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Why scalpers can get tickets

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Re: Why scalpers can get tickets

#21

Post by [deleted] »

nayuki wrote: post #15
hooverd wrote: post #8

Scalping is such an ugly term for "the market efficiently allocating resources." This is just completely normal price discovery. /s

I would take off the "/s", because I agree with your statement at face value. If there are a limited number of tickets but many thousands of fans who are willing and able to pay, then naturally the price goes up. And whether you like it or not, people are either paying with money, or paying with time (e.g. waiting in line), or paying with frustration (e.g. going through opaque scalping networks). The root cause of th…

[deleted]

Re: Why scalpers can get tickets

#22

Post by chevman »

Protip I've used the last couple years (worked before that as well, but not as much need) - just check StubHub or other second hand markets a week or so before the show.

Generally the scalpers over buy and will start to panic and unload tickets at very good prices the closer the show gets.

Re: Why scalpers can get tickets

#23

Post by MSFT_Edging »

nayuki wrote: post #15
hooverd wrote: post #8

Scalping is such an ugly term for "the market efficiently allocating resources." This is just completely normal price discovery. /s

I would take off the "/s", because I agree with your statement at face value. If there are a limited number of tickets but many thousands of fans who are willing and able to pay, then naturally the price goes up. And whether you like it or not, people are either paying with money, or paying with time (e.g. waiting in line), or paying with frustration (e.g. going through opaque scalping networks). The root cause of th…

> The root cause of the problem isn't scalpers; it's the original concert seller either setting too low a price or too low a quantity.

Imagine viewing a pricing scheme that allows more socioeconomic groups access to the arts as the core problem.

We're experiencing a great decline and fall as social services are failing, wages stagnating, and common cultural experiences are being squeezed for profit, only enabling the richest among us to experience any kind of common social event.

And of course, the response is "keep increasing prices until its unbearable", just like we're doing with rent and housing prices, and calling this efficient.

Inflating prices until few can afford it isn't efficient, its just short sighted greed.

Finding a way to suppress prices and remove scalpers is a net benefit for the artists, venues, and patrons.

Re: Why scalpers can get tickets

#24

Post by jsnell »

aschobel wrote: post #7

> Ticketmaster now requires text message phone number verification, but they can bypass this by buying “Mobile Virtual Network Operator” phone numbers in bulk from eBay I’m surprised SMS verification is this ineffective at testing for “human-ness”.

It depends on how much money there's to be made, just like every other counter-abuse measure.

Proof of work is useful for protecting things worth like a thousandth of a cent per transaction. Captchas for something worth 1/10th of a cent. Phone number verification for something worth $0.1-$1. Real-world presence and real-world id checks for things worth $100.

The amount of money you can make scalping tickets is way higher than that, so it's not a useful defense. Doubly so when the cost of the phone verification isn't even per-transaction, but once per account.

For the ticketmaster case, I think what you'd want is some kind of proof of stable liveness at every transaction. It's easy enough to game proof of liveness, or proof of unique identity, at account creation time. Just the classic method of paying people at a parking lot $5 to pass a "wave to the webcam" captcha. But they can't get those same people back for another captcha every time they want to use that account for another ticket. (Though it's possible that deepfakes have rendered webcam captchas effectively worthless in the last year or two, I don't know where the state of the art on deepfake detection for this kind of usecase is.)

Re: Why scalpers can get tickets

#25

Post by armada651 »

nayuki wrote: post #15
hooverd wrote: post #8

Scalping is such an ugly term for "the market efficiently allocating resources." This is just completely normal price discovery. /s

I would take off the "/s", because I agree with your statement at face value. If there are a limited number of tickets but many thousands of fans who are willing and able to pay, then naturally the price goes up. And whether you like it or not, people are either paying with money, or paying with time (e.g. waiting in line), or paying with frustration (e.g. going through opaque scalping networks). The root cause of th…

The problem with raising the prices is that people are willing to pay so much for a ticket exactly because they're difficult to get.

If the tickets were actually easily obtainable but more expensive then paradoxically people wouldn't be willing to pay as much for the ticket because of a perceived loss of value.

And as mentioned in the other reply, many people disagree with the "greed is good" philosophy, hence the /s.

Re: Why scalpers can get tickets

#26

Post by bagels »

xnx wrote: post #3

Based on nothing, I think tickets for high-demand events should be allocated: 1/3 first-come first-serve for in-person sales (you pay with your time), 1/3 random assignment (you have to get lucky), 1/3 auction to highest bidder (pay with your money).

In the time of box offices, ticket scalpers still thrived.

Re: Why scalpers can get tickets

#27

Post by fps-hero »

capableweb wrote: post #6
josephcsible wrote: post #4

Why do the organizations putting on events like these leave so much money on the table? Why don't they just charge the market-clearing price themselves, leaving no room for scalpers to make any profit?

Artists generally want to have a diverse crowd in terms of disposable income, they don't want to have a crowd of just the people who can/will pay the most.

Every action directed at making tickets more affordable will have the opposite effect of making scalping more profitable. Im amazed that a reverse auction style approach hasn’t caught on, when you are capacity limited it seems nearly optimal for extracting profit and kills the ticket scalping business model.

Re: Why scalpers can get tickets

#29

Post by firesteelrain »

I don’t know if I buy the premise of the article. We were able to have an opportunity to buy tickets after being waitlisted (I think it was 48-72hrs after the initial presale). But the tickets were extremely expensive. Ticketmaster was scalping not the scalpers.

We did buy Taylor Swift tickets for next year however it was $1k for three tickets.

Re: Why scalpers can get tickets

#30

Post by jppittma »

armada651 wrote: post #18
Buttons840 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Triple the ticket price but give half away by lottery. Although, I guess scalpers ruin lotteries as well :(

The article itself mentions how scalpers just register hundreds or thousands of accounts to dramatically increase their odds at winning fan lotteries.

Do fan-club registration in person.
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