101–110 of 487 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So hire some designated middleman to wear a villain mustache and claim to be taking a huge cut on paper while actually giving all of the money back to the artist under NDA.
This has to be what TicketMaster is doing, right?
IMO, Comic Con has done a pretty fine job at eliminating scalpers. They do this in a few ways: - Random selection over an hour at ticket sale time that is unique per device, with some 'are you human' checks along the way to make it more difficult to bot. - Requiring physical delivery of the badge with a maximum number per address, or government issued ID to pick it up in person. - Random ID checks during the con. - T…
Put your name on the badge. If you want to sell it, they buy it back at face value minus a restocking fee, and then resell it at original price.
This would be much less of a pain in the ass for everyone involved.
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Then they just pay homeless people to register. Whatever clever you can come up with, they will figure out a way around it.
They're going to pay thousands of homeless people to register for the fan clubs of how many artists? Nevermind the logistics of the hiring, the payment alone eats into the margin.
> 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”.
I avoid them whenever possible, but I recently bought a ticket for an event weeks after they went on sale (there was essentially no activity on the map of available tickets that day).
They "unknown error"'ed me at the end of the purchase flow (inside their reservation timeout window). 60 seconds later, the tickets I had tried to purchase were being resold by a scalper.
So, whatever their API is, it allows scalpers to get a feed of tickets that are in the middle of being purchased, then to buy them in the reservation window and offer them for resale with super human speed.
That company is clearly run by crooks. They've repeatedly been brought under investigation for exactly this behavior (for over a decade), so presumably, they are also good at paying out bribes.
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?
That is to say. I think the artist just like the idea of the tickets being affordable to allow their younger and less well off fans access.
I think any argument here has to acknowledge the artists rights in this. Charging more might alleviate the issue, but if private ownership of the performance is to have any meaning, it must include the right to set a price below the market rate. If the artist wants to be "economically inefficient" we as a society must protect that right.
A decade ago or so I went on a first date with a woman who was a professional scalper. Unfortunately I didn't have the balls to ask her about the ethics of what she does. (I expect it would have been something like, "if I don't do it, someone else will".) But it really grossed me out; I just can't respect someone who does something like that.
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?
Because, ironically, a show that only rich people can afford to attend will be pretty terrible. Rich people tend not to loudly enjoy the show, so the atmosphere isn't there. This is bad for the rest of the audience and for the performer. It's hard to put 100% in when all you can see is a bunch of people staring solemnly at you. It happens in football (soccer for my American friends) for clubs like Man Utd (and probab…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> So even if you bought it from a scalper, you would now have the code for next year's presale. i would imagine a scalper would record the code from the badge as well, before giving it to you. So this means they're going to be able to buy just as well, and may be invalidate the code before you get to use it!
Both the scalper and the buyer might be attempting to use the same code in the presale in that case. I'm not sure how they handle that but I imagine that invalidates it for both parties.
I quickly scanned the article, so I might have missed this, but can someone explain how sites like StubHub get away with what they do? As soon as I found out about them, I immediately thought "aren't these people just scalpers that offer tickets on the internet instead of standing out in front of venues?" If the argument is that they're not scalpers , they're resellers , then I'd like to try selling some concert tick…
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?
I think live performance music is still one of the few things in this hyper capitalist world directed by the performers. I base this absolutely no information expect the interviews I've seen, but it's my impression that performers are heavily involved with everything in a live performance, including the price setting. That is to say. I think the artist just like the idea of the tickets being affordable to allow their…
Most venues ARE hypercapitalists.
That club down on the corner where the cool touring bands play? They take a 15-20% cut on the hands merch in exchange for the oh so vauablr service of providing maybe a beat up old folding table.