How to sell tickets fairly • Hacker News Board

Re: How to sell tickets fairly

#351

Post by buro9 » Mon, Nov 21, 2022, 2:53 PM UTC

Shaanie wrote: post #331

BeniBoy wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counterpoint: Dice is terrible. Sure it makes sense for bigger artist that will sold out, but for most it is not necessary and it forces you : - To have a smartphone - To give out your phone number - To create an account The worst? You can't even resale the ticket if the event is not sold out! Usually if I'm unable to attend a concert, I'll put my ticket up for sale for half the price, but with Dice, you just wasted…

Those three drawbacks are barely drawbacks at all nowadays. Not being able to return/resell your ticket is a big issue though.

Dice say that if someone wants to be able to purchase your ticket then you can sell it to them via their platform at no cost to you. i.e. you can return your ticket if someone wants it.

I do not know of any ticket that can be returned "just because".

Even a theatre or opera will accept returns only if they have demand for them.

Now compare to the majority of platforms that don't allow returns even when there is demand for them... or that will charge late arriving fans a higher price than face value for the returned tickets.

Re: How to sell tickets fairly

#352

Post by elefantastisch » Mon, Nov 21, 2022, 3:02 PM UTC

etchalon wrote: post #29

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.

Right, this is a values problem, not a technical problem.

Who should get to see Taylor Swift? How much should they pay? How should profits be distributed?

These are philosophical questions. If you assume a particular set of answers to these questions, designing the correct sales process is not difficult. But everyone has a different set of answers.

Re: How to sell tickets fairly

#353

Post by pas » Mon, Nov 21, 2022, 4:01 PM UTC

MichaelZuo wrote: post #218

pas wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

more like monopoly on the venue service. (a place where you have the permit to organize large group events, so proper exits, toilets, accessibility (if required); bag/clothes storage, waiting area, permit to sell alcohol, staff for all this, sufficient electricity connection, HVAC, ability to assemble a stage and the frame for lights and the soundsystem) for example rave organizers in LA can do it in a lot of potenti…

So why don't some enterprising well known artists/VCs/record labels/ pool together some money to build a new large venue, and control the ticketing themselves?

Big record labels are absolutely uninterested in this. They get their cut and that's it. Small labels don't matter.

Festival headliners, and other big big big artists in general have managers, make a shitton of money, have a lot of other problems on tours besides ticketing anyway, plus they have guest lists, so in the end they don't care.

Those few artists that are big and care, well, they care to solve the problem for their own situation, for their fans, and don't really want to solve the general problem.

Because in general it's not their problem. :/

Oh and LiveNation is a public company, it has a nice business moat, so it's like a successful unicorn.

Re: How to sell tickets fairly

#354

Post by matai_kolila » Mon, Nov 21, 2022, 4:21 PM UTC

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #332

matai_kolila wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that's the point; it's his farm, they're his robots. You're an employee. You got a job in an industry you like, that's not the same thing as, "I partnered with someone to build my idea."

Take a look at your comment at the start of this thread, including the quote from the article: >> Shameless plug: I understand how to make and launch exactly this kind of system, at least technically. If you want it built, please contact me. > I cannot roll my eyes hard enough - if you can, then do it already. Why the hell do you need the encouragement? There is no discussion of partnership. The point is, some people…

This isn’t farming, he needs zero resources to build this on his own, the fact that he doesn’t do it means he doesn’t think this idea has merit on its own.

Investors, cofounders want to see skin in the game. This disclosure shows he doesn’t have that, full stop. That’s disqualifying for nearly any partner who would be worth working with, and justifiably so.

This guy doesn’t have the stamina to see this idea through.

Re: How to sell tickets fairly

#355

Post by asurty » Mon, Nov 21, 2022, 4:43 PM UTC

I think ticket master attempted to do something similar to what you were saying as mentioned in this freakonimics podcast -

https://freakonomics.com/podcast/why-is-the-live-event-ticke...

I believe the problem they cited with this approach is it provides a poor UX where someone would have to keep checking the site to see if the ticket price has hit their desired target.

It would also still leave room for bots front running although still a better solution since the effects are dampened. Still, it's a lot easier for a bot to watch for a 'good price' to come up than a 'true fan'.

Perhaps to get around that there could also be an ability to make automatic purchases for a user once the ticket price reaches desired target? Something like a batch auction that randomizes winners in a cohort might work.

There are also people working in this area that would like to simply prevent resales. The problem there is it also might discourage purchases since people might be more reluctant to make such a big purchase if there is no way to recoup their money in case something happens that prevents them from going.

Perhaps another alternative to discourage scalping is if there was an identity system that requires each ticket holder to prove their identity. That, however, would also decrease the UX dramatically and would be a tough sell. But maybe the time is right to make such a hard sell?

Re: How to sell tickets fairly

#356

Post by asurty » Mon, Nov 21, 2022, 4:56 PM UTC

manholio wrote: post #278

MichaelZuo wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How exactly do fans prove their loyalty?

All kind of models are possible: associate your social ID and prove you've distributed band related content early in their career; associate multiple past purchases - for things like merchandising, fan specials, behind the scenes etc. etc. The main theme is giving band and labels tools to maintain and curate this relationship with the fanbase, and only then add ticketing on top of it. If you have a certain mass and s…

I love the idea of requiring the purchase of merchandise beforehand, although I'm not sure if this would only compound the problem of scalping. The problem with building moats is

a ) scalpers will write algorithms to predict where the moats are before fans can get there

b ) it discourages new fans getting into a band

Re: How to sell tickets fairly

#357

Post by type-r » Tue, Nov 22, 2022, 5:45 PM UTC

Setting aside the issues that revenue maximization is not typically the only (or even the main) concern for those selling tickets, I still think this system isn't very good. One key issue is that it assumes that the underlying value of the tickets themselves does not change over time (in the article's specific case, 6 months). But an artist's popularity can be extremely unpredictable, and over the course of 6 months could change drastically. This would likely mean leaving money on the table, especially if that rise in popularity comes close to the actual event date.

I think a better approach that could deal with this would be to avoid trying to come up with the 'max' and 'min' amounts and instead simply let people submit bids for how much they are willing to pay for tickets. You would pre-authorize that amount at order time, but it wouldn't yet be deducted. At the end of every day, the top n bids would 'win' and actually actually purchase the ticket.

In the simple case where the artist's popularity stays the same over time, this would probably result in a similar outcome to OP's suggestion. But if the artist undergoes a big increase in popularity, the ticket price would rise again to a much higher value later.

Re: How to sell tickets fairly

#358

Post by type-r » Tue, Nov 22, 2022, 5:50 PM UTC

JKCalhoun wrote: post #221

detaro wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want your marketing signaling to be "this artist is for rich people, normal people have no chance to see them anyways", sure. Many probably don't want to do that - indeed the strength of the lottery system is that it does signal the opposite.

You can of course have a hybrid — where say 75% of the tickets are lottery, the rest are insanely high priced.

This already basically exists, with things like VIP / "meet and greet"

Re: How to sell tickets fairly

#359

Post by etothepii » Tue, Nov 22, 2022, 6:22 PM UTC

8note wrote: post #321

etothepii wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As in if I know I will make $1m in sales I might choose to use better audio equipment.

If you're selling out shows at double the price, wouldn't the next step be to reduce the sound quality so you can play cheaper shows with a higher profit?

This is a really interesting question. I feel like I see it with airlines all the time. The question that comes eventually though is do people notice and does a culture of penny-pinching trickle down into an inferior product that makes people resent the high price enough that sometimes they won't pay it.

Re: How to sell tickets fairly

#360

Post by the_mungler » Wed, Nov 23, 2022, 5:33 AM UTC

elil17 wrote: post #350

the_mungler wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good point, but you could address that by splitting up the seats into multiple auctions depending on the quality of the seats. People could even bid "conditionally" for multiple sections, and once bidding closes you resolve the separate auctions in order from best to worst. If a person with multiple bids gets a good seat, their bids in the other sections get cancelled. Seems to me that this could have very similar re…

People don't want to do complex bidding schemes. Even Vickery auctions confuse people - look at how eBay has to call their Vickery auction "automatic bidding" to alleviate that confusion. A threshold effect could certainly exist, that would be one issue with that scheme.

Yeah, you're right about that. I'll admit this topic sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole on how this could be accomplished. An alternative scheme could be a Vickery Clarke Groves or generalized second price auction. These bidding schemes are used to price online adverts. Once the auction closes, let people choose their seats in order of who paid the most. This let's you place one bid, and individually prices each seat, but the downside is you don't know how good a seat your bid will get you. Still, would probably be easier to understand. If you bid more, you get first pick.