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Louis C.K. sees ticket scalping drop over 96% by selling tickets himself

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Re: Louis C.K. sees ticket scalping drop over 96% by selling tickets himself

#41

Post by diek »

mhartl wrote: post #15

For his shows, C.K. saw scalping rates as high as 25%, driving up the price of his shows for people who wanted to attend, by those who didn’t. The only people driving up the price of the shows are people who want to attend. How could it be otherwise? People who don't want to go to the show certainly don't raise prices. If scalpers can profit, it means you aren't charging market price. Policies like the one described…

You're operating on the flawed assumption that the sole endeavor here is to extract as much money from consumers as possible. If $45 a ticket allows Louis C.K. to make a tidy profit while still being affordable for his fans, but a third party buys all the tickets and resells them for $55... sure, some of his fans may shrug and say, "Well, I guess $55 isn't too bad" (price elasticity, etc, etc)... but why would Louis C.K. enable that behavior?

Re: Louis C.K. sees ticket scalping drop over 96% by selling tickets himself

#42

Post by Uchikoma »

mhartl wrote: post #15

For his shows, C.K. saw scalping rates as high as 25%, driving up the price of his shows for people who wanted to attend, by those who didn’t. The only people driving up the price of the shows are people who want to attend. How could it be otherwise? People who don't want to go to the show certainly don't raise prices. If scalpers can profit, it means you aren't charging market price. Policies like the one described…

Not if people who have no plan to attend buy significant amounts of tickets to corner the market.

Re: Louis C.K. sees ticket scalping drop over 96% by selling tickets himself

#44

Post by potch »

Androsynth wrote: post #35
mhartl wrote: post #15

For his shows, C.K. saw scalping rates as high as 25%, driving up the price of his shows for people who wanted to attend, by those who didn’t. The only people driving up the price of the shows are people who want to attend. How could it be otherwise? People who don't want to go to the show certainly don't raise prices. If scalpers can profit, it means you aren't charging market price. Policies like the one described…

yeah I'm confused, isn't scalping a necessary side effect of the process? It seems natural if you sell tickets at a constant price over time and don't adjust that for higher demand (as event gets closer in time) or lower supply (as tickets are sold). Also, is scalping a bad thing? It seems to me that they are making the market more efficient.

If the only factor in your market's efficiency is price charged, then this is true. The real market has other factors like satisfaction/willingness to repeat a transaction (for both sides of the party), opportunities for disruption of your market (exacerbated by said dissatisfaction), and (gasp!) goodwill of parties in a transaction. If you're optimizing just the ledger numbers in your industry, you might make a buck, but you're setting yourself up for hatred and being toppled by a newcomer who customers actually like.

Re: Louis C.K. sees ticket scalping drop over 96% by selling tickets himself

#45

Post by joezydeco »

Androsynth wrote: post #35
mhartl wrote: post #15

For his shows, C.K. saw scalping rates as high as 25%, driving up the price of his shows for people who wanted to attend, by those who didn’t. The only people driving up the price of the shows are people who want to attend. How could it be otherwise? People who don't want to go to the show certainly don't raise prices. If scalpers can profit, it means you aren't charging market price. Policies like the one described…

yeah I'm confused, isn't scalping a necessary side effect of the process? It seems natural if you sell tickets at a constant price over time and don't adjust that for higher demand (as event gets closer in time) or lower supply (as tickets are sold). Also, is scalping a bad thing? It seems to me that they are making the market more efficient.

Scalping confuses demand.

If 1000 people want to see a show in a theatre with 1000 seats, that would be an ideal market. But in reality you get 2000 people trying to buy tickets for that show. 1000 are the fans and 1000 are people trying to buy the tickets to flip them for a profit.

The artificial demand creates a market that benefits nobody except the scalpers. The fan loses by paying higher prices, and the artist loses (sometimes) by leaving money on the table. This is why Madonna and the Eagles are charging $750 for front row seats.

Re: Louis C.K. sees ticket scalping drop over 96% by selling tickets himself

#46

Post by dlikhten »

cletus wrote: post #26

This is of course interesting and will lead to inevitable comments about disruption being needed in event ticketing. Let me save you the trouble as this has been rehashed many times already: the problem here is Ticketmaster's exclusives on venues and the entertainment's willingness to let Ticketmaster be the "sacrificial anode" and focus of ire from both audiences and performers. There was a deal done some years ago-…

Well said, good sir, well said. However it still goes to show that there is a disconnect between "popular" and "up and coming". The rules for Louis C.K. and up-and-coming comedians are quite different. He is a gorilla and can use his momentum to do interesting things, others cannot.

Disruption is possible IF the seller company choses to take a multi-year hit while de-throning ticketmaster. If that happens with the backing of big names like Louis it may be a possibility.

Re: Louis C.K. sees ticket scalping drop over 96% by selling tickets himself

#47

Post by JohnTHaller »

esbwhat wrote: post #27
chwahoo wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't match the text on the site: "If the ticket is found to be offered for resale above face value we may invalidate the barcode and refund the ticket price."

Perhaps the refund isn't digital? I.e. you get refunded at the entrance if you have a scalped ticket

That would make the most sense and is how I read the language. You're free to go buy an $80 scalped ticket if you want. But if they can figure out it was scalped, they'll just cancel the ticket and refund your $45 ticket price right at the show.

Re: Louis C.K. sees ticket scalping drop over 96% by selling tickets himself

#48

Post by Androsynth »

potch wrote: post #44
Androsynth wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah I'm confused, isn't scalping a necessary side effect of the process? It seems natural if you sell tickets at a constant price over time and don't adjust that for higher demand (as event gets closer in time) or lower supply (as tickets are sold). Also, is scalping a bad thing? It seems to me that they are making the market more efficient.

If the only factor in your market's efficiency is price charged, then this is true. The real market has other factors like satisfaction/willingness to repeat a transaction (for both sides of the party), opportunities for disruption of your market (exacerbated by said dissatisfaction), and (gasp!) goodwill of parties in a transaction. If you're optimizing just the ledger numbers in your industry, you might make a buck…

Higher prices dont necessarily breed hate in your customers. As long as people see that they are getting what they are paying for, they come out happy. It's the situations where they feel like they are getting screwed, or have too many restrictions, etc. Those generally come about because the market is not efficient, eg ticketmaster.

Re: Louis C.K. sees ticket scalping drop over 96% by selling tickets himself

#49

Post by blhack »

drcube wrote: post #36
mhartl wrote: post #15

For his shows, C.K. saw scalping rates as high as 25%, driving up the price of his shows for people who wanted to attend, by those who didn’t. The only people driving up the price of the shows are people who want to attend. How could it be otherwise? People who don't want to go to the show certainly don't raise prices. If scalpers can profit, it means you aren't charging market price. Policies like the one described…

Explain the Burning Man comment please. I'm involved in the local Burners scene, but I've never been to the the big one in Black Rock City. My wife is going this year with a friend, but she was gifted a ticket. So I would like to know what stupid decisions and exacerbated problems I will see if I decide to buy a ticket for next year's burn. Thanks.

The bmorg completely disenfranchised large parts of the community with a "ticket lottery".

Earlier this year, we were seeing theme camps with something like 10% "success" rate in the lottery, and a lot of the major camps weren't going to be able to go.

It was only through a last-ditch effort, cancelling a second lottery and giving the tickets to "established" camps that they were able to get some of the major theme camps to go.

The lottery played heavily in the favor of scalpers, who very obviously exploited it to their own gain, and this was something that the community had been screaming up and down about since the lottery was announced last year.

Re: Louis C.K. sees ticket scalping drop over 96% by selling tickets himself

#50

Post by mhartl »

drcube wrote: post #36
mhartl wrote: post #15

For his shows, C.K. saw scalping rates as high as 25%, driving up the price of his shows for people who wanted to attend, by those who didn’t. The only people driving up the price of the shows are people who want to attend. How could it be otherwise? People who don't want to go to the show certainly don't raise prices. If scalpers can profit, it means you aren't charging market price. Policies like the one described…

Explain the Burning Man comment please. I'm involved in the local Burners scene, but I've never been to the the big one in Black Rock City. My wife is going this year with a friend, but she was gifted a ticket. So I would like to know what stupid decisions and exacerbated problems I will see if I decide to buy a ticket for next year's burn. Thanks.

Last year Burning Man sold out for the first time. In an attempt to alleviate the shortages, this year they had a lottery where people could request up to four tickets per person. The obvious strategy was to request more than you needed, in order to hedge your risk of losing the lottery (essentially a prisoner's dilemma situation). The utterly predictable outcome was worse shortages. They added an aftermarket to "fix" the problem, but (like Louis C.K.) they capped the price at ticket face value. Since the market price is higher, this guarantees shortages.
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