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

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

#181

Post by soundwave106 »

ue_ wrote: post #110
antisthenes wrote: post #104

I'm really surprised to see so many from the HN audience against scalpers, considering how libertarian the site leans. If there's any market where a completely free market approach is applicable and actually desirable, it's this one. I've bought maybe 40-50 tickets for various events (gaming, concerts, sports) over the last 5 years, and 99% of the time, the price of the ticket was negligible next to all the other exp…

>Even at 2-3x price, the price of the ticket is a relatively small portion of the total cost of attending. This is irrelevant. The fact is that it's 2-3x the cost because someone decided to be greedy and purchase lots of tickets that people would have bought. Imagine if you go to buy a bar of chocolate, and it's $1 as it usually is. Then one day you've found out that the only way to buy it is from the weird guy outsi…

From what I can see, absurdly inflated scalping prices is only an issue for a handful of bands out there: the bands whose fanbase has outstripped the capacity of where they are booked at. This is only a small percentage of bands out there. Your chocolate comparison in other words only works if the weird guy bought up only the most popular brand.

The generally crappy experience of Ticketmaster / Livenation and the high ticket prices of certain artists certainly have deterred me from supporting this "greed" very much. Instead, I've tended over the years to go for local scale up to medium-high sized concert events. I've rarely run into these sort of scalper issues as a result.

Judging by the continued high prices of certain tickets, I'm atypical. But this isn't life or death type items like food or healthcare, where capitalism runs into morality issues. This is music. If you aren't happy about certain portions of the music industry, the best way to express that is to not support this side with your dollars -- not as an absolute rule perhaps, but definitely as a factor in your decision.

Because I'm probably not the only one deterred by very high prices and the general crappy experience of Ticketmaster, I do believe that these things do indeed damage the brands of certain artists. If artists want to implement solutions to help those that can't afford market rates (like the many-times mentioned lotteries) to broaden appeal, that's fine. In fact, I'd suggest that would be a good idea: brands are often more important than chasing the short-term dollar. Creating fan clubs, and have ticket clubs allocated by lottery (perhaps adding a bonus of rewarding loyalty, such as increasing your lottery chances based on your membership length): that's probably good for your image, and thus your business.

But IMHO this type of initiative has to be artist driven.

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

#182

Post by dsp1234 »

acchow wrote: post #169
striking wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

The original premise of reCAPTCHA was to help crowdsource the digitization of books by providing spam bot prevention. It's slogan was "Stop Spam, Read Books." up until 2014.

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

#183

Post by matwood »

ue_ wrote: post #110
antisthenes wrote: post #104

I'm really surprised to see so many from the HN audience against scalpers, considering how libertarian the site leans. If there's any market where a completely free market approach is applicable and actually desirable, it's this one. I've bought maybe 40-50 tickets for various events (gaming, concerts, sports) over the last 5 years, and 99% of the time, the price of the ticket was negligible next to all the other exp…

>Even at 2-3x price, the price of the ticket is a relatively small portion of the total cost of attending. This is irrelevant. The fact is that it's 2-3x the cost because someone decided to be greedy and purchase lots of tickets that people would have bought. Imagine if you go to buy a bar of chocolate, and it's $1 as it usually is. Then one day you've found out that the only way to buy it is from the weird guy outsi…

> The fact is that it's 2-3x the cost because someone decided to be greedy and purchase lots of tickets that people would have bought. Imagine if you go to buy a bar of chocolate, and it's $1 as it usually is. Then one day you've found out that the only way to buy it is from the weird guy outside the shop, who has purchased the entire supply of chocolate and is selling them at $3. I would be upset about it. The actual original price it irrelevant, no matter how cheap it is to get it. The fact is that you're making someone pay 3x as much which is frankly horrible behaviour

You do realize the price is not set by the scalpers, but by the market? This is basic market economics (there is also time-decay so perhaps not completely basic but still). The supply is small, and the demand high. The price will move to a level where all tickets are sold. The scalpers certainly don't want to have any tickets leftover because then they become worthless.

People incorrectly think that if scalpers were removed they would be able to attend all the events they want to attend at some very low price. This is flat out wrong.

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

#184

Post by brudgers »

rurabe wrote: post #168
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...

After commenting, I suspect that the TicketMaster system meets the requirements of most bands. This is noted in the article for the reason you mentioned, but I think the current situation provides additional business utility to the performers.

$70 tickets don't segment the market in the same way $700 tickets do. The expected lifetime value of one $700 a ticket fan is probably much more than the expected lifetime value of a $70 a ticket fan. The $70 a ticket fan might be stretched and is less likely buy a hoodie and get drunk on craft beer and use valet parking...all of which the band gets a cut.

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

#185

Post by matwood »

criddell wrote: post #180
LordKano wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

Right. The market doesn't work very well except for the very simple scenario of maximizing revenue.

I think it works wonderfully well. I get to see popular events if I'm willing to pay, and I've seen less popular events for less than face value of the ticket.

When I lived near a pro-sports team, my wife and I would go down on Sundays and play good cop/bad cop at kick-off time, and pit the scalpers against each other trying to get rid of their final tickets. Rarely did we ever pay above face value.

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

#186

Post by matwood »

criddell wrote: post #146
antisthenes wrote: post #104

I'm really surprised to see so many from the HN audience against scalpers, considering how libertarian the site leans. If there's any market where a completely free market approach is applicable and actually desirable, it's this one. I've bought maybe 40-50 tickets for various events (gaming, concerts, sports) over the last 5 years, and 99% of the time, the price of the ticket was negligible next to all the other exp…

Not everybody that sells tickets has as their goal maximizing revenue. For example, lots of bands work very hard to put on shows that are affordable for their fans. Scalpers taking advantage of the situation is an example of this-is-why-we-can't-have-nice-things . And I agree that access to affordable shows isn't as important as housing or healthcare, but I think you are very much underestimating the value and import…

> For example, lots of bands work very hard to put on shows that are affordable for their fans. Scalpers taking advantage of the situation is an example of this-is-why-we-can't-have-nice-things.

Don't believe their hype. If bands wanted to make shows cheaper they only have to do more shows.

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

#187

Post by knodi123 »

ikeboy wrote: post #100
knodi123 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What will of the merchant here is being thwarted? Allowing poor fans the opportunity to get in to a show. > I gave several possible answers No, you gave two. And the background check one was so ludicrous that you probably should have kept it to yourself. And you missed the most obvious, don't allow ticket resale . No need for hundreds of expensive financial investigations, and you don't have to rent out a stadium.…

Why can't they meet the demand by renting a larger venue? Banning ticket resale is also expensive at scale.

> Why can't they meet the demand by renting a larger venue?

For a variety of reasons. If Sting reunites with The Police and goes on tour- sure, rent a football stadium. Some bands prefer smaller, more intimate venues. Some may have a hard time competing for the limited spaces at larger venues. Some may choose to avoid that level of fame. Who knows? It's none of my business.

Bands are always free to chase as much fame as they want, and to make their own policies about pricing or resale or whatever. I just think it's a little dystopian to say they're required to zealously follow some sort of capitalist ideal.

> Banning ticket resale is also expensive at scale.

Checking tickets at the door doesn't get much more expensive if you also require showing an ID with a name that matches the name on the ticket. You can even use the barcodes on most IDs, no fiddly reading required! Remember, you're trying to keep out the people who capitalize on scale, so if somebody sneaks in with a resold ticket and a corresponding fake ID, who cares? A 99% solution is fine.

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

#188

Post by anigbrowl »

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…

This is a very narrow concept of efficiency. The person who drops $500 on a ticket doesn't necessarily like the band more than the person who can only afford $50. People are always citing models of price efficiency forgetting that perfect competition only obtains under very limited conditions, and that participants are theoretically free to enter or exit the market at any time.

Bands don't generally want to maximize revenue from any given gig, they want to maximize fan loyalty because it's the dedicated fans who spend the most money over the long term. Overly simplistic pricing models don't account for this. In economics your aim is to maximize utility. Money is only a proxy for this, and often an inaccurate one.

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

#189

Post by ue_ »

matwood wrote: post #183
ue_ wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Even at 2-3x price, the price of the ticket is a relatively small portion of the total cost of attending. This is irrelevant. The fact is that it's 2-3x the cost because someone decided to be greedy and purchase lots of tickets that people would have bought. Imagine if you go to buy a bar of chocolate, and it's $1 as it usually is. Then one day you've found out that the only way to buy it is from the weird guy outsi…

> The fact is that it's 2-3x the cost because someone decided to be greedy and purchase lots of tickets that people would have bought. Imagine if you go to buy a bar of chocolate, and it's $1 as it usually is. Then one day you've found out that the only way to buy it is from the weird guy outside the shop, who has purchased the entire supply of chocolate and is selling them at $3. I would be upset about it. The actua…

>You do realize the price is not set by the scalpers, but by the market?

Yes. I never claimed it doesn't make economical sense.

I was trying to make the point that people are engaging in behaviour I regard as abhorrent. The scalpers are doing it, even if they don't set the prices. Sweatshops also make economic sense.

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

#190

Post by ikeboy »

knodi123 wrote: post #187
ikeboy wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't they meet the demand by renting a larger venue? Banning ticket resale is also expensive at scale.

> Why can't they meet the demand by renting a larger venue? For a variety of reasons. If Sting reunites with The Police and goes on tour- sure, rent a football stadium. Some bands prefer smaller, more intimate venues. Some may have a hard time competing for the limited spaces at larger venues. Some may choose to avoid that level of fame. Who knows? It's none of my business. Bands are always free to chase as much fame…

>require showing an ID with a name that matches the name on the ticket

Then scalpers would just pre-sell tickets and buy it in the given name. There's an arms race and it's not easy to fight the market.

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