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Why scalpers can get tickets

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171–180 of 487 posts

Re: Why scalpers can get tickets

#171
post #168

My impractical solution: no resale of tickets, and check of ID at the door. It’ll slow things down for check in, and people sick will miss out, but it will collectively bring prices down and increase seat availability.

Yeah I don’t like scalpers at all, but I don’t think I should have to give out any personal information to buy a concert ticket.

You already do

Re: Why scalpers can get tickets

#172

My impractical solution: no resale of tickets, and check of ID at the door. It’ll slow things down for check in, and people sick will miss out, but it will collectively bring prices down and increase seat availability.

Or just make it an auction. Every ticket goes to the highest bidder.

That’s effectively what it is now, and it means poorer ppl lose. That’s not good for society.

Re: Why scalpers can get tickets

#173
post #127
post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article talks about how scalpers circumvent no ticket resale - sell the entire account containing the tickets.

Presumably OP is saying the name on the actual ticket never changes. That is, even if you sell the account, the ticket is tied to the person.

Exactly

Re: Why scalpers can get tickets

#174
post #67

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…

You can do dynamic pricing. Have a reasonably strong identifier ticket app that is tied to a device, ip address, voice print id, and phone number. Have people put in bids for the ticket (with a minimum floor price), weigh each bid by some determination of "fan strength", like willingness to travel larger distance to see a show, then select winners based on a bell curve distribution of bids.

Re: Why scalpers can get tickets

#175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a significant difference between buying something and reselling, and then having bots buying hundreds/thousands and reselling.

Not really. The demand is what it is, and the supply of tickets is fixed. That sets the price, not the number of different people selling.

Very true, but very annoying for the person that wants to attend the concert. You can pretty much flush your chances of getting tickets directly from Ticketmaster right down the toilet.

Re: Why scalpers can get tickets

#176

My impractical solution: no resale of tickets, and check of ID at the door. It’ll slow things down for check in, and people sick will miss out, but it will collectively bring prices down and increase seat availability.

[deleted]

Re: Why scalpers can get tickets

#177
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SMS are plaintext that can be obtained via web API. It seems on the face of it to be just about the least effective possible means of verifying human-ness.

The reason SMS verification is popular isn't because it's effective against sybil attacks. It's not. You can get access to phone numbers in bulk for little money. It's because most honest users only have one phone number, which makes it a useful unique ID for tracking the honest users. Anyone using it should immediately be under suspicion of selling you out.

Well, I mean there's no way I can prove this but I think it has more to do with the fact that compared to email verification ($0.002/hotmail address), CAPTCHA ($0.003/reCAPTCHA), it substantially raises account creation costs because real US/EU phone numbers will be at least a couple cents per verification.

Re: Why scalpers can get tickets

#178
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Oh lawd. 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.

The valuable service is allowing the sale of merch within the venue, the table is free.

Re: Why scalpers can get tickets

#179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They started out as plain scalper marketplaces but now have deals with most venues to give the venue a cut.

So venues take bribes in the from of kickbacks to look the other way when stubhub commits illegal acts? or does stubhub not operate in states where scalping tickets is a crime?

> to look the other way when stubhub commits illegal acts?

Scalping is only illegal in certain jurisdictions (usually state level, iirc). Presumably stubhub intentionally does not operate in those jurisdictions.

They could sell to people in those jurisdictions, but you could make people sign a thing saying that they actually bought the tickets from another area. Someone could probably come after them, but there's enough plausible deniability to keep it tied up in court for a while, and nobody is going to do that for low level scalping offenses.

Re: Why scalpers can get tickets

#180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. The demand is what it is, and the supply of tickets is fixed. That sets the price, not the number of different people selling.

OK but the tickets are going to different people. In most cases (music, sports) you want your tickets going to your best fans because the energy of the crowd improves the performance. We’re not selling wheat futures here. If the tickets instead go to rich people who may or may not show up, it could harm the event.

You're right, the future looks grim. Who knows how many layers of the reseller parfait you have to go through just to get a ticket? At some point it becomes prohibitively expensive and there won't be enough people that can afford to attend events.

I wonder how much of this could be alleviated by selling a certain percentage of tickets at the box office only? I worked in operations for a pretty large concert venue several years ago, and the Jonas Brothers were going to play there (this was at their peak). I remember a good chunk of tickets were only sold at the box office and there was a limit per person (maybe 5 or 6)? I know it's annoying to drive somewhere and wait in line for hours, but I'm sure there are folks out there that would prefer to do that instead of paying a 500% markup on the original ticket price.

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