When I was a lad we bought tickets at a booth. Just saying ...
And it was terrible. For every party involved.
CAPTCHAs are over (in ticketing)
131–140 of 285 posts
Re: CAPTCHAs are over (in ticketing)
#132I can’t claim I’m the first one to think about this, but every time Ticketmaster shows up on HN I keep coming back to this idea: Sell the tickets with regressive price based on time. Sales starts say 2 months before event, initial price is truly exorbitant, say one million dollars. Price decreases linearly down to zero (or true cost price). At any point, people can see current price and the seats left. Now every pote…
That's a Dutch auction: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_auction.
I agree that reverse auctions would be a simple solution the current scalper problem. If demand outweighs supply, scalpers drive up the prices toward their economic equilibrium anyway, making ticket prices just as "unfair" to the poor, but with additional problems of trust...
Re: CAPTCHAs are over (in ticketing)
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
I suspect the key thing is that the industry really wants scalpers, but must appear to act against them.
Neither the performers (raises prices for fans artificially) or ticket agencies (leaves money on the table) want scalpers.
Those may be arguments for why (some) performers and (some people at) ticket agencies don't want scalpers, but empirically, for popular performers, both performers and ticket agencies still set prices lower than the market will bear. They could charge more, but they don't.
Eliminating uncertainty about whether a concert will sell out may be the primary reason.
Net ticket prices might be dictated by the performers and their agents, and the ticket agency might not have the ability to raise prices unilaterally, at least not by enough to stop scalpers.
There's another factor, or side-effect, that might be missed in explaining why an artist or their agent won't set prices higher, even when the artist has a history of having concerts sell out and tickets scalped: scalping is a symptom and sign of scarcity, and scarcity drives interest.
They probably want to set prices as high as possible while still having a high probability that tickets will sell out and make concertgoers panic-buy.
Re: CAPTCHAs are over (in ticketing)
#134I can’t claim I’m the first one to think about this, but every time Ticketmaster shows up on HN I keep coming back to this idea: Sell the tickets with regressive price based on time. Sales starts say 2 months before event, initial price is truly exorbitant, say one million dollars. Price decreases linearly down to zero (or true cost price). At any point, people can see current price and the seats left. Now every pote…
The scalper problem is a mispricing problem: Scalpers are just arbitrageurs because ticket prices are artificially very low.
If you want to fix that, you need to ask yourself "why are ticket prices artificially very low?" first. The answer probably isn't "artists/venues like leaving money on the table".
Re: CAPTCHAs are over (in ticketing)
#135The solution is, as always, simple: regulation. In this case: - break up Ticketmaster, Live Nation and their European friends. Ban vertical integration. And for good measure (and to placate the public who is out for blood, and I mean that one in the literal sense - ask a random on the street about what they'd do to scalpers and TM, I'd bet good money on at least 50% going for one or another form of violence), place t…
Why should ticket sales be regulated? Why should the government care about what price event tickets sell for? Concerts are pure luxury. I like going to concerts, but I don't see a reason why the government should intervene? Scalpers exist because artists underprice tickets on purpose.
> Why should ticket sales be regulated? Why should the government care about what price event tickets sell for?
Simple: because a government should take care about what its citizens want. And on top of that, the economy (aka artists and venues that really REALLY don't want to deal with TM but have no other choice) also wants it.
That's why anti-trust legislation was created. It just fell out of practice to actually use it.
Re: CAPTCHAs are over (in ticketing)
#136Re: CAPTCHAs are over (in ticketing)
#137[flagged]
Re: CAPTCHAs are over (in ticketing)
#138I can’t claim I’m the first one to think about this, but every time Ticketmaster shows up on HN I keep coming back to this idea: Sell the tickets with regressive price based on time. Sales starts say 2 months before event, initial price is truly exorbitant, say one million dollars. Price decreases linearly down to zero (or true cost price). At any point, people can see current price and the seats left. Now every pote…
> but it will definitely fix the scalpers problem
Nobody wants to fix the scalpers problem because, to the Ticketmaster monopoly, scalpers aren't a problem. The Ticketmaster monopoly values known, consistent, derisked revenue over possible lottery ticket windfalls with the possibility of complete wipeout. Scalpers do exactly that.
Scalpers are only a problem to fans. And scalpers are only a problem online because they can wipe out the entire ticket base. The "solution" is to introduce offline friction to the problem--anything which requires a person to show up and buy only a limited number of tickets. Unfortunately, that introduces a lot of uncertainty into the system instead of guaranteed cash flow and the business side finds that to be anathema.
However, the real solution is to bust up the Ticketmaster monopoly. If each of the individual actors (ticket sales, venue owner, performers) have to operate independently and have to de-risk at each point, scalpers become an enemy to be neutralized.
I also have a completely unjustified suspicion that scalping is hiding a lot of money laundering so lots of people have vested interest in it continuing.
Re: CAPTCHAs are over (in ticketing)
#139The solution is, as always, simple: regulation. In this case: - break up Ticketmaster, Live Nation and their European friends. Ban vertical integration. And for good measure (and to placate the public who is out for blood, and I mean that one in the literal sense - ask a random on the street about what they'd do to scalpers and TM, I'd bet good money on at least 50% going for one or another form of violence), place t…
>I'd bet good money on at least 50% going for one or another form of violence), place their execs behind bars for a decade. Why not send them to the firing squad? Or torturing them? Some people have sociopathic tendencies. If your problem is scrappers making money the solution could not be creating a bigger problem like sending people to jail for a decade. Comming recently from visiting Ukraine I can't help thinking…
> If your problem is scrappers making money the solution could not be creating a bigger problem like sending people to jail for a decade.
My problem is the profiteering, the concentration and subsequent abuse of power by the rich. It used to be the case that rich overlords who abused their power got deposed by their population, driven off with pitchforks if they were lucky, decapitated by guillotine if not. Personally I don't want a return to such grisly times, hence I call for at least punishing abusers by putting them behind bars.
> Comming recently from visiting Ukraine I can't help thinking how insignificant those pet problems are, while real crimes like kids being killed go impune every day...
Now Putin and his command chain, I don't think anyone but rabid tankies would have an issue with their lives being condemned in a repeat of the Nuremberg Trials.
Re: CAPTCHAs are over (in ticketing)
#140I can’t claim I’m the first one to think about this, but every time Ticketmaster shows up on HN I keep coming back to this idea: Sell the tickets with regressive price based on time. Sales starts say 2 months before event, initial price is truly exorbitant, say one million dollars. Price decreases linearly down to zero (or true cost price). At any point, people can see current price and the seats left. Now every pote…
That's a Dutch auction: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_auction . I agree that reverse auctions would be a simple solution the current scalper problem. If demand outweighs supply, scalpers drive up the prices toward their economic equilibrium anyway, making ticket prices just as "unfair" to the poor, but with additional problems of trust...
That's not actually a Dutch Auction. Sounds more like the "eBay ascending uniform-price mechanism". (From the same Wikipedia article)