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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

#171
post #166
post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who refuse to learn economics keep making the same mistakes. :-( Nothing that I said makes any assumptions either way about the secondary market. In fact in the real world a secondary market serves a valuable purpose for people who want to go and then are unable due to unexpected circumstances (sickness, loss of income, etc). Or for people who buy an extra ticket to gift a friend, and then find that the friend…

The fact that you would make a blanket statement about somebody learning "economics" as if that is one skill demonstrates your level of understanding here, methinks. -- I think you don't understand the culture at burning man, which is, or at least triest to be, completely decoupled from the concept of money. In fact, that is one of the 10 core principles.

The fact that you claimed that I had made assumptions that I had not in fact made demonstrates your level of understanding.

Can we dismiss the snide remarks?

I freely admit that I have never gone to burning man, nor could I possibly fit something like that into my life for many years. However that said, a better understanding of money and economics would ironically enable burning man to better set things up to create a space that is free from monetary concerns.

With the strategy that I proposed, they would be in a better position to make the event as big as it could possibly be at exactly the lowest price that breaks even. And to do it in a way that limits the ability of scalpers to take money from people who want to be at burning man, while providing freedom for people who need to change their minds to actually change their minds. (It also provides the ability to buy tickets with the purpose of gifting them to others, without having to worry about who those others might be.)

Think of it as a piece of economic judo, using economics to best produce a non-economic outcome. In some sense it is not entirely dissimilar to how a copyleft license uses copyright law to achieve a purpose that is diametrically opposite to what that law was originally intended for.

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

#172

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

Seriously,...no body even noticed MogoTix ticketing Facebook's f8 event last year? www.mogotix.com my startup. However, I don't believe MogoTix is the disruption this industry needs.

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

#173
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 prof…

"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." Isn't that the way the world works? We aren't talking about access to food, education, or healthcare here. We're talking about entertainment. Is there a particular reason why someone with more time or money shouldn't have an edge and be able to spend their money to…

Scalping is asshole behavior. It is that simple. Don't sugarcoat it in talk of 'smoothing' markets. The scalpers do not add any value to the transaction. They merely inflate the price.

I'm so sick of HN over-intellectualizing topics in order to avoid the difficult discussions of ethics. I'm guessing they're avoided because (gasp) it isn't objective. The horror!

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

#174
post #171
post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that you would make a blanket statement about somebody learning "economics" as if that is one skill demonstrates your level of understanding here, methinks. -- I think you don't understand the culture at burning man, which is, or at least triest to be, completely decoupled from the concept of money. In fact, that is one of the 10 core principles.

The fact that you claimed that I had made assumptions that I had not in fact made demonstrates your level of understanding. Can we dismiss the snide remarks? I freely admit that I have never gone to burning man, nor could I possibly fit something like that into my life for many years. However that said, a better understanding of money and economics would ironically enable burning man to better set things up to create…

Ok.

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

#175
post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Burning Flipside here in Texas has had a lottery system for the last few years due to not being able to exceed 2500 people on site or be under the TX mass gathering law. They make the lottery a little inconvenient (sign up in early January, mail in a money order during one week later in the month, have the MO returned if you don't get tickets). They also have a no scalping policy and regularly go after sales on Craig…

not being able to exceed 2500 people on site or be under the TX mass gathering law Sorry, what? have all major sporting events been cancelled too?

No, it doesn't permit gatherings of more than 2500 people to last longer than five hours without a lot of overhead (money and paperwork):

http://law.justia.com/codes/texas/2005/hs/009.00.000751.00.h...

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

#176
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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." Isn't that the way the world works? We aren't talking about access to food, education, or healthcare here. We're talking about entertainment. Is there a particular reason why someone with more time or money shouldn't have an edge and be able to spend their money to…

Scalping is asshole behavior. It is that simple. Don't sugarcoat it in talk of 'smoothing' markets. The scalpers do not add any value to the transaction. They merely inflate the price. I'm so sick of HN over-intellectualizing topics in order to avoid the difficult discussions of ethics. I'm guessing they're avoided because (gasp) it isn't objective. The horror!

If I'm a person who's willing to pay above face value for a ticket but didn't get in line fast enough, the scalpers provide tremendous value to me.

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

#177
post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Burning Flipside here in Texas has had a lottery system for the last few years due to not being able to exceed 2500 people on site or be under the TX mass gathering law. They make the lottery a little inconvenient (sign up in early January, mail in a money order during one week later in the month, have the MO returned if you don't get tickets). They also have a no scalping policy and regularly go after sales on Craig…

not being able to exceed 2500 people on site or be under the TX mass gathering law Sorry, what? have all major sporting events been cancelled too?

no, it's just that when you exceed 2500 people, a bunch of special provisions come into play, like having to provide water, security, vending, etc. that clash with the self-reliance/gift-economy aspect of a burn.

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

#178
post #141

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.

How is that 'smoothing' the market? CK Louis seems to have smoothed it flat with $45 for all tickets. If the scalpers didn't exist, the eventual ticket-holders would still be able to purchase from the original vendor. It's not like scalpers make tickets magically appear.

> If the scalpers didn't exist, the eventual ticket-holders would still be able to purchase from the original vendor.

A lot of them wouldn't, though. If the scalpers sell the tickets for, say, $500, then the people willing to pay $500 get tickets pretty reliably. If the scalpers didn't exist, those people would have to take a roll of the dice along with the many, many more people who are willing to pay $45. A lot of them wouldn't be able to see the show.

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

#179
post #116
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-…

"Ticketmaster's exclusives on venues" Sorry for the dumb question - does this mean that nobody else can book these venues? If that is the case, can't CK (and other comedians) find a neutral venue (or a venue that is not already on Ticketmaster's list)? At least in his case, he doesn't need sophisticated venues (like the ones need for an opera, or a circus for example) Also, for disruption - can't a company buy/build…

No, it just means Ticketmaster is the exclusive provider of box office services.

That is a potential disruption model (if you could manager actually buying/building a venue) but there's a reason (commercial) venues almost always require you to use their box office services. Often times, the venue gets rent in terms of a flat fee plus a cut of the net adjusted gross box office revenue. A bigger show puts more strain on the venue and they'll want a slightly larger cut. The venue then wants to oversee the settlement, and, therefor, the box officing.

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

#180
post #169
post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything you just said assumes that there is never a secondary market. There is. That is the problem. Nobody cares about spending $400 for a ticket. To burners, that's a very tiny price to pay to get "home" for a week, and is a tiny fraction of the overall cost of the trip. If we can figure out a way (like, hello, names on tickets) to make the tickets non-transferable, then figuring our a reasonable price isn't an…

Just curious: how would the burner community react to being forced to present ID "at the door"?

A large, vocal majority of them have been demanding this since last fall when the lottery was announced.

A very small also vocal minority doesn't like this. Supposedly. Somewhere.

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