so give it to him. That's fair. That's life. EDIT: And if you sell it to me for $1000, don't be surprised if I turn around and sell it to the $2000 guy. He wants it more than I do, and he's going to get it one…

I don't see why that's "fair" - your definition of fair is entirely based on an assertion that someone with more money should be able to get more things at the expense of others, even when the person/entity providing those things doesn't wish that to be the case. Or, in other words, your assertion is that capitalism is inherently fair, because you're defining fair as anything that is the result of capitalism.

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

#133

Post by [deleted] »

darpa_escapee wrote: post #67
ctrl-j wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you're saying it's humorous that we don't like rich people dropping loads of cash on things that should be fairly available to everyone? I don't see the funny.

I'm saying it's funny how we tend to find excuses to justify and moralize that behavior. The top-level comment does this by explaining why driving up the cost of a commodity by creating scarcity is a good thing because rich people who don't want to wait in line can now cut it, while everyone gets to pay more assuming they can afford the new price. By funny I mean tragic.

[deleted]

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

#134

Post by pitt1980 »

lixquid wrote: post #124
ue_ wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>but people have a visceral negative reaction to arbitrageurs since they didn't do anything to "earn" their profits I don't think there's anything wrong with getting money that you didn't earn (so long as you're not exploiting people, as the bourgeoisie do); I do think there is something ethically questionable about forcing (I use the word 'forcing' to refer to the idea that within the confines of show-going, it is t…

But.. they are exploiting people. That's literally what they are doing; expecting people to purchase these tickets at a higher cost for the simple reason that supply is short.

that's every market you purchase anything in

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

#135

Post by hackermailman »

got2surf wrote: post #106
hackermailman wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Live Nation and its ticket distributor Ticketmaster consistently promote scarcity by diverting the majority of tickets into the hands of resellers like TicketsNow, which is a Ticketmaster subsidiary so they can get the full demand rate in the secondary market. The artist gets a cut of this, it's all a scheme and nobody at Ticketmaster cares about the bots who fight over the tiny amount of released tickets. Artists kn…

Also, doesn't Ticketmaster benefit from the scalping through more transaction fees anyway? Between TicketsNow and the increased transaction volume from scalpers/flippers, seems like TicketMaster can't really lose.

Live Nation owns Ticketmaster, and often the venues too, so in the end it all flows back to the promoter from drink pricing to ticket reselling. We used to joke in highschool that the guys punting tickets for 10x the price in the parking lot of shows were Ticketmaster employees and now they actually are.

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

#136

Post by logfromblammo »

matwood wrote: post #71
knodi123 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. And if I'm an artist who wants to ensure that fans without a lot of money can see me? Should I be allowed to offer a concert where tickets cost 20% of market value, or should "…

> And if I'm an artist who wants to ensure that fans without a lot of money can see me? Which fans without a lot of money? How do they get picked? Lottery? Who can click the fastest? Who has no job and can stand in line for days?

Release a gratis band-themed mobile game, with user ID tied to the phone owner.

In this app, allow the user to collect a free sweepstakes entry, with a 60 minute cooldown timer, to a maximum of 8 entries per calendar day. Whenever concert tickets go on sale, reserve a block on the floor from the Nth row to the back of the floor. (We all know that the spots all the way up front are for the groupies, superfans, and rich people.)

Allow users to allocate their entries to specific shows/venues on your tour. Hold a lottery for each show, and allow the users that are drawn to buy 2 tickets for $2, and an exclusive concert tee for $21. Allow a few winners to get gratis superfan passes, to meet the band, collect autographs, get the gratis ultra-exclusive VIP concert tee, scream and collapse on the fainting couch, or whatever it is your hardcore fans would most like to do. Close to concert time, if the venue is not actually sold out, do another lottery and make a second-chance offering to get any previously unsold tickets for $1 each. Any user that does not or cannot buy tickets can then spend their entries to get gratis/discounted merch or media files, or just get their remaining sweepstakes entries back, perhaps to try again on the next show.

The user arrives at the venue, and presents a certain screen of the app on their phone to be permitted entry.

This rewards dedication to the band (and its licensed merch). In order to maximize your chances, you have to check in every hour that you are awake and not at work or in school. You can't get those tickets any other way, and if you don't make the effort, someone who is more into the band will.

Also, the app itself can recruit and assimilate new people into your fanbase. And you can make sure that the band's own holding company controls the IP and app-based revenue, not the record label, promoter, or distributor.

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

#137

Post by vkou »

darpa_escapee wrote: post #67
ctrl-j wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you're saying it's humorous that we don't like rich people dropping loads of cash on things that should be fairly available to everyone? I don't see the funny.

I'm saying it's funny how we tend to find excuses to justify and moralize that behavior. The top-level comment does this by explaining why driving up the cost of a commodity by creating scarcity is a good thing because rich people who don't want to wait in line can now cut it, while everyone gets to pay more assuming they can afford the new price. By funny I mean tragic.

Scalpers don't create scarcity. They aren't buying tickets, and setting them on fire.

The artists are who create scarcity, by virtue of not having enough capacity to serve all fans willing the pay the retail price of the ticket. (Or by not doing tiered pricing, cheaper ticket distribution by lottery, etc.)

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

#138

Post by chillwaves »

lixquid wrote: post #124
ue_ wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>but people have a visceral negative reaction to arbitrageurs since they didn't do anything to "earn" their profits I don't think there's anything wrong with getting money that you didn't earn (so long as you're not exploiting people, as the bourgeoisie do); I do think there is something ethically questionable about forcing (I use the word 'forcing' to refer to the idea that within the confines of show-going, it is t…

But.. they are exploiting people. That's literally what they are doing; expecting people to purchase these tickets at a higher cost for the simple reason that supply is short.

Artificially short by scalpers driving up demand.

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

#139

Post by lmm »

tomtoise wrote: post #26
jstanley wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Well, why should the fan who is able to pay less money miss out in favor of the fan who has more? Are people fundamentally more deserving for having more disposable income? The Artist (ie the provider of the 'value') is not making more profit, they have set what they feel their work is worth. Scalpers add no value and simply take. Automation of scalping is bad for everybody involved (edit: except of course the scalpe…

> Automation of scalping is bad for everybody involved (edit: except of course the scalpers themselves), as typically bots will buy out tickets to popular events extremely quickly, leaving legitimate fans out in the cold.

On the contrary, it's extremely good for legitimate fans who e.g. have a job and can't take time off to buy tickets at the exact minute they were released.

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

#140

Post by TorKlingberg »

austenallred wrote: post #22

I spent some of my formidable years scalping and brokering event (mostly broadway) tickets in various forms. The company I co-founded made a few million and I learned an expensive lesson in equity at age 18 (I opted instead for the $14/hr salary). We worked in broadway (meaning the style of show, not just the street), and I met the Wiseguys folks at secondary market trade shows, but I had no idea they were this big,…

> I spent some of my formidable years scalping

I think you mean formative years.

Did you ever get hit buying lots of tickets for a show and then unable to sell them?

Post reply on HN