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How to sell tickets fairly

barnabas.me

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Re: How to sell tickets fairly

#291

Post by pclmulqdq »

somehnacct3757 wrote: post #226
pclmulqdq wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regular purchasers would learn to not try to game the auction like that any more. In the scenario you described, they are only losing out on tickets because they are getting greedy and trying to buy them for less than they think those tickets are worth. The point of auctions is that the right strategy is to bid to your price, not to try to guess what other people think the price should be. That's why they work.

Again, X is not a price it's a demand level (for scalper tickets). Everyone can 'bid their price' and scalpers will still buy out the bottom of the auction and take control of the pricing.

Those hypothetical scalpers will indeed have control of the pricing, but they will have no customers willing to pay what they have paid, because all customers willing to pay more will have already bought tickets.

In theory, there may have been holdouts who wanted to get a better price, as you are suggesting, who then turn to the scalpers. Those holdouts are either (a) irrational for not bidding the price they were willing to pay or (b) not actually willing to pay whatever price the scalpers want to get.

By taking this strategy of picking a demand level X and buying out all the tickets once the supply is below that level, scalpers are virtually guaranteed to lose money.

For most goods, there is no demand that is independent of price.

Re: How to sell tickets fairly

#292

Post by fragmede »

cbsmith wrote: post #273
yardstick wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All that a lottery does is incentivize everyone to participate, even those who have no interest in going. Then a secondary market will engage in actual price discovery and you’re left with the current system. How would the secondary market work if you have to put peoples names on tickets upon buying the ticket. No renames allowed (bring your name change deed poll and old and new IDs I guess). Can’t make the concert…

My name is Chris Smith. Solve that.

Maybe it'll let you go on a free trip round the world! https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-30530070

Re: How to sell tickets fairly

#293

Post by paxys »

hluska wrote: post #2

Pearl Jam tried to beat Ticketmaster. At the risk of sounding like the big fan I am, if Eddie Vedder and co. (at their commercial peak) can’t beat Ticketmaster, I’m not convinced that software can. I’ve been pasting this Rolling Stone link since I was in my teens. I can’t believe how old I am… https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/pearl-jam-taki...

You underestimate Taylor Swift fans.

Re: How to sell tickets fairly

#294

Post by zwkrt »

Spooky23 wrote: post #262
silvestrov wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tha…

The problem with Ticketmaster is the same as any consolidation play. If you let a middleman control the wholesale and retail side of the transaction, you’re gonna get a bad deal. The solution is really simple, but the government no longer has the regulatory ability to do anything. You segment the distributor function from the retail, and end up with a bunch of retailers running volume driven low margin sales channels…

In a transaction of the style of musical performances, I think it’s inevitable that an entity like Ticketmaster would begin to exist. The issue is that we have a many to many to many relationship between fans, artists, and venues.

In database design when you have such a pattern it is common that you’ll have a new table to maintain the complex relationship. It doesn’t make sense for venues to sell tickets because each artist has their own tour through many venues. Selling tickets for a tour becomes a hassle as many venues would have to coordinate. To complicate things, opening acts often switch during the course of a tour. Conversely, it doesn’t make sense for artists to sell tickets because the process of coming up with the ticket price and negotiating with the venue and handling transactions and returns , etc. is not their core competency.

This is why promoters like Live Nation exist—to bridge this gap and take on the capital risk necessary to put on a large tour. They aren’t necessary but their value to venues and artists (the business owners) is palpable. For Taylor Swift to go on a world tour, an amount of centralized coordination makes it much easier and much less likely to end in financial ruin.

Re: How to sell tickets fairly

#295

Post by CPLX »

silvestrov wrote: post #199
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 tha…

But it is all their fault. They’re an obviously illegal monopoly that was allowed to thrive during our multi-decade experiment with not enforcing antitrust laws.

If artists literally ALL wanted to hire a scapegoat that rips off fans then sure. But many don’t. The fact that there’s no other alternative is WHY it works.

Also there’s no such thing as “venues and artists” since they own the venues too. Which is another part of the overall problem.

Re: How to sell tickets fairly

#296

Post by Symbiote »

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…

In Denmark it's illegal to resell tickets above the original price.

Occasionally you see "crate of beer 1000DKK comes with free Taylor Swift ticket" but it's rare.

Re: How to sell tickets fairly

#297

Post by lifeisstillgood »

onion2k wrote: post #176

Starting at $2000 for a concert where demand outstrips supply to the point where people will pay $4000 to a ticket scalper just means the minimum ticket price will be $2000. All the tickets will still sell out immediately. The audience will be entirely made up of wealthy people, or people who are willing to break the bank to see Taylor sing. The only "fair" way to sell a good that's in high demand and you want everyo…

Just want to support this - and agree that the implication is the people who don't implement this are the artists (or managers) themselves who, y'know, like money.

Re: How to sell tickets fairly

#298

Post by fragmede »

yardstick wrote: post #287
cbsmith wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My name is Chris Smith. Solve that.

Name and date of birth Edit: Also Chris Smith is still a very limited sales opportunity compared to everyone. Plus Chris would be going alone assuming their partners name was not listed correctly or partners name didn’t have a ticket matching that too. Hamilton already does something similar with having to present your ID plus the credit/debit card used for booking and the names must match. See https://www.ticketmast…

Not so hilariously for people this applies to, but the combination of name and DOB still isn't actually unique either. I'll skip rewording it and just leave this link

https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-...

Re: How to sell tickets fairly

#299

Post by yardstick »

fragmede wrote: post #298
yardstick wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Name and date of birth Edit: Also Chris Smith is still a very limited sales opportunity compared to everyone. Plus Chris would be going alone assuming their partners name was not listed correctly or partners name didn’t have a ticket matching that too. Hamilton already does something similar with having to present your ID plus the credit/debit card used for booking and the names must match. See https://www.ticketmast…

Not so hilariously for people this applies to, but the combination of name and DOB still isn't actually unique either. I'll skip rewording it and just leave this link https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-...

It doesn’t need to be absolutely unique though. It just needs to make the secondary market infeasible. I would argue that only being able to re-sell tickets on the secondary market to “Chris Smith” is going to result in essentially no ticket scalping.

Re: How to sell tickets fairly

#300

Post by pclmulqdq »

thrtythreeforty wrote: post #209
pclmulqdq wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NFTs actually can't algorithmically restrict transfer prices or algorithmically take fees. The fee taking that happens today is done by an exchange as a courtesy to the "artist." This is one of the limitations of the NFT model.

I was under the impression you can run arbitrary code in the blockchain?

Not even close. You are very much limited by what each chain's VM allows. The bitcoin VM is extremely limited. The EVM lifts most of those limitations. All of the VMs have a fee you pay based on the complexity of your program, too.

You are also limited in what cryptography you can do because all of the data involved has to be public - so no private keys can be involved in that computation if you want them to stay private.

Take the example of transaction fees on sale of NFTs. A lot of NFT creators wanted to be able to take X% of the sale price of NFTs as an ongoing royalty. Here's how that might have to happen if you did it algorithmically:

1. You initiate an NFT transfer that requires the creator's signature to be processed

2. You pay a fee to the creator and provide proof of the purchase price to get them to sign the transaction

3. The creator signs your transaction, completing it

This step involves trusting the creator to do (3). You cannot automatically do (3) without the creator's private key being on-chain.

Note that if it were a flat fee, there would be no problem - the transfer transaction would be able to auto-deduct the ETH from your account and move it to the creator's, but the variable fee creates problems.

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