31–40 of 363 posts
The obvious fix to bots and scalpers is just to not allow ticket transfers - you give your name when you buy the ticket and show your ID at the door. Why this isn't the current process is left as an exercise to the reader.
How could it be done without invading privacy?
The obvious fix to bots and scalpers is just to not allow ticket transfers - you give your name when you buy the ticket and show your ID at the door. Why this isn't the current process is left as an exercise to the reader.
The obvious fix to bots and scalpers is just to not allow ticket transfers - you give your name when you buy the ticket and show your ID at the door. Why this isn't the current process is left as an exercise to the reader.
Or you could just be like Garth Brooks and keep adding shows until they no longer sell out. Boom, problem solved.
More work for the artist though, and for the mega-popular (Taylor Swift atm) it might be hard to schedule enough shows.
$75 was a bit of money to be sure.
Back then you waited outside record stores to buy tickets. You'd line up, and sometime before the sale, they'd come out and hand out numbers, say 1 to 100. Then you'd sort by the number. Then they'd come out and say "We're starting the line at 37". 37 would be the front of the line, everyone else would sort behind that, wrapping around at the back. #36 would be the last in line.
When I went to buy Tommy tickets, they were also selling another acts tickets.
Since the tickets were so expensive, I went out of my way to go to a lower income neighborhood with the hope that there would be less folks in line to buy tickets, simply due to the price.
In the end, I got my ticket and the lady behind me did not. If they weren't selling the other act, maybe she would have made it.
When the Rolling Stones with Guns and Roses in LA went on sale, they gave out wristbands days in advance. My spot in line was around the building, the first show was sold out before I got there. The seats I did get were basically lousy when I did get them. That took an afternoon.
When I went to buy tickets at the venue, they handed out numbers, but they didn't scramble them. The numbers were random, but #1 was first in line. As soon as I got my number, there was a guy offering to buy low numbers. I had not doubt he was going to buy the 8 ticket limit. He wasn't a fan, he was a professional scalper.
U2 tried to sell tickets over the phone in LA, trying to route around TicketMaster. It literally disabled the Los Angeles telephone system for several hours. You'd pick up the phone and not be able to hear a dial tone (I was listening to the modem trying to dial in to a client site). It would take up to 30 seconds to get a dial tone, and good luck getting your call through anyway. Total disaster.
Taylor Swift sold out 2M tickets. I don't care what the time frame that was in, that's a boat load of traffic. Think not of the 2M they sold, think of how many were not sold. I think there are few companies that could handle that load, especially something as specific as selling seats A29, A30, A31, and A40 to Bob Jones. Let's see a paper on that locking problem.
The production company sets the ticket prices, TM sets the service fees, if you want to save on service fees, go to the venue. I'm not defending TM, they certainly don't need me, but it's been an intractable problem for a long, long time, at all sorts of levels. If you think TMs fees are bad, try StubHub.
In the absence of some system that prevents resale, scalpers will likely still buy up all of the Taylor Swift tickets before they drop to a price that is affordable for these less-affluent fans.
The bots will likely still win if they can determine how many tickets are left and how fast they are selling.
There is no such thing as a "fair" way to sell anything where demand vastly outstrips supply. There are just choices about what resource you want to prejudice for: money, time or luck.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because people drop out last minute and might want to take a different friend.
I went to a concert that requires you to match your ticket, but allowed you to sell tickets on a site they control for the face value. I think the buyer has to pay a transaction fee as well. I got the tickets by signing up and they took my credit card, and charged me when I was next in line and someone had tickets for sale. It was pretty neat, though I suspect I lucked out because a bunch of people sold their tickets…
Why not have a big closed auction? Everyone has a week or so to submit how much they are willing to pay for a ticket. Once the auction closes, sort by price and take the number of seats available. Everyone pays the minimum price that still fits in the seats available. I'm imagining a large scale Vickery auction, sorry if I'm not explaining super well. Everyone pays the same, but people get a price they think is fair.
A Vickery auction would not, I think, lend itself to that kind of price discovery.