Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A scalper who used bots to buy millions of tickets, now wants to stop them

motherboard.vice.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 328 posts

Re: A scalper who used bots to buy millions of tickets, now wants to stop them

#161

Post by M_Grey »

brudgers wrote: post #151

When the Rolling Stones did their last tour in 1981 --those were still the days when rock and rollers hoped to die before their geriatric years and The Who would perform their Final Tour just a year later -- the tickets (at least in the US) were by mail and via lottery. Payment was with cashier's check only and only two tickets per order. [1] It would still work today. For fans with money, it would be less convenient…

Is it cool if I just sit on your lawn and listen to your interesting stories? I'll pluck weeds!

Re: A scalper who used bots to buy millions of tickets, now wants to stop them

#162

Post by phlowbieuq »

Pigo wrote: post #86
simonsarris wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You reasoning is a pretty good example of why the median person should be very wary of anyone saying that free markets and their "efficiency" are a good thing, or will result in good outcomes for them. They will result in good outcomes for the richest, sure. We can agree to that. You are conflating die-hard fans with die-hard wealthy fans which is a little silly. Not all fans have the same marginal value of pocket ch…

However justifiable it might be, this ticket gouging is the reason I haven't seen a concert in almost a decade. Maybe I'm a cheap bastard because I refuse to pay hundreds for the few decent artists I've seen on tour, but it's not that I don't have the money. The first NIN concert I went to, I only had to steer clear of certain mosh-pits. The last one I had to put up with a sea of "brighter than the stage" phones uphe…

> drinking Rhinegeist.

fistbump for a fellow Cincinnatian. I feel the exact same way about football (especially the Bengals). I can buy 10 cases of beer for what it would cost me to freeze my ass off at the stadium, and they are going to bungle it anyway. =D

Re: A scalper who used bots to buy millions of tickets, now wants to stop them

#163

Post by Arizhel »

mattnewton wrote: post #69
jstanley wrote: post #8

> The scourge of ticket bots and the immorality of the shady ticket scalpers using them is conventional wisdom I very much disagree. If I am willing to pay the asking price for tickets, I should be able to buy them. If you're offering them so cheaply that I will happily buy all of the tickets then you're offering them too cheap and you can't really complain if I buy them. If it weren't for ticket-scalpers, die-hard f…

Ticket scalping hurts artist exposure by finding an equilibrium point on price alone, where many artists may really want to maximize audience size and not earnings from tickets. Concerts are like promotional events for their brand and many people buy albums, swag, post on social media about the event, and that's all beneficial to the artist. Ticket scalping removes the ability of the artist to maximize attendance (an…

>Concerts are like promotional events for their brand and many people buy albums, swag, post on social media about the event, and that's all beneficial to the artist.

This isn't true. These days, musicians make the vast majority of their money in touring, from both ticket sales and merchandise (t-shirts) at the venue. They don't make squat from album sales. Notice how many old 70s-80s-era classic rock bands are out there touring. They aren't selling brand-new CDs; they're making money with ticket sales. Come to think of it, this is likely why concert tickets are so much more expensive than they were decades ago.

Re: A scalper who used bots to buy millions of tickets, now wants to stop them

#164

Post by newdayrising »

vkou wrote: post #119
ikeboy wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then do more shows in the same place until demand is met.

But when everyone and their dog can attend, as opposed to just the , the event stops being exclusive. What's the point of going, then? Sure, it's exclusive when tickets are only available at high prices, but surely, you understand that to be the wrong kind of exclusive!

This is partly why the ticket prices are so damn high - manufactured exclusivity. IMO a "true" fan is there for the music and performance, not so they can brag about their manufactured exclusive moment on social media.

The artists will pretend like they're performing for the fans, being the good liberals that they are - in reality they're rich partly because of exclusivity.

Re: A scalper who used bots to buy millions of tickets, now wants to stop them

#165

Post by newdayrising »

knodi123 wrote: post #39
jstanley wrote: post #8

> The scourge of ticket bots and the immorality of the shady ticket scalpers using them is conventional wisdom I very much disagree. If I am willing to pay the asking price for tickets, I should be able to buy them. If you're offering them so cheaply that I will happily buy all of the tickets then you're offering them too cheap and you can't really complain if I buy them. If it weren't for ticket-scalpers, die-hard f…

> If I am willing to pay the asking price for tickets, I should be able to buy them. If you're offering them so cheaply that I will happily buy all of the tickets then you're offering them too cheap and you can't really complain if I buy them. And if I'm an artist who wants to ensure that fans without a lot of money can see me? Should I be allowed to offer a concert where tickets cost 20% of market value, or should "…

How many artists, do you think, value their fans over money?

Re: A scalper who used bots to buy millions of tickets, now wants to stop them

#166

Post by LeifCarrotson »

ryandrake wrote: post #3

> "There's an emotional aspect to what artists do, which is to say 'I'm not willing to charge $500 even though clearly the market value is $500. I'm going to charge $100, and at the end of the day someone else is going to make that money,'" The bots are just a symptom. Seems like this is likely the root of the problem. If the primary market was efficient, then there would be no secondary market, and the whole point o…

> "I'm going to charge $100, and at the end of the day someone else is going to make that money"

That's what StubHub imagines the artists were thinking.

What I think many artists are actually thinking is "I'm altruistically going to charge $100 (or $10) so that someone who can't pay $500 can get to see the show". They believe in the lottery system and wish it worked.

More effective altruism could be achieved if the artists actually charged market value to buy a guaranteed ticket, and used some of the proceeds to 'buy' their own tickets to give away in a lottery.

Re: A scalper who used bots to buy millions of tickets, now wants to stop them

#167

Post by hackermailman »

kbenson wrote: post #159
hackermailman wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Live Nation and its ticket distributor Ticketmaster consistently promote scarcity by diverting the majority of tickets into the hands of resellers like TicketsNow, which is a Ticketmaster subsidiary so they can get the full demand rate in the secondary market. The artist gets a cut of this, it's all a scheme and nobody at Ticketmaster cares about the bots who fight over the tiny amount of released tickets. Artists kn…

In most cases, they aren't diverting tickets directly to TicketsNow, and if they are, it's a select few. They don't need to. They sell to the public, which includes resellers (whether they be fans or brokers), and that public then sells the tickets on TicketsNow, which show up as verified resale tickets on the ticketmaster/livenation website if barcodes are supplied (or you sell directly out of your ticketmaster acco…

In some cases they definitely are diverting directly, U2 only sold 1/4 of their tickets here through TM, the rest were held back for secondary market Seatwave and TicketsNow (both owned by LiveNation/TM). By directly capturing the secondary market the band can get a cut of this revenue, if they just allow the public to resell and TM gets all the fees the band makes less income.

Re: A scalper who used bots to buy millions of tickets, now wants to stop them

#168

Post by rurabe »

brudgers wrote: post #151

When the Rolling Stones did their last tour in 1981 --those were still the days when rock and rollers hoped to die before their geriatric years and The Who would perform their Final Tour just a year later -- the tickets (at least in the US) were by mail and via lottery. Payment was with cashier's check only and only two tickets per order. [1] It would still work today. For fans with money, it would be less convenient…

That may meet your priorities and maybe even the band's but it most definitely does not meet Ticketmaster's in a world where they can offload all the tickets in 15 minutes and charge the maximum palatable fees with basically no variable costs.

And Ticketmaster is in control of this process, so...

Re: A scalper who used bots to buy millions of tickets, now wants to stop them

#169

Post by acchow »

striking wrote: post #9
laurencei wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is more interesting about that statement is how did he learn that fact? Possibly some help from the inside? Or some other method...?

He might've tried to write a computer vision solution to solve TicketMaster captchas. In order to test your solution, you need a bank of images to test from. So you download the first, say, 50k. And realize that you're getting a whole lot of repeats. 30k is still really annoying to get around without computer vision. But OpenCV is really, really fun and easy to use.

It's a CV arms race - the CAPTCHAs are meant to stay ahead of state-of-the-art CV tech. That's the entire premise behind reCAPTCHA - if you've solved it, then we've sold useful real-world problems and can move onto the next ones.

Re: A scalper who used bots to buy millions of tickets, now wants to stop them

#170

Post by LordKano »

criddell wrote: post #147
LordKano wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of the convoluted reasons why scalping must be stomped out have never made sense to me. If people would let the market handle it, things would sort themselves out naturally. If scalpers have to spend more money buying tickets than they can make by selling them, they'll stop buying so many tickets. Also, maybe venues should have some method of selling unredeemed tickets at the door. For example, if a ticked hasn't…

Let the market handle it? You mean sell to those willing to pay the most? If you are a performer, sometimes you want to sell to the biggest fans. What's the market mechanism for that?

Yes. That's how things have always been. As long as we live in a capitalist society, that's how they'll always be. The market value of a thing is not just what someone tries to sell it for, it's what someone else is willing to pay for it.

There have long been mechanisms by which the most dedicated fans have access to some of the tickets for less than market rates. Call it old fashioned if you like but fan clubs or the 21st century analog.

FB Groups, mailing lists, private websites, actual in person box-office ticket sales, whatever...

14 months ago, I got to meet my all time favorite musician. I purchased my ticket at a beauty parlor and I talked to the concert promoter on the telephone to ask him if he could help me make it happen.

Post reply on HN