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Louis C.K. sees ticket scalping drop over 96% by selling tickets himself

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Re: Louis C.K. sees ticket scalping drop over 96% by selling tickets himself

#91

Post by unwiredben »

peterwwillis wrote: post #78
mhartl wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last year Burning Man sold out for the first time. In an attempt to alleviate the shortages, this year they had a lottery where people could request up to four tickets per person. The obvious strategy was to request more than you needed, in order to hedge your risk of losing the lottery (essentially a prisoner's dilemma situation). The utterly predictable outcome was worse shortages. They added an aftermarket to "fix…

It's almost strange that they would implement a system like this just because they sold out for the first time. Other regional burns around the country regularly sell out up to a month before the event, and they never implement alternate strategies for people to buy tickets. Then again i'm not aware of a scalper market for these since they are small and regional, but I have often considered buying four tickets at the…

Burning Flipside here in Texas has had a lottery system for the last few years due to not being able to exceed 2500 people on site or be under the TX mass gathering law. They make the lottery a little inconvenient (sign up in early January, mail in a money order during one week later in the month, have the MO returned if you don't get tickets). They also have a no scalping policy and regularly go after sales on Craigslist and other sources for more than face value.

Re: Louis C.K. sees ticket scalping drop over 96% by selling tickets himself

#92

Post by nooneelse »

masklinn wrote: post #70
mhartl wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The scalpers are the market-makers. If there were an official market, the scalpers would be out of business overnight.

> The scalpers are the market-makers. So what? They're not adding any value in the equation, they're just parasitically extracting wealth from all other entities. What's the point of that from a social perspective?

Indeed. And what is the incentive for an artist to allow his/her fans to have their wealth extracted by a third party? None. It only makes the fans less able to buy things from the artist in the future.

Louis C.K. is cultivating/nurturing his fans like a gardener cultivates/nurtures a plant. That clearly includes not letting insects eat the leaves off of a plant one intends to get an ongoing crop from.

Re: Louis C.K. sees ticket scalping drop over 96% by selling tickets himself

#93

Post by sambe »

fusiongyro wrote: post #72
Androsynth wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Leaving money on the table does no one any favors. If people are willing to pay $150 for tickets and hes charging $50 (or whatever it is), he's only doing himself a disservice. If people are willing to pay that much and he delivers a show that is up to his normal standard, they won't hate him for charging them that much; quite the opposite actually. It's only the price gauging and poor service of monopolies that peop…

> he's only doing himself a disservice. How precisely is the scalper, by increasing costs and adding _no value_ doing us a service?

They are doing a service to anyone who buys scalped tickets, who is happy to pay extra rather than not go. Competition at this price is lower. I know many people who have happily paid well over face value on several occasions. Of course everyone would rather pay an artificially low price. Wanting a better deal isn't the same as the premium being extortion.

You may not like scalping but there's no point being blinkered about it.

Re: Louis C.K. sees ticket scalping drop over 96% by selling tickets himself

#96

Post by pyre »

defen wrote: post #75
pyre wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess what it really comes down to is: How does he know which ticket is being sold? I imagine if a scalper wants to avoid detection, they just don't give out specific information until the sale is final (banking that Louis CK won't buy their tickets at scalper prices just to find out which tickets to cancel). If the ticket has some sort of ID, avoid giving that out before the final sale. If the ticket has a seat nu…

Switch to will call only; require the original CC or photo ID to pick up tickets. He explicitly stated on the ticket purchase page that this was a possibility.

That would be bad for the people that sold their tickets for face value ($45) to recoup costs, though. He has no way to know what the resale price was once someone shows up at the door with the tickets.

Re: Louis C.K. sees ticket scalping drop over 96% by selling tickets himself

#97

Post by fusiongyro »

sambe wrote: post #93
fusiongyro wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> he's only doing himself a disservice. How precisely is the scalper, by increasing costs and adding _no value_ doing us a service?

They are doing a service to anyone who buys scalped tickets, who is happy to pay extra rather than not go. Competition at this price is lower. I know many people who have happily paid well over face value on several occasions. Of course everyone would rather pay an artificially low price. Wanting a better deal isn't the same as the premium being extortion. You may not like scalping but there's no point being blinkere…

Except they're only paying extra because, ta-da!, the tickets were scalped. The competition is higher at the lower price because, ta-da!, the tickets were scalped.

The arguments for scalping only work if the effects of the scalping are ignored. Eliminating scalpers benefits everyone.

Re: Louis C.K. sees ticket scalping drop over 96% by selling tickets himself

#98

Post by res0nat0r »

joezydeco wrote: post #83
pyoung wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The SF Giants use a variable ticket pricing scheme that seems to be pretty successful. It adjusts the price of tickets based on projected demand. This probably does a pretty good job at eating into scalpers profits (although not entirely). Of course baseball ticket demand is a lot more predictable due to the fact that their are ~80 home games a season. It would be interesting to see if there was any way to implement…

Trent Reznor had some thoughts on that: "My guess as to what will eventually happen if / when Live Nation and TicketMaster merges is that they'll move to an auction or market-based pricing scheme - which will simply mean it will cost a lot more to get a good seat for a hot show. They will simply BECOME the scalper, eliminating them from the mix." http://forum.nin.com/bb/read.php?59,548515

I think is partially already in place? Ticketmaster now allows users to resell their tickets via their website: http://www.ticketmaster.com/ticketexchange/

Re: Louis C.K. sees ticket scalping drop over 96% by selling tickets himself

#99

Post by jyu »

Couldn't someone start an alternative ticketing method using this as a model? Proactively squash scalping, select alternative venues, and only sign artists who have big email/twitter/facebook fan bases.

This way, you can avoid the big chicken/egg initial distribution problem.

Re: Louis C.K. sees ticket scalping drop over 96% by selling tickets himself

#100

Post by joezydeco »

dkokelley wrote: post #59
joezydeco wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scalping confuses demand. If 1000 people want to see a show in a theatre with 1000 seats, that would be an ideal market. But in reality you get 2000 people trying to buy tickets for that show. 1000 are the fans and 1000 are people trying to buy the tickets to flip them for a profit. The artificial demand creates a market that benefits nobody except the scalpers. The fan loses by paying higher prices, and the artist l…

The artificial demand you mention is essentially speculation. The scalpers are betting that the actual price attendees are willing to pay is higher than the initial selling price, which leads them to buy the ticket. This system still requires players who ultimately purchase the tickets for the utility of seeing the show. If $100 tickets ultimately get sold for $2,000 to actual attendees, the original seller significa…

You're right: it's speculation. I should have used that term outright.

The problem I see is that it's speculation with a known outcome. If I buy gas or oil forward contracts, it's a play with non-zero risk. Iran might declare war or we might invent Mr Fusion tomorrow. So far so good.

But with a concert, let's be a bit more realistic. If the Rolling Stones decide to tour and play in your town this year you can be 100.00% sure the concert would sell out. If they quadrupled the dates in that town, they would still sell out. For a given set of acts that scalpers target, there is no possible way that there is a risk of scalpers holding expired tickets...unless they get greedy.

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