I quickly scanned the article, so I might have missed this, but can someone explain how sites like StubHub get away with what they do? As soon as I found out about them, I immediately thought "aren't these people just scalpers that offer tickets on the internet instead of standing out in front of venues?" If the argument is that they're not scalpers, they're resellers, then I'd like to try selling some concert tickets in a parking lot and see what happens if I made the same claim.
Why scalpers can get tickets
91–100 of 487 posts
Re: Why scalpers can get tickets
#92Why do the organizations putting on events like these leave so much money on the table? Why don't they just charge the market-clearing price themselves, leaving no room for scalpers to make any profit?
Because the majority of the fans wouldn't be able to afford to go. This damages the act's fan base, which in turn negatively affects future revenues via streaming, merchandise, co-branding, and future ticket sales.
The logic doesn't quite work because the same number of people would get to go in either scenario
Re: Why scalpers can get tickets
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because it is the scalpers charging that price and not the artist so people get angry at the scalpers and not the artist.
So hire some designated middleman to wear a villain mustache and claim to be taking a huge cut on paper while actually giving all of the money back to the artist under NDA.
This has to be what TicketMaster is doing, right?
Re: Why scalpers can get tickets
#94Why do the organizations putting on events like these leave so much money on the table? Why don't they just charge the market-clearing price themselves, leaving no room for scalpers to make any profit?
Because the majority of the fans wouldn't be able to afford to go. This damages the act's fan base, which in turn negatively affects future revenues via streaming, merchandise, co-branding, and future ticket sales.
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Re: Why scalpers can get tickets
#95Why do the organizations putting on events like these leave so much money on the table? Why don't they just charge the market-clearing price themselves, leaving no room for scalpers to make any profit?
Because, ironically, a show that only rich people can afford to attend will be pretty terrible. Rich people tend not to loudly enjoy the show, so the atmosphere isn't there. This is bad for the rest of the audience and for the performer. It's hard to put 100% in when all you can see is a bunch of people staring solemnly at you. It happens in football (soccer for my American friends) for clubs like Man Utd (and probab…
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Re: Why scalpers can get tickets
#96Why do the organizations putting on events like these leave so much money on the table? Why don't they just charge the market-clearing price themselves, leaving no room for scalpers to make any profit?
For the same reason why artists use Ticketmaster. Do you think they are stupid and just hand over ticket distribution to a company that routinely charges 30$ fees to a 40$ ticket? No, artists and producers aren't stupid, they get the most of the money from the Ticketmaster "fees". But when a fan sees a 70$ ticket, they'd may decide Bruce Springsteen (net worth 650$ million) isn't a man of the people. When they see a…
Ticketmaster is mostly in the business of being the company that everyone hates so the artists can pretend to be helpless and of the people.
Re: Why scalpers can get tickets
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
The article itself mentions how scalpers just register hundreds or thousands of accounts to dramatically increase their odds at winning fan lotteries.
Do fan-club registration in person.
Run it like an airline, where your name is on the ticket and you don't get in unless it matches your ID. Either that or your ID is the ticket. Just bloop that big barcode on the back of your ID with your phone when you buy the admission, then let the guy bloop it again at the door when you go to the show. That would make some scenarios harder, like the trope about your boss handing you two extra tickets she can't use, but there's probably some way to bloop around that without giving the scalpers unfettered bloops.
Re: Why scalpers can get tickets
#98Scalping is such an ugly term for "the market efficiently allocating resources." This is just completely normal price discovery. /s
I would take off the "/s", because I agree with your statement at face value. If there are a limited number of tickets but many thousands of fans who are willing and able to pay, then naturally the price goes up. And whether you like it or not, people are either paying with money, or paying with time (e.g. waiting in line), or paying with frustration (e.g. going through opaque scalping networks). The root cause of th…
In the past I would routinely pay ticket brokers so as to have a better selection of seats, and to not have to deal with the "on sale" crush. Yes, of course I paid more, and I paid for the convenience, but I don't think I ever paid more than 50% of the face value.
I was a dedicated concert goer back in the day, having spent a lot of time in ticket lines. By time I started, "sleeping overnight" was pretty much over with as an hour or so before the sale, the staff would come out, hand out wrist bands, and then say "#123 is the front of the line" with the 123 being some (I guess random) number from the range of wrist bands they gave out, and everyone else would line up, with #122 wrapping around and being behind whatever the highest band that went out. The premise being there was no reason to show up much more than just before the onsale time, since your arrival time was no guarantee of line position.
Similarly, at one venue, they simply handed out numbers, low number wins. After we picked ours up, there was a guy on the edge willing to buy low numbers.
I was once first in line, but the tickets I got were underwhelming, which made me more cynical about the buying process.
Then, there was that one time, my poor wife, bought us some tickets. There was no way she could have known. There was no way anyone, really, could have known. It was a typical amphitheater layout, and she got the last row of the middle section. When you buy tickets during the mad rush of the opening sale, you just get what they give you, there's really no time to pick or choose.
Amphitheaters tend to be reasonably steep, with the seat in front of you lower, by, perhaps, a foot, so as to offer mostly unhindered sight lines to the stage. But the venue, at some point added a row of seats that were directly behind the row in front of it, with no offset, essentially offering NO view of the stage. It was just awful, and there's nothing she could have done about it.
In the end, I just learned to use a broker for most of the shows I saw. It was a much saner experience, I could pick seats, I could judge value, I could apply intangibles.
Thankfully, the bands I see today are cheap and unpopular, and the sports tickets I just buy from the stadium.
Re: Why scalpers can get tickets
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because the majority of the fans wouldn't be able to afford to go. This damages the act's fan base, which in turn negatively affects future revenues via streaming, merchandise, co-branding, and future ticket sales.
The logic doesn't quite work because the same number of people would get to go in either scenario
Same number but not same the community, since this pushes out anyone who can't afford it. Artists are usually not MBA types trying to minmax profit and want to appeal to more than just the privileged Coachella crowd.
Re: Why scalpers can get tickets
#100Why do the organizations putting on events like these leave so much money on the table? Why don't they just charge the market-clearing price themselves, leaving no room for scalpers to make any profit?
Rolex has the exact same problem.