How to sell tickets fairly • Hacker News Board

Re: How to sell tickets fairly

#191

Post by culturedsystems » Sat, Nov 19, 2022, 11:35 AM UTC

pclmulqdq wrote: post #95

musicale wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember Green Day doing a local show where you had to pay cash at the door. This seems to address botting, though scalping organizations can still pay people to stand in line (and presumably take a cut when they are paid to give up their spots.) Personally I think this approach helps out kids who have time to wait in line but don't necessarily have the money to pay huge markups and fees from the secondary market.

The simple solution to getting fans rather than grifters is to make the tickets cost something other than money. Time is a nice obvious cost element to add. If only we could channel that time more productively (and in a more palatable way) than having people wait in line.

Taylor Swift did do something a bit like this this for a previous tour - you could get early access to the ticket sales by doing various kinds of fan activities, including buying physical copies of her records, watching videos, and posting on social media [1]. People were kind of mad about it, although I think in part that was because the "fan activities" that gave you the best chance to get tickets were the ones that also involved buying things.

[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/aug/31/bad-blood-is-t...

Re: How to sell tickets fairly

#192

Post by pas » Sat, Nov 19, 2022, 11:41 AM UTC

jzwinck wrote: post #147

bo1024 wrote: post #18

I think this is great if your goal is to clear the market at a competitive price. But a lot of artists want to sell tickets below market price. That makes the problem a lot harder. The obvious thing to do is have a lottery, but it's hard to stop people from using multiple identities (especially scalpers).

Sell a fraction of tickets at higher prices (perhaps via auction) ahead of time, and sell the rest at the door. Scalpers cannot pretend to be multiple people if they have to enter the venue and pay. The known-price door tickets set a bound on the value of advance tickets, with the latter having a premium for certainty of getting in. Younger people with less money will place less value on certainty (they can wait in l…

sell low price vouchers, require ID for them, make them refundable in 90+ days or in person with ID only

set up a membership/trust/reputation system for fans and/or frequent venue goers (eg. locals), and if they actually show up to gigs, then you can reduce the refund wait time for them, etc.

Re: How to sell tickets fairly

#193

Post by listenallyall » Sat, Nov 19, 2022, 11:51 AM UTC

blowski wrote: post #180

Ferret7446 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But a lot of artists want to sell tickets below market price And I want to experience being a dragon, unicorn, billionaire, etc. We can want impossible things, but ignore reality at our own peril. You can't "beat" the market, you just force the market underground (black market, scalpers). The market ALWAYS pays what it can afford. If demand is greater than supply, and someone is willing to pay more for it, refer to…

The market! The market! The market! This invisible beast which controls everything for all eternity! There are always ways of influencing the market. Taxes, subsidies, regulations, advertising. It requires imagination, but let's not feel ourselves enslaved completely to the invisible hand of the new leviathan.

"Influencing the market" is just a way of introducing unenforcable or ineffective rules, or unintended consequences. You want to tax resale of tickets at above face value at 100%? Sure. Now enforce it. I mean, it's been illegal in many states for a while now anyway.

Back in the day, before the web, anyone who wanted a ticket at face value could get one. You just had to wait in line. For a long time. And back then, people said that system was unfair, because wealthy people could afford to take the day off of work, while poor people couldn't. Or wealthy people could simply pay other people to wait in line for them. And the wealthy people realized, hey, the limit is 8 tickets but I'm going with just a group of 4... I can buy all 8 and sell 4 to people at the end of the line for a profit. And they did! And so waiting in line became fruitless, unless you were really, really, really early, because all the wealthy people (scalpers) would buy the max number of tickets and the show would sell out fast. Now we have the internet and nobody has to wait on a line, everyone can log in at the exact moment, but people once again say this is unfair.

The idea that you can somehow ignore, heavily influence, or override the free market in concert tickets is nonsensical.

Re: How to sell tickets fairly

#194

Post by mananaysiempre » Sat, Nov 19, 2022, 12:01 PM UTC

buro9 wrote: post #154

The proposed idea is a technical one that doesn't work for the promoters or artists or venues. The promoters want to know very early whether the venue is the right one for the number attending and whether to upsize, add dates, or even to go the other way to a smaller venue. The time to book a venue is very long... So they need as complete data as they can about sales as early as possible (they would love if 80% of th…

> [T]he idea that "I have more money and deserve more to have a ticket over someone that doesn't have as much money" is antithetical to the thinking of every artist I've ever worked with.

The problem is, with a limited supply of tickets you’re going to draw the line somehow whether you want it or not. Price sets the barrier explicitly. Attempts to avoid using that (e.g. in various social welfare programs all over the world, but also throughout the late Soviet consumer economy) have usually ended up instituting a different, implicit barrier that may seem less outrageous on the surface but at the end of the day is not that much better: networking or bribery skills, amount of time to spend standing in queue or refreshing the website (frequently turned back into price by various enterprising people—I wonder if the US Consulate in Moscow realizes the reduction in visa interview capacity a couple of years ago had as its main effect funnelling applicants’ money to a small, untaxed, and technically illegal industry of bot programmers).

If you’re trying to extract as much money from each customer as possible (as airlines and other “discriminating monopolies” do), those additional barriers might be intentional. Otherwise they don’t seem that much better than the original money one—I guess you could claim the most passionate fans will be able to buy cheap tickets that are sold out in hours (one possible barrier) but you’re automatically cutting off people who can’t afford the necessary time off work to monitor the sale as well, for example.

I don’t like this. But I don’t see a workable economic mechanism that can do substantially better, either.

Re: How to sell tickets fairly

#195

Post by somehnacct3757 » Sat, Nov 19, 2022, 12:01 PM UTC

pclmulqdq wrote: post #92

somehnacct3757 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

X isn't the price in my solution it's the percent of concert hopefuls who will hold their nose and pay a scalper. Once there's exactly that many tickets left, there's no point running the auction anymore. Scalpers should use their bots to completely buy up all remaining tickets, as they do now, and then set them for a higher price on the secondary market. Buying the first 1-X% tickets nearly guarantees you will pay m…

Wait, they didn't choose to buy a ticket at the price the scalpers got (plus epsilon), so why would they pay more when the scalpers come around with a ticket?

Cuz the auction ran out of tickets so the price starts to climb as scalpers monetize FOMO. Regular purchasers don't know what the scalpers think X is for this particular concert. Even if you knew X, all you could do is try to buy a ticket right before the remaining quantity reaches X which guarantees you paid more than the scalper, but maybe not more than the scalper's resell price.

X is the moment scalpers buy up the remaining market and set their own prices now that they control the supply. They know many other ticket holders can't compete with them since they paid more money for their ticket.

Re: How to sell tickets fairly

#196

Post by StingyJelly » Sat, Nov 19, 2022, 12:11 PM UTC

wombat-man wrote: post #61

- Digital only tickets - By default, the tickets are not transferrable. Use your app on your phone to get in. - You can pay a fee to make tickets transferrable/scalpable. - The fee increases as more tickets are sold with this option (set ceiling on max number of tickets with this option sold) So okay, you want to scalp tickets, you have to pay more and people who don't want to transfer pay less.

I don't like that idea. First, personally, I'll rather pass than install that app.

Second, it would need to heavily rely on device fingerprinting and obfuscation to give scalpers hard time trying to modify the app. Software protection will likely fail anyway when both scalpers and people buying from them have aligned interests. Even if the software protection holds, the price of second-hand phones may be too low compared to price of the tickets, so the "transferability fee" has a practical ceiling, especially since the phone can be sold again afterwards.

Re: How to sell tickets fairly

#197

Post by aetherson » Sat, Nov 19, 2022, 12:25 PM UTC

Cederfjard wrote: post #144

conradludgate wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the kids didn't buy at the time, that means they didn't buy them before when the tickets were more expensive. Which means that also wouldn't be interested in buying the more expensive scalped tickets either. Put into context: Tickets are $30 - kid doesn't buy them next day Tickets are $29 - scaler buys them before the kid The kid has already decided that $30 is too much. For the resale to be worth it, it would nee…

What if the kid passes at $30 because money is tight, they’d prefer to pay $20 and want to try for that, but scalpers snatch up all the cheapest tickets before the kid is able to. The kid still really wants to go, however, and is willing to actually pay the scalper up to $40 when push comes to shove, even if it hurts a bit? Or if they weren’t organized enough or able to commit to going early on, but still have the pu…

Then they learned a valuable lesson?

I mean, this seems like a low stakes operation. Nobody on their deathbed is like, "If only that Taylor Swift ticket had cost $10 less."

Re: How to sell tickets fairly

#198

Post by manholio » Sat, Nov 19, 2022, 12:46 PM UTC

mananaysiempre wrote: post #194

buro9 wrote: post #154

The proposed idea is a technical one that doesn't work for the promoters or artists or venues. The promoters want to know very early whether the venue is the right one for the number attending and whether to upsize, add dates, or even to go the other way to a smaller venue. The time to book a venue is very long... So they need as complete data as they can about sales as early as possible (they would love if 80% of th…

> [T]he idea that "I have more money and deserve more to have a ticket over someone that doesn't have as much money" is antithetical to the thinking of every artist I've ever worked with. The problem is, with a limited supply of tickets you’re going to draw the line somehow whether you want it or not. Price sets the barrier explicitly. Attempts to avoid using that (e.g. in various social welfare programs all over the…

The model that works is to build relationships with fans and afford them privileged access, and sell everything else at market clearing prices.

Ticketmaster tried too offer that through a "verified fan" route, but it failed under the weight of its own monopolistic ineptitude. Whoever cracks the fan management+ticketing service and offers it to bands will have an incredibly strong moat.

Re: How to sell tickets fairly

#199

Post by silvestrov » Sat, Nov 19, 2022, 12:49 PM UTC

buro9 wrote: post #154

The proposed idea is a technical one that doesn't work for the promoters or artists or venues. The promoters want to know very early whether the venue is the right one for the number attending and whether to upsize, add dates, or even to go the other way to a smaller venue. The time to book a venue is very long... So they need as complete data as they can about sales as early as possible (they would love if 80% of th…

There is the old trope that McDonalds is primarily a real estate business.

In the same line of thinking, you could say Ticketmaster is a "scape goat" business so the artists and venues can get max profit while still coming of as innocent angels.

It is now all Ticketmaster's fault. Venues and artists are innocent.

This would explain why you can't fix it: where would the scapegoating go? When you have larger demand than supply, then prices will always be high. And when venues + artists prefer full venues, then demand must be higher than supply.

Re: How to sell tickets fairly

#200

Post by blowski » Sat, Nov 19, 2022, 12:51 PM UTC

listenallyall wrote: post #193

blowski wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The market! The market! The market! This invisible beast which controls everything for all eternity! There are always ways of influencing the market. Taxes, subsidies, regulations, advertising. It requires imagination, but let's not feel ourselves enslaved completely to the invisible hand of the new leviathan.

"Influencing the market" is just a way of introducing unenforcable or ineffective rules, or unintended consequences. You want to tax resale of tickets at above face value at 100%? Sure. Now enforce it. I mean, it's been illegal in many states for a while now anyway. Back in the day, before the web, anyone who wanted a ticket at face value could get one. You just had to wait in line. For a long time. And back then, pe…

So we can influence the market for travel, healthcare, education, military, environment, food, children’s toys, etc. But not for tickets to watch Taylor Swift?