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Why scalpers can get tickets

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Re: Why scalpers can get tickets

#471

Post by banannaise »

nayuki wrote: post #430
mpixel wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People just don’t want to deal with the reality that the Taylor swift tickets that start at $40 or whatever were never real to begin with This. Here's a much more optimal semi-auction style solution. Tickets go on sale for 20 days, each day, all the seats and spots are worth the same price, you can buy anything, the price is always the same. Day 1, the price is $2000. Day 20, the price is $10. So you'd only pay $60…

I agree with you and that's called a Dutch auction or descending price auction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_auction But inevitably, someone (such as the vocal people in this thread) is going to complain that it means only the richest fans can afford to attend the concert. No duh, being rich means you are able to afford things that some others can't.

One of the reasons that artists want their tickets to be accessible for less-wealthy fans is that those fans are often more invested. Expensive tickets lead to a lot of rich people who are there to be seen and to experience an exclusive event rather than people who are specifically interested in that artist.

You find similar effects at sporting events (which is part of why nearly every soccer club has a "supporters' section" with ticket prices deliberately kept very low).

Re: Why scalpers can get tickets

#473

Post by nayuki »

banannaise wrote: post #471
nayuki wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you and that's called a Dutch auction or descending price auction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_auction But inevitably, someone (such as the vocal people in this thread) is going to complain that it means only the richest fans can afford to attend the concert. No duh, being rich means you are able to afford things that some others can't.

One of the reasons that artists want their tickets to be accessible for less-wealthy fans is that those fans are often more invested. Expensive tickets lead to a lot of rich people who are there to be seen and to experience an exclusive event rather than people who are specifically interested in that artist. You find similar effects at sporting events (which is part of why nearly every soccer club has a "supporters'…

That's true. But there will still be some kind of rationing going on. If there are a thousand seats but a million fans, then 99.9% of them will be disappointed. Sure, you can lower the price, but then the winners will be either first-come-first-serve, or lottery, or nepotism.

Re: Why scalpers can get tickets

#474

Post by jaybrendansmith »

nayuki wrote: post #56
jaybrendansmith wrote: post #49

I think unique identity is worth something. This is what the government (federal, state, local, doesn't matter) ought to have a role in protecting. If we had laws that said, for example, you must have proof of identity in the country or state or region where the arena is located, would that not solve this? We used to do it in the 90s by using phone area codes, and this worked pretty effectively: the early 90s was a g…

So tell international fans to f*ck off, right? I know many friends who fly to Japan to attend concerts because they genuinely like those artists. Way to stifle free trade and trample on people's preferences.

Agree that's wouldn't be right ... but proof of identity should solve for both as long as there was reciprocity between governments.

Re: Why scalpers can get tickets

#475

Post by habosa »

anthonypasq wrote: post #466
habosa wrote: post #320

Some of my favorite bands have done simple things which drastically (but not completely) reduce the levels of scalping. On a previous tour, Wilco made tickets only valid for the original holder with matching photo ID at the door. So I couldn’t sell my ticket. I was able to bring any guest I wanted with my second ticket though. For a while now Phish has done tickets via lottery and all tickets come in the physical mai…

This entire "scandal" is simply a variety of bizarre tactics and discussions to get around the fact that people expect to be able to see the most popular musicians on the entire planet for $40. No one expects to be able to go to the super bowl for $40 but for some reason people think they should be able to see Taylor Swift?

I don't think anyone wants more events like the Super Bowl besides the NFL. And there's really no comparison between that event and a single Taylor Swift concert ... the Super Bowl is big enough to have a Beyonce concert at halftime! There are also dozens of Taylor Swift concerts per tour and she does a tour every few years. For most fans their team makes the Super Bowl only once or twice in a lifetime.

Also not all sports finals are so expensive! For instance the FA Cup Final, one of the major trophies for one of the biggest sports leagues in the world, had tickets last year starting at 45GBP: https://www.mancity.com/tickets/mens/fa-cup-final-ticketing-...

And in the UK at the time there was a lot of coverage that the tickets had gotten too expensive.

Re: Why scalpers can get tickets

#476

Post by xp84 »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #439
slau wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re missing the point: every ticket has a name. Not the same single name on 4 tickets. Every ticket is personalised. It doesn’t matter that one person can’t come. All the others can go. If you can’t go, you still can get refunded for your ticket cost. If one person buys multiple tickets, they need to provide all the names of the people who are going. Just like when you book a plane ticket.

> You’re missing the point: every ticket has a name. Not the same single name on 4 tickets. Every ticket is personalised. At which point you can no longer exchange one for a different name and have pissed off legitimate customers. That was the point of the suggestion that you could get 2-4 tickets in the same name -- so that you could change 1-3 of them in case of a conflict. But then scalpers can too.

So what? People will always be pissed off. Millions are pissed off today because they had no chance to afford tickets to popular shows thanks to scalpers.

Plane tickets are all virtually as this person described. Someone in your party can’t go to Jamaica with you because they got sick/broke up with you/whatever? Nobody cares, AND no refunds. This Names-and-IDs policy is actually much nicer than plane tickets, because refunds at face value would be allowed. If you’re lucky you might even be able to rebuy the same ticket for your new gf if you’re quick.

Re: Why scalpers can get tickets

#477

Post by xp84 »

autoexec wrote: post #462
kortilla wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of what you said makes any sense. Who would pay thousands per roll? Why would the price be that high? Also, you’re incorrect about producers having the right incentives. They are incentivized by money, not a higher calling to wipe ass. Price controls have no place at all other than appealing to people’s emotions. They cannot fix or hide supply problems. They can just shift the price signal to lucky intermediarie…

> Why would the price be that high? You said: "the price of toilet paper should have been increased by an order of magnitude at the store level. This would prevent hoarding". How high do you think the price per roll would have to be to ensure that no one (not even rich people or a small group of rich people working together) could afford to buy up a pallet of toilet paper to try to resell at a higher price? It'd have…

An order of magnitude literally means 10. Not 100,000. Usually it costs like $1-2 a roll, so it should have gone to $10-20 a roll as soon as shelves emptied the first time. That would have meant that people would have bought only what they need (they would not have seriously spent $1000 on TP), but nearly all people could have afforded say $40-50 to get a 4-pack to get them by a week until more were delivered. That minimizes consumers’ excess hoarded inventory— which is where all the TP was.

Instead, IRL, anyone who could find them were buying up several massive packages because it was only the normal ≈$20 for 20 rolls situation, so “heck, buy 60, 80, maybe 100 rolls! Who knows when I’ll get this lucky as to find it again?” Meaning suddenly everyone was buying and warehousing way more TP than they needed in 6 months. Not adjusting prices literally caused the shortage.

Re: Why scalpers can get tickets

#478

Post by [deleted] »

autoexec wrote: post #363
zone411 wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most economists believe that price gouging is completely fine. Anti-price gouging laws lead to a misallocation of resources and lower supply where it's needed.

It shouldn't surprise us that people who want to be able to exploit others for profit, or who advocate for those who do, would claim that exploiting others is somehow a virtuous act.

[deleted]

Re: Why scalpers can get tickets

#479

Post by xp84 »

TylerE wrote: post #298
codelikeawolf wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, the future looks grim. Who knows how many layers of the reseller parfait you have to go through just to get a ticket? At some point it becomes prohibitively expensive and there won't be enough people that can afford to attend events. I wonder how much of this could be alleviated by selling a certain percentage of tickets at the box office only? I worked in operations for a pretty large concert venue sev…

Ironically, tiered pricing to cut out the scalpers it exactly what got Springsteen so much blow back. The artists have simply decided to sell $1000 tickets instead of $200 tickets that get scalped for $1000

It’s the correct move economically, why the hell should scalpers earn that $800 for being parasites, but people are very economically-illiterate so they’ll always see that move as greed.

Re: Why scalpers can get tickets

#480

Post by mattmaroon »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #438
mattmaroon wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Artists don’t pay for venues, promoters do, so they’re not cheaper, but your point that Ticketmaster has more revenue (and thus more to pay the artist) so they may get paid more indirectly is valid. But also, Ticketmaster has a monopsony. Or nearly so. One might argue (and many artists have ) that the artists would get paid more if there were a market for their tour rather than one company owning the vast majority of…

> One might argue (and many artists have ) that the artists would get paid more if there were a market for their tour rather than one company owning the vast majority of large venues. I think that's where the "reputation laundering" angle comes into play. With its unique position, Ticketmaster gives artists plausible deniability. "Nothing we can do about it", "evils of capitalism", "a monopolist captured the market,…

Yes that’s true but also, one may argue, as Pearl Jam did in court, that Ticketmaster has a monopoly on ticket sales and this hurts Artist revenues. Artists would get more from those fees if they could negotiate with multiple different ticket sellers. And that was before TM merged with Live Nation which is also now the exclusive promoter at most of the biggest venues in the world, and by most, I mean over 2/3.

It’s a monopsony.

The only real winners are Ticketmaster live nation

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