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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

#71

Post by rmc »

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.

Also, is scalping a bad thing? It seems to me that they are making the market more efficient.

It might make the market more effecient. But it annoys your customers.

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

#72

Post by fusiongyro »

Androsynth wrote: post #57
AndrewDucker wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Market efficiency is not necessarily a person's aim.

Leaving money on the table does no one any favors. If people are willing to pay $150 for tickets and hes charging $50 (or whatever it is), he's only doing himself a disservice. If people are willing to pay that much and he delivers a show that is up to his normal standard, they won't hate him for charging them that much; quite the opposite actually. It's only the price gauging and poor service of monopolies that peop…

> he's only doing himself a disservice.

How precisely is the scalper, by increasing costs and adding _no value_ doing us a service?

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

#73

Post by masklinn »

joezydeco wrote: post #68
Androsynth wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if the customers are willing to pay the scalpers price, that means the demand exists. You say 'flip them for profit' as if thats a bad thing, but as long as people buy those tickets, its just smoothing out the market.

I do say it as a bad thing. In my example, the 1000 fans and the artist would have been perfectly happy with the arrangement. Of course this is never the case. So the scalpers are profiting from the mismatch in supply and demand and making the show less accessible to the fans. From a scalper POV, that's capitalism. God bless America. From the fans's POV, it just sucks. And I could swap Louis CK for oil, and scalpers…

> From the fans's POV

And the artist's POV as well, his fans are now poorer and there's no value into it: they don't enjoy it more, they don't get more merch, they don't keep their money to see the next show, they don't get to buy a nice dinner for their SO, etc...

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

#74

Post by rmc »

erpa1119 wrote: post #12

Sounds like ticketing is ripe for re-invention, how about electronic tickets via smart phone?

There's loads of ticketing startups. (e.g. http://ticketabc.com/ ) It's like trying to sell operating systems though. Microsoft are the big boys.

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

#75

Post by defen »

pyre wrote: post #7
3JPLW wrote: post #2

It seems as though the important part here wasn't so much that he sold them himself as it was that he added the following clause: "You’ll see that if you try to sell the ticket anywhere for anything above the original price, we have the right to cancel your ticket (and refund your money). This is something I intend to enforce." This is something that any middleman could do, too... but the incentives simply aren't the…

I guess what it really comes down to is: How does he know which ticket is being sold? I imagine if a scalper wants to avoid detection, they just don't give out specific information until the sale is final (banking that Louis CK won't buy their tickets at scalper prices just to find out which tickets to cancel). If the ticket has some sort of ID, avoid giving that out before the final sale. If the ticket has a seat nu…

Switch to will call only; require the original CC or photo ID to pick up tickets. He explicitly stated on the ticket purchase page that this was a possibility.

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

#77

Post by TylerE »

Seems like a fair way to do it (while still extracting lots value), would be to a sort of dutch type auction. E.g. theater seats 1000, so you take bids for the max people are willing to pay.

Then, once that closes out, you take enough people to fill, say, the first 5 rows off the top of the list, and charge them whatever the lowest winning bid is of the people in that group. Repeat for each tier going back until the venue is sold out.

This actually tackles the inefficiencies at both ends - people willing to splurge on great seats get them, but if a show is not high in demand, you might still get people who kind of want to go to pay, say, $5 for the nosebleeds.

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

#78

Post by peterwwillis »

mhartl wrote: post #50
drcube wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's almost strange that they would implement a system like this just because they sold out for the first time. Other regional burns around the country regularly sell out up to a month before the event, and they never implement alternate strategies for people to buy tickets. Then again i'm not aware of a scalper market for these since they are small and regional, but I have often considered buying four tickets at the lowest introductory price and selling them a week before the event ("Hello, my name is Peter, and i'm a capitalist.")

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

#79

Post by TylerE »

trebor wrote: post #28
qq66 wrote: post #24

Isn't a ban on scalping a violation of the First Sale Doctrine?

IANAL, but I believe a ticket to attend an event is different from a CD or record. First Sale states that when you buy something like a book or CD, you have full right/control over what happens to it. But I believe that Louis has the right to revoke a ticket, making scalping virtually impossible. I would like to know what a lawyer says about this, though.

If you ever read the 2pt font on the back of a ticket, you'll find that what you have bought is in fact a ticket license. The physical ticket itself is just for convenience, what you're paying for is the right to attend.

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

#80

Post by joezydeco »

Androsynth wrote: post #66
sambe wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is there artificial demand? The scalpers aren't buying tickets for fun - there has to be someone to flip them TO. These people are fans and they create the demand, as stated in the grandparent. Edit: a common "rebuttal" in this thread (see diek, potch, drivingmenuts) seems to be that there is an assumption of correct market price being the aim. That isn't the assumption or the point. The point is that excess dema…

Re: Correct Market Pricing 1-This is inherently a class-based argument. It assumes that someone with more money than you isn't a 'real fan' and that his true fans are the squeezed middle class (or whatever class-bracket you happen to be in). 2-The world doesn't owe you anything. Thinking this is unfair because you can't afford tickets to a stand-up comedy show is the epitome of a First-World problem. edit: this isn't…

C'mon, let's have a little reality here.

Anyone that has tried to deal with buying tickets (either in today's system or even back in the old days where you had to stand in line) knows that there are people with large sums of cash willing to pay people to stand in line or bombard ticketmaster.com with requests to land tickets for a show they have no intention of seeing. They resell those tickets immediately for a profit to the people that really wanted to see the show. Go look at StubHub.com 30 minutes after a popular rock concert goes on sale. Did every single one of those sellers have a sick grandmother pop up?

No, the world doesn't owe anyone anything, and this isn't a white whine. It's an example of how people with more time and resources than you can jump ahead of you in line and, as a result either deny you an experience or make you pay more out of pocket for it...all in the name of profit.

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