Couldn't ticketmaster put a minimum time limit on each ticket sale? So a bot tries to buy a ticket and ticketmaster says sorry you completed the transaction too fast, you are probably a bot. Pick a min time consistent with how long it typically takes a person. This would level the playing field between bots and humans.
A scalper who used bots to buy millions of tickets, now wants to stop them
281–290 of 328 posts
Re: A scalper who used bots to buy millions of tickets, now wants to stop them
#282I spent some of my formidable years scalping and brokering event (mostly broadway) tickets in various forms. The company I co-founded made a few million and I learned an expensive lesson in equity at age 18 (I opted instead for the $14/hr salary). We worked in broadway (meaning the style of show, not just the street), and I met the Wiseguys folks at secondary market trade shows, but I had no idea they were this big,…
Do you have a scalper's view on Burning Man tickets?
AFAIK, it's not that no-one scalps them, but that it's a definite minority, due to community standards, slick moves by the Borg, and invalidating tickets that they find out get scalped.
Re: A scalper who used bots to buy millions of tickets, now wants to stop them
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I have never yet seen a system that cannot be beat by scalpers, including paperless ticketing, I have seen such a system. A festival near me has a limited number of tickets available each year (due to site and staff restrictions) with surprisingly high demand. Their solution is to do a lottery that gives people an opportunity to buy tickets, requiring the name of each individual ticket recipient at purchase, then t…
Sell by auction. Let buyers bid up to the natural market value. Avoid sniping by running it like a real auction: having no fixed ending time and only finalizing a sale when there have been no bids for a period of time to be sure everyone has a chance to bid up to whatever it's worth to them.
Ok that actually works, but market value will change drastically over time, and fans would be in an uproar
Re: A scalper who used bots to buy millions of tickets, now wants to stop them
#284I spent some of my formidable years scalping and brokering event (mostly broadway) tickets in various forms. The company I co-founded made a few million and I learned an expensive lesson in equity at age 18 (I opted instead for the $14/hr salary). We worked in broadway (meaning the style of show, not just the street), and I met the Wiseguys folks at secondary market trade shows, but I had no idea they were this big,…
Do you have a scalper's view on Burning Man tickets? AFAIK, it's not that no-one scalps them, but that it's a definite minority, due to community standards, slick moves by the Borg, and invalidating tickets that they find out get scalped.
Have never paid attention
Re: A scalper who used bots to buy millions of tickets, now wants to stop them
#285Earlier 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…
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. If people stopped buying scalped tickets, scalpers would be out of business. We're not talking about a product that's of life and death scale importance. I can understand people being upset by price gouging on water and food. I have, personally, sworn off doing busin…
>If people stopped buying scalped tickets, scalpers would be out of business.
That's true, but it doesn't mean that the industry is ethical.
>We're not talking about a product that's of life and death scale importance.
Irrelevant. Why does the vitality of the product matter? Somebody wants it; I can't see why gouging is only an issue when it's basic utilities. You probably have to get into a whole issue on what qualifies as 'need'.
>price gouged customers after Sandy Hook but nothing they did should be illegal.
Sure.
Re: A scalper who used bots to buy millions of tickets, now wants to stop them
#286Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Wait, because its concert tickets its less of a violation? yes, exactly that. what's so hard to understand? price gouging on essentials is clearly a worse thing to do than price gouging on leisure items.
So by your logic it is OK because there are worse things? Do you use that metric in all aspects of your judgement? If so you must be able rationalize a lot of questionable behavior because you can always think of something 'worse" that you "could" be doing instead. What's so hard to understand is that your logic is pretty twisted.
it's really hard for me to understand why you're talking to me like this, as if I personally did something wrong.
forgive me for being relatively unconcerned that sometimes concert tickets cost a lot.
my judgment absolutely does take into account the pragmatic concerns regarding harm. some bad things are less bad than other bad things. just like some good things are more good than other good things. do I need to explain that? I'm quite astonished that you're challenging me on that point.
murder is worse than stealing chewing gum. yes? price gouging on medicine is worse than price gouging on concert tickets. yes?
not every injustice in the world is really worth reacting to with such passion.
Re: A scalper who used bots to buy millions of tickets, now wants to stop them
#287Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
>"If bands wanted to make shows cheaper they only have to do more shows." That's often not feasible. Booking dates depends on a venues schedule. Its often not possible to book a venue for 2 or even 3 nights in a row, especially in primary markets.
Plus artists would probably like to put on better shows (of which the audience is a key part) rather than more shows. Quality over quantity.
Re: A scalper who used bots to buy millions of tickets, now wants to stop them
#288Earlier quoted context omitted.
So by your logic it is OK because there are worse things? Do you use that metric in all aspects of your judgement? If so you must be able rationalize a lot of questionable behavior because you can always think of something 'worse" that you "could" be doing instead. What's so hard to understand is that your logic is pretty twisted.
it's really hard for me to understand why you're talking to me like this, as if I personally did something wrong. forgive me for being relatively unconcerned that sometimes concert tickets cost a lot. my judgment absolutely does take into account the pragmatic concerns regarding harm. some bad things are less bad than other bad things. just like some good things are more good than other good things. do I need to expl…
>"it's really hard for me to understand why you're talking to me like this, as if I personally did something wrong."
You want to pass judgement on people and then act all sensitive when someone responds to you? There is nothing disrespectful in anything I wrote. It's called a discussion.
>"not every injustice in the world is really worth reacting to with such passion."
Again, here is another judgement by you that music is not such an important thing. People are extremely passionate about music and their favorite artists. Music and more specifically a live show is a very emotional experience for fans. There are million of people in the world for whom music and their favorites artists are some of their most treasured things. Just because its not for you does not mean its not for someone else.
Re: A scalper who used bots to buy millions of tickets, now wants to stop them
#289Earlier quoted context omitted.
But an efficient primary market disconnects you from your fans by advantaging richer customers. Probably not the best way to get the crowd that actually care about your music.
If the value of the ticket is more than the price, you're just going to have what you have today: scalper-bots gobbling them up and re-selling them to those richer customers anyway. The people who can't afford the tickets still can't afford them. Whenever you price something under its value, you are just opening up an arbitrage opportunity for someone else.
They still can afford it, they just have less chance to get the tickets. I think it's somehow more fair than rising the price for everyone.
Re: A scalper who used bots to buy millions of tickets, now wants to stop them
#290Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
Awesome, I was genuinely curious if anyone would recognize the beer. I've been seeing it further and further away from Cincy.