[HN Gopher] Rammstein Get Restraining Order Blocking Viagogo fro...
___________________________________________________________________
Rammstein Get Restraining Order Blocking Viagogo from Reselling
Concert Tickets
Author : nabilhat
Score : 187 points
Date : 2022-10-01 19:22 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (consequence.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (consequence.net)
| Havoc wrote:
| I just want to know who looks at a picture like that and thinks
| "yeah lets fuck with these guys".
| sigstoat wrote:
| they're a bunch of wealthy european musicians who wear silly
| costumes when performing. (i say that as someone who enjoys
| most of their music.)
|
| what do you think they're going to do to anyone?
| tonfreed wrote:
| Eventim is a godawful site, if they fixed that as well a lot of
| people would be grateful
| devteambravo wrote:
| NFTs would fix this.
| spyremeown wrote:
| I would _love_ to hear further explanation. Please, elucidate
| the topic to us.
| krn wrote:
| I was wondering, if ticket resale is a viable business model only
| because tickets are not priced properly in the first place.
|
| What if tickets were sold using a reverse auction system[1]
| instead? For instance, tickets could start at $1000 and then go
| down by $1 every hour until the minimum price set by the promoter
| is reached - or all the tickets are sold out.
|
| This way, even if resellers bought a huge number of tickets, it's
| possible that they wouldn't be able to resell them for a large
| enough profit to cover the risk.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_auction
| scrollaway wrote:
| Optimal pricing for event tickets is undesirable.
| scrollaway wrote:
| (Follow-up) It's kinda exhausting reading here through
| comment after comment of armchair "entertainment venue
| economists" imagining how to maximize the profits for a
| single event, all the while forgetting the circumstances
| leading to event tickets being underpriced.
|
| Circumstances such as the fact events are generally a part of
| tours, that the artists likely want a diverse audience, that
| event sales have side effects on future sales and marketing,
| etc etc.
|
| Not specifically targeted at you, krn, but is it really so
| far-fetched to think that artists _did_ think about the fact
| they 'd still have sold out venues at a higher price point?
|
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Chesterton%27s_fence
| krn wrote:
| > [...] imagining how to maximize the profits for a single
| event
|
| No, I am not interested in maximizing profits. I am only
| interested in eliminating resellers.
|
| > Circumstances such as the fact events are generally a
| part of tours, that the artists likely want a diverse
| audience, that event sales have side effects on future
| sales and marketing, etc etc.
|
| That's exactly my point: if currently tickets are grabbed
| by automated systems and resold for much higher prices,
| none of these goals are reached by the artists.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Your answer is to become the reseller and charge more
| putting the reseller out of business?
|
| Now you have increased profits short term and increased
| risks. And only rich fans can attend. This works for some
| stars and against other star'a brand.
|
| A popular answer is requiring the purchaser to show id to
| get in with obvious drawbacks.
|
| Rising prices would lose the cool fans and make the
| followers who can afford less likely to want to go.
| bheadmaster wrote:
| I hope scalping in general become outlawed. The practice is just
| pure opportunism - it literally brings no value to anyone, it
| only extracts value from hotspots of popular demand.
| dangero wrote:
| It definitely brings value to people who have money to buy
| marked up tickets and exposes the inefficiency of ticket
| pricing algorithms.
| bheadmaster wrote:
| Do you really want to live in a society where every single
| thing is priced as high as it's possible to extract from the
| people who have a lot of money? Should only rich people be
| allowed to afford anything?
| pkroll wrote:
| You do live in that society. Everyone selling something IS
| trying to get the highest price they can for it.
| Thiez wrote:
| The article is literally about a band not trying to
| charge the highest price they can.
| t-writescode wrote:
| Arguably, scalping is capitalism in motion. In situations where
| the supply and demand curves are unbalanced, especially due to
| things like MSRP (which tend to be agreements between
| manufacturer and seller) when supply and demand are wildly out
| of sync (like the graphics card supply shortage), scalpers may
| more accurately reflect the "true price" of things.
|
| Of course, it can go too far and become a monopoly, just like
| anything in capitalism without restraint; but they do have a
| purpose
| cbozeman wrote:
| The graphics card shortage is probably one of _the worst_
| examples you could have tried to use.
|
| The root cause of the graphics card shortage was rampant
| central bank printing of currency.
|
| This is a long ride, so buckle up... TL;DR at bottom.
|
| How do we get there? Everyone got scared of a virus that was
| so lethal half the people who had it didn't even know they
| had contracted it. Yes, early on, COVID-19 looked like a
| contender, but six months in, we knew... we knew it killed
| fat people, old people, immunocompromised people. In other
| words, people that Nature herself is already stalking. Even
| with the delta variant, arguably the "worst" of the bunch, as
| long as you took moderately good care of yourself, weren't
| old, and didn't have compromised immunity, you very likely
| were going to be okay.
|
| In response to this, politicians, always fucking terrified of
| being held accountable for any decision they make, decided to
| lock everything down in the Western world and send out a
| metric ass-ton of money to everyone. Well the only way to do
| that is for Jerome Powell to make the money printer go
| "brrr". Obviously, Europeans will do whatever America does,
| so all their central banks made money printer go "brrr". What
| exactly _does_ happen when you pour trillions of dollars into
| the global worldwide market?
|
| People start doing idiotic speculative investment, that's
| what... hence some of the most hilarious /r/WallStreetBets
| posts we've seen since the subreddit's creation. Meanwhile, a
| few people who still have their heads on straight realize
| that their life savings are being rapidly devalued and they
| start looking seriously at cryptocurrency for the first time.
| Even Grandma and Grandpa are buying a few of these "Byte-
| pieces". Meanwhile my neighbor, a bald, greying man of 53 who
| was literally a maintenance supervisor for manufacturing
| plants, ends up with a 18 GPU Ethereum farm running out of a
| shed on his 4 acre property in rural North Texas. That's how
| easy it became for the average person to set up a crypto-
| mining farm. A guy who graduated high school and spend 35
| years turning wrenches on conveyor belts, fucking around with
| PLCs (which I do admit, you can't be a fool and do that...),
| manages to not only hoover up a shitload of GPUs during the
| pandemic, but also figures out how to buy mining
| motherboards, hook the shit all up together, and set it up so
| it's 24/7 mining Ethereum. He also has three 15,000 BTU air
| conditioners in the shed windows keeping the temps on the
| GPUs tolerable.
|
| So if a beer-swilling, "God, guns, and country" blue collar
| laborer-turned-manager can figure out how to set up an
| Ethereum mining farm, and if Grandpa and Grandma can figure
| out how to put some money into Coinbase to buy Bitcoins, then
| you can imagine just how easy it was for more technologically
| adept people to get their hands on GPUs and start mining.
|
| In Dallas, Texas at our MicroCenter, for pretty much the
| entire pandemic, it turned into a miniature version of Skid
| Row in downtown Los Angeles. Tents everywhere, everyone
| waiting for the daily lottery to see if they would get the
| chance to buy a GPU, so they could then go repost it on eBay,
| or sell it directly to a miner buddy, or just go home and
| install it into their own crypto-mining rig.
|
| Moving on to NVIDIA, AMD, and their board partners... they
| were directly selling to miners. All of them. Thus bypassing
| the chance for gamers to even get their hands on the cards in
| some instances. TSMC and Samsung were at maximum capacity
| every single month of the pandemic. It never slowed down,
| except for "acts of God". This made sense as a lot of the
| white collar workers found themselves in need of laptops,
| webcams, monitors, blah blah blah, all shit that TSMC/Samsung
| makes chips for. That's another reason GPU demand was so
| dramatic. TSMC/Samsung couldn't focus every single wafer on
| GPUs. They had to make all kinds of shit for all kinds of
| devices. So you have a two-fold hit on demand. Everyone wants
| a GPU, but we're having to reduce capacity for other stuff we
| also need. Turns out you don't actually need an RTX 3090.
|
| Talk about a "perfect storm".
|
| But wait... people are now flush with cash for getting $600
| unemployment payments every week for a year or two. So they
| do what any rational person does... THEY INVEST IT... HAHA,
| JUST KIDDING! They buy... _new fucking cars_. Yes, people buy
| new cars instead of paying off mortgages early or investing
| their hard-earned dollars into the market.
|
| So anyway... that's how you get a GPU shortage.
|
| TL;DR: Bad virus scare people. Politicians coward. JPow make
| money printer go brrr. People use pandemic money to buy Magic
| Internet Money printers called GPUs. Everyone has to make
| spreadsheets at home. Everyone has to buy electronics. No
| more capacity to make extra GPUs. Gamers have no GPUs, go
| play NES on an emulator.
| mertd wrote:
| Scalping is unpleasant for everyone involved other than the
| scalper. Entertainment industry is finally catching up to the
| real fix, which is increasing the supply. If there is way too
| big of a demand for a single concert, just hold more concerts
| at the same spot. It's basically the Vegas residency model.
| Sure you might visit less cities overall but not rebuilding a
| stage every other day yields a substantial savings in
| logistics, too.
| cortesoft wrote:
| > Scalping is unpleasant for everyone involved other than
| the scalper.
|
| It is more pleasant than the alternative for the person
| buying a ticket from the scalper; not going at all. If
| there weren't scalpers, you just don't get a ticket at all
| because they are already sold out. Scalpers are what let
| you get a ticket so at all.
|
| You can't just play more shows at a single location. What
| if every show at every venue is sold out? A band can only
| play so many total shows.
| happyopossum wrote:
| > Scalping is unpleasant for everyone involved other than
| the scalper
|
| No, it's also pleasant for the person who wants to go to
| the event and can afford to buy a ticket on the secondary
| market.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| > No, it's also pleasant for the person who wants to go
| to the event and can afford to buy a ticket on the
| secondary market.
|
| This isn't a secondary market, this is scalping at an
| industrial level and provide strictly no added value
| whatsoever.
|
| This is only pleasant for Viagogo making a quick buck
| with scalp bots.
| cortesoft wrote:
| I disagree. Why is it bad to let the free market determine the
| price for an item with limited supply?
|
| With scalping, I know that I can get a ticket at at least some
| price. If I want to go to an event bad enough, I can pay more
| and get a ticket.
|
| Without scalping, it doesn't matter how badly I want to go to
| an event, if I am not lucky enough or fast enough, or able to
| wait in line, I can't get a ticket.
|
| Scalping does provide a value... it creates liquidity in the
| market.
| tzs wrote:
| What about shows where the number of people who want to buy
| tickets is about the same as the number of tickets that are
| available?
|
| Without scalping, the band sells tickets for $X and nearly
| everyone who wants to go is able to buy a ticket for $X.
|
| With scalping, the band sells tickets for $X, the scalpers
| buy a large fraction of them or even all of them for $X each,
| and then sells them for much more than $X each.
|
| This doesn't let people go who otherwise would not have been
| able to. It just makes them all pay more to do so.
| quantum_magpie wrote:
| Because if you would pay 200$ for the concert, 50$ would go
| to the band, the actual value creators at the concert. If you
| then pay 900$ to the scalpers, 50$ goes to the band, the
| value creators, and 700$ to the cunts, the exploiters. They
| created absolutely zero, but they sucked the majority of the
| money. They destroy value.
| mjthrowaway1 wrote:
| I think the problem for the artist is that the demand for
| tickets far exceeds supply. Imagine if the only way to see
| Bad Bunny is to pay $5000/ticket. I'm fairly confident large
| artists could sell out at these prices. The problem is you
| exclude/alienate your fan base so it's net negative for the
| artist's reach. Ticket prices are kept artificially low to be
| accessible to broader audiences.
| mrob wrote:
| But the below-market-price tickets are allocated
| essentially at random, so this is an unreliable way of
| doing it. If they want to reward loyal fans it would be
| better to give cheap/free tickets to active followers on
| social networks, or to give discounts for repeat purchases.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| > Without scalping, it doesn't matter how badly I want to go
| to an event, if I am not lucky enough or fast enough, or able
| to wait in line, I can't get a ticket.
|
| Except it does matter how badly you want to go... if you
| really want to go but you don't want to wait in line, and
| someone else also badly wants to go, and they do want to
| wait... they want it more. They deserve it.
|
| So really you're against a meritocracy based on how badly
| someone wants to go to the concert, and instead want to
| define merit based on discretionary income.
|
| It takes some self-awareness but people really need to take
| themselves out of their bubbles before they speak. I can't
| imagine people who don't live in the HN bubble saying things
| like "if I really want to go I can just pay more, duh" it's a
| bad look that's the root if why people look down on "techies"
| as being aloof and socially backwards.
| [deleted]
| nicoburns wrote:
| > If I want to go to an event bad enough, I can pay more and
| get a ticket.
|
| You might be able to, but lots of people can't afford to do
| that. You seem to be assuming that the people who want to go
| the most will pay the most, thus leading to meritocratic
| distribution of tickets. In reality, it will just skew
| concert attendance towards the wealthy who can afford to pay
| even if they're not that fussed about going.
| unpopular42 wrote:
| Now, why is that a bad thing?
|
| Not everyone can live in the best location, not everyone
| can drive the best car, not everyone can attend the best
| concert. There is no other way when many people want
| something that is in limited supply - someone will be left
| out.
|
| Wealth is a proxy for the amount of services provided to
| others earlier, so why giving tickets in exchange for that
| is less fair than giving tickets to the one who clicked
| first?
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| >Wealth is a proxy for the amount of services provided to
| others earlier
|
| Yeah right. How many services has Elon Musk's toddler
| given to others, and how much have you?
| unpopular42 wrote:
| He hasn't. His father has -- obviously.
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| Quite a poor proxy then if he gets credit for all the
| good works his dad's done - enough that you could work
| every hour for the rest of your life and never even come
| close to him.
| unpopular42 wrote:
| Why is it a poor proxy though? His father provided those
| services and passed some of the resulting wealth to his
| son. The quality of the proxy doesn't change depending on
| who's spending. Whatever the son spends, the father can't
| spend anymore.
|
| Note that one of the strong drivers making people take
| risks, work shitty jobs, and otherwise do things that
| others don't want to do is exactly this -- providing for
| their families.
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| What could this mean: "Wealth is a proxy for the amount
| of services provided to others earlier" if not a proxy
| for the amount of services provided to others earlier...
| by the holder of the wealth?
|
| If I can be wealthy without providing others services,
| then my wealth is certainly a poor proxy for how many
| services I have provided.
| nicoburns wrote:
| > Now, why is that a bad thing? > Wealth is a proxy for
| the amount of services provided to others earlier
|
| It's a bad thing because wealth is a poor measure of the
| amount of services provided to others. And because while
| someone will always be left out, it's much better if it's
| not the same people always getting left out. Being able
| to click first is more accessible to more people,
| although I'd argue it isn't great either, and some kind
| of random lottery system might be better.
| pc86 wrote:
| > _wealth is a poor measure of the amount of services
| provided to others_
|
| Isn't it better than pure luck, even if luck plays a part
| in wealth?
| unpopular42 wrote:
| > wealth is a poor measure of the amount of services
| provided to others
|
| It's the best we have though.
|
| Otherwise, should we also randomly distribute best homes,
| or whatever else is in limited supply?
| tedunangst wrote:
| Maybe we can convince Sotheby's to do a click first
| auction. I'd like to own a Monet someday, and I feel I'm
| always getting left out at traditional art auctions.
| bocytron wrote:
| > Wealth is a proxy for the amount of services provided
| to others earlier
|
| Source? I don't think the research agree with that
| statement.
| unpopular42 wrote:
| Which research do you mean? Please point, thanks
| tedunangst wrote:
| Looking forward to Ticketmaster adding a "Describe your
| reasons for wanting to attend this concert in 500 words"
| text field to their order form, and then the evolution of
| autocomplete AIs to write the best essays.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| Or... they could just not allow resale above face value.
|
| That alone would wipe out everyone who doesn't want to go
| but wants to resell for a profit.
|
| The rest works itself out within the margin of error...
| if you want the tickets be there at opening.
|
| And before someone else replies in bad faith like the
| comment I'm replying to did... maybe along the lines of
| "well what if your internet cuts out!!! or you get hit by
| a bus at that moment!!!": that's the margin of error.
|
| You can't have a perfect meritocracy but you can have a
| _better_ one.
| cortesoft wrote:
| > if you want the tickets be there at opening.
|
| So now instead of discriminating against people who don't
| have enough money, now you are discriminating against
| people with busy lives who can't be there right when the
| tickets go on sale.
|
| Also, you would still end up with people who were there
| right when the tickets go on sale and still didn't get
| any.
|
| I don't think your method is any more of a meritocracy.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| I spent half the comment trying to head off low-effort
| bad faith replies and yet here we are...
|
| If you can't figure out how biasing sales towards people
| who want to go to a concert is more meritorious than
| allowing people who want to resell for more than face in
| a context where "merit" is literally "wanting to see the
| show", you need to take a long hard sit and really think
| this one out.
|
| You cannot have perfect system in real life, but you can
| move away from enabling people with no interest at all in
| the event to just those who at least had a cursory enough
| interest when they're not profiting.
| tedunangst wrote:
| Welcome to bizarro HN, where we hate the first sale
| doctrine and love DRM.
| qeternity wrote:
| Don't shoot the messenger but this is the point. In the
| absence of a better metric, price is the least worst proxy
| for "who wants to go the most". The reality is you have a
| limited supply good that needs allocating. There are a
| number of systems by which this can occur, but price is the
| one which has worked best throughout human history.
|
| Also it's been established the artists are often hiding
| behind scalpers to sell tickets at true market prices,
| whilst appearing to sell them at "fair" prices.
| yojo wrote:
| It is likely scalping reduces the total effective supply.
| Presumably, scalpers do not successfully unload 100% of
| tickets before the event, any unsold go unused.
|
| It is possible (and would depend on demand elasticity and
| proportion of tickets scalped) that scalpers might have an
| incentive to intentionally remove tickets in the same way a
| monopolist has incentive to artificially restrict supply. If
| prices on the remaining tickets increase more than the price
| of the unsold ticket, they're money ahead.
|
| This probably isn't happening, but could in theory.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| If they made money in proportion to how much liquidity they
| provide, that would be much less of a problem.
|
| But often tickets are sold below the market price, and
| scalpers insert themselves and suck up the difference while
| providing next to no value in exchange.
| consp wrote:
| > Why is it bad to let the free market determine the price
| for an item with limited supply.
|
| Because the limited supply usually isn't there and
| artificially created for the sole purpose of rising prices.
| For tickets you can see this happening when there are
| suddenly lots of tickets available all over the radio and tv
| shows a week or so before the event (since they have to fill
| up all the unsold places).
| bheadmaster wrote:
| I disagree with the notion that things should be as expensive
| as (some) people are willing to pay. The argument seems
| skewed towards the interests of wealthy. What if all food was
| priced "optimally" in terms of foodmakers' profit, making it
| so expensive that half of society starves to death? Would
| that be just "liquidity in the market"? If so, then honestly
| fuck the liquidity in the market.
|
| The market is supposed to serve the people, not the other way
| around.
| gruez wrote:
| >What if all food was priced "optimally" in terms of
| foodmakers' profit, making it so expensive that half of
| society starves to death?
|
| That already happens today. It's just that competition
| provides a counterbalance to foodmakers raising their price
| to infinity.
| unpopular42 wrote:
| There is no "market" serving people, only other people do.
| Are you proposing to force them to serve cheaper or perhaps
| for free?
| cortesoft wrote:
| > What if all food was priced "optimally" in terms of
| foodmakers' profit, making it so expensive that half of
| society starves to death?
|
| Umm, that is literally how the food market works. The
| people selling food, including all the middle men, are
| selling it for as much as they can.
|
| A sold out concert is like high end truffle... yes, they
| are crazy expensive, because they are rare and and in high
| demand. Most people can't afford to eat truffle often.
|
| Most people have to eat cheaper food and don't get to eat
| truffles all the time. Because market sellers can sell
| their food at as high a price as they can get, more people
| are incentivized to produce food, and there ends up being
| enough food for most people to eat.
|
| Of course the market isn't perfect, and we have to do
| things to make sure poor people don't starve, but that
| doesn't mean we stop using a market economy to allocate
| scarce resources.
| ravenstine wrote:
| _I disagree!_
|
| Why should tickets to a _Rammstein_ concert sell for any
| price but what people are willing to pay for? This isn 't
| exactly food or healthcare we're talking about.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| I don't understand this argument at all. You think only
| essentials should attempt to have "fair" pricing? Luxury
| shouldn't ever try to be "fair"? Why?
| nradov wrote:
| There's no such thing as a "fair" price. That's a totally
| subjective and meaningless concept which has been
| discredited since the Middle Ages.
|
| I think a fair price for flawless 2 carat diamonds is
| $100. Why won't anyone sell them to me at that price?
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| In this case it's a price that both the musician and the
| audience member like.
|
| And more generally you can calculate a "fair" price by
| looking at costs and adding a comfortable profit margin
| on top.
| nradov wrote:
| No that's not how it works. You're just making up
| arbitrary rules.
| cbozeman wrote:
| No, because it is, by definition, no longer "luxury".
|
| Something everyone can afford isn't a luxury. Food is a
| luxury in certain nations. Food is just another everyday
| regular bullshit item here in America, or in Sweden, or
| Denmark. Not everyone can afford a Rolls-Royce Cullinan.
| That's why it's a luxury SUV.
|
| Ticket prices aren't really any different. First off,
| these tickets do have "fair" pricing, but what they don't
| have are protections. If I want to buy 153 tickets for
| $40 each so I can bring my entire extended family to an
| event, should I have the right to do that? I don't know.
| Obviously in America, I tend to lean more towards "yes"
| than "no".
|
| I do agree with one of the posters above who said, "If
| someone really wants to go see a show, they'll pay
| whatever they have to pay." I do tend to agree with that.
| I don't even remember the last concert I've been to
| because, based on my experience, it's going to be hot,
| entirely too loud, entirely too distorted, and I could
| have a way better time in my home theater cranking a
| recording of a previous concert up to 50% volume and
| rocking out.
|
| Frankly I don't even understand how someone could pay $50
| to see a show, much less $250, but each to their own I
| guess.
| ravenstine wrote:
| > I don't even remember the last concert I've been to
| because, based on my experience, it's going to be hot,
| entirely too loud, entirely too distorted
|
| Out of curiosity, do you wear concert earplugs? I get
| that some people prefer a controlled sound experience,
| but maybe your experience was subpar because of the
| loudness? I wore some concert earplugs from Amazon last
| weekend, everything sounded clear, and no ringing
| afterwards.
| bheadmaster wrote:
| Because, apparently, Rammstein doesn't like the concept
| of only the wealthiest being able to afford their
| tickets.
| ryandrake wrote:
| So they'd rather have the luckiest people rather than the
| wealthiest people? Neither seems fair.
| Thiez wrote:
| The system where each fan that can afford the ticket
| price set by the band/venue has the same chance to get a
| ticket seems pretty fair to me.
|
| If you are one of the wealthiest people perhaps you
| should consider the fact that you have been pretty lucky
| in life already, even if you sometimes can't attend a
| concert you really wanted to.
| ravenstine wrote:
| Sure, but I was commenting on your argument in
| particular, not Rammstein, which is a more general
| philosophical argument than them not wanting their fans
| in particular to get outpriced.
| bheadmaster wrote:
| I was using food as a hyperbole, the same argument can be
| applied to anything. Should X be priced in such a way to
| extract the most money possible from a certain top of the
| wealthiest, leaving effectively everyone else without it?
|
| Substitute X for whatever you want, and any affirmative
| response would be equivalent to saying "nobody should
| have X except the rich". If you agree with that sentence,
| then that's no other argument I can bring to the table.
| vageli wrote:
| What is stopping food producers or sellers from 10xing
| their prices tomorrow to price out the less than wealthy?
| You're free to sell rice at $1000/kg but you probably
| won't find too many interested buyers.
| j-bos wrote:
| A bit disingenuous, no? "The rich" aren't infinite, so
| market price can only be so high. And, perhaps we can
| agree that some things like food, should be available to
| everyone, other things aren't so important.
| bocytron wrote:
| Let say there's 100 tickets available but 200 people
| wanting to go. You are saying the right price is the
| price that only the richer half can afford right?
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| Precisely. We're not talking about essential goods or
| services here, so protesting the injustice of crazy
| concert tickets is a bit comical and whiny. It makes more
| sense to ask why there is a market for such insane prices
| in the first place. Why are people crazy enough to pay
| that much for concert tickets? It's their fault, not the
| scalpers. No one needs to buy concert tickets. No one is
| being forced to pay for them.
| ravenstine wrote:
| Rammstein really doesn't do shows in North America very
| often, so that motivates people (such as myself) to pay
| extra for the best tickets, even if it means getting
| those tickets from somewhere else when Ticketmaster is
| sold out. The last time they toured here was over a
| decade ago, with maybe a few shows here and there that
| weren't part of a tour. Given that some of the members
| are pushing their 60s, I'm not sure I care where my
| ticket comes from as long as I can see them before they
| retire.
| tedunangst wrote:
| What? Rammstein was in philadelphia a month ago. There
| were hundreds of tickets available for around $25 the day
| of the concert.
| ravenstine wrote:
| Yes, they were there a month ago _as part_ of their North
| America tour because hauling their stage with them is a
| humongous effort. They weren 't there a month ago
| casually.
|
| > There were hundreds of tickets available for around $25
| the day of the concert.
|
| This was not the case in Los Angeles even for general
| admission or the nosebleeds, and especially not if you
| want to be at the very front. Why you saw $25 tickets in
| Philly, I have no idea. I don't think I've ever been to
| one of their shows in the United States where tickets
| were as cheap as $25 for presale.
| j-bos wrote:
| My rule of thumb is, if it's entertainment, sky's the limit
| on price. Nobody loses anything of value when luxuries are
| are markert priced.
| m000 wrote:
| > Why is it bad to let the free market determine the price
| for an item with limited supply?
|
| How exactly is scalping "free market"? It is a textbook
| definition of artificial scarcity.
|
| Also, "market liquidity" is just fine, without the help of
| the scalpers. If you want _that_ bad to go to a concert, just
| post how much you 're willing to pay for a ticket on a couple
| of FB groups. If you're willing to give 2x - 4x the face
| value, I'm pretty sure someone will be willing to part with
| their ticket.
| josephcsible wrote:
| > How exactly is scalping "free market"? It is a textbook
| definition of artificial scarcity.
|
| No, artificial scarcity is for things that there could be
| an unlimited amount of, but that the seller artificially
| restricts the supply of. The limit on the number of seats
| at a concert is real, and scalpers don't change it.
|
| > If you want _that_ bad to go to a concert, just post how
| much you 're willing to pay for a ticket on a couple of FB
| groups. If you're willing to give 2x - 4x the face value,
| I'm pretty sure someone will be willing to part with their
| ticket.
|
| What's the difference between the person who would sell me
| a ticket in your example and the scalpers we have today?
| bheadmaster wrote:
| > artificial scarcity is for things that there could be
| an unlimited amount of, but that the seller artificially
| restricts the supply of
|
| Since the "unlimited amount of" anything doesn't exist in
| the real world, replace the "unlimited" with
| "sufficient", and the concept of artificial scarcity can
| be applied to scalping again. If scalpers sell tickets at
| 4x the face value, they don't need to sell them all to
| make a profit - they only need to sell more than 25%. All
| the others can go to waste, and scalpers are still
| profiting.
|
| That's, again, textbook artificial scarcity.
| m000 wrote:
| > No, artificial scarcity is for things that there could
| be an unlimited amount of.
|
| There's no such thing as "unlimited amount" of anything
| that involves the physical world.
|
| > What's the difference between the person who would sell
| me a ticket in your example and the scalpers we have
| today?
|
| Everyone involved would be better-off. Except for the
| scalpers. Simple as that.
| josephcsible wrote:
| > There's no such thing as "unlimited amount" of anything
| that involves the physical world.
|
| I can believe that. Offhand, I can't think of any
| examples of artificial scarcity that don't involve
| digital goods.
|
| > Everyone involved would be better-off. Except for the
| scalpers. Simple as that.
|
| I'm saying that the seller in your example _is_ a
| scalper.
| m000 wrote:
| > I'm saying that the seller in your example is a
| scalper.
|
| They're not. Intent and quantity are the defining traits
| of scalpers. If you're buying a single ticket with
| original intent to use it, you are not a scalper.
| ravenstine wrote:
| Artificial scarcity is like when you're DeBeers and you
| make sure that enough diamonds are locked up or not mined
| that your diamonds can be considered "rare" even though
| they otherwise wouldn't.
|
| Buying up a bunch of diamonds from DeBeers and reselling
| them isn't artificial scarcity. It's _just_ scarcity that
| people don 't like.
| m000 wrote:
| Yes, but they're not buying "a bunch of tickets". They
| buy (almost) ALL of the tickets in a matter of minutes.
|
| If you could afford to buy ALL of the DeBeers stock, it
| would have a similar effect on the diamonds market: You
| could charge the poor sods that are desperate to get
| engaged ASAP 4x the price DeBeers charged.
| manholio wrote:
| > Scalping does provide a value... it creates liquidity in
| the market.
|
| That's invalid economic reasoning. Tickets are a monopoly
| market with a fixed supply. The monopolist (band/label) can
| issue tickets at whatever price they want, but once that
| price and quantity is set, additional resellers are only rent
| extracting, they are gouging consumer surplus and providing
| zero service in return - the exact same number of tickets are
| sold to the exact same show.
|
| There are many legitimare reasons for a band to issue tickets
| bellow market clearing prices, i.e. leave some fans with
| money in their pockets even if they would be willing to pay
| more. For example, building a long term relation with their
| fan base, providing a good service for a "fair" price etc.
| Essentially it's a gift economy where people exchange more
| values than just money (trust, appreciation, artistic
| expression etc.); the scalper is throwing sand in that
| transaction by maximizing its own financial revenue.
| nradov wrote:
| That's not a real monopoly. There are thousands of good
| bands. Can't get a ticket to the Rammstein show? Go to a
| different one.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| "I can afford scalper prices so I don't see what the big deal
| is."
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| > I disagree. Why is it bad to let the free market determine
| the price for an item with limited supply?
|
| This isn't the free market at first place, it's artificially
| limiting supply and price gouging as Viagogo provides
| strictly no added value upon the official ticket retailer.
| None.
| orangecat wrote:
| _Viagogo provides strictly no added value upon the official
| ticket retailer. None._
|
| It allows people who are willing to pay more to attend,
| when they otherwise wouldn't have been able to. That's an
| added value. You can argue that that's outweighed by the
| loss to people who really wanted to go and who can't afford
| the market-clearing price, but it's false that zero people
| benefit.
| ChildOfChaos wrote:
| But one of the reasons why you can't get a ticket in the
| first place, is because scalpers are buying tickets for the
| simple reason of reselling the ticket for a higher price.
|
| Scalpers increase market demand just as much as people that
| actually want to go and the only person profiting here is the
| scalper, who is not really deserving to do so here.
|
| If you are going to increase price with demand, at least let
| it go to the people behind the event/artist in a fair way.
| josephcsible wrote:
| > But one of the reasons why you can't get a ticket in the
| first place, is because scalpers are buying tickets for the
| simple reason of reselling the ticket for a higher price.
|
| But the only reason that scalping is profitable is that
| more people want to go to these events at the original
| ticket price than there are seats available.
|
| > If you are going to increase price with demand, at least
| let it go to the people behind the event/artist in a fair
| way.
|
| I agree with this. When a show sells out in 5 minutes, the
| organizers should take note and charge more the next show.
| ChildOfChaos wrote:
| > But the only reason that scalping is profitable is that
| more people want to go to these events at the original
| ticket price than there are seats available.
|
| In general yes, however I have seen plenty of events that
| didn't sell out and scalpers where left still selling
| tickets and perhaps some people only knew about sites
| like ViaGoGo so bought of there.
|
| I'm sure times when demand closely matches supply, it's
| still going to the scalpers because they get in there
| first.
| djbebs wrote:
| No it is not.
| bheadmaster wrote:
| Yes it is.
|
| ---
|
| See how pointless this type of comment is? What exact
| information are you trying to convey here? "I disagree"?
| Do you consider that your disagreement alone is supposed
| to be a valid argument?
| cortesoft wrote:
| This doesn't make any sense, and isn't how a market works.
| Reducing supply to increase demand only works if you are
| the manufacturer of the item... if you have to buy up the
| entire market and hold them out to raise prices, it isn't
| going to work because you are going to be stuck with
| inventory you paid too much for.
|
| I do agree with you that the solution should be to have the
| artist make the money... they should raise ticket prices or
| us an auction system to match the price to the demand.
| picsao wrote:
| [deleted]
| drewg123 wrote:
| Scalpers are reselling tickets for profit because the
| artists price them too low, hence allowing the scalper to
| make money. Artists price tickets too low for a variety of
| reasons (the ego boost of playing to sold out venues, a
| misguided sense of loyalty to their fans, etc).
|
| All that is needed to stop scalping is to price the tickets
| appropriately when they are first issued.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| sigstoat wrote:
| the internet is full of folks lamenting how little
| musicians make for their music. somebody suggests that
| they ought to be paid more and you subject them to
| rudeness?
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| I quoted a single phrase to disagree with, not the entire
| post.
|
| If musicians want more money, great, get that bread.
|
| If a musician thinks they have plenty, and wants to let
| fans in for cheaper, it's horrible to call that
| objectively wrong and a misguided sense of loyalty.
|
| And we're talking about sold out venues going for very
| high prices; if those particular musicians say a certain
| price is high enough _I will believe them_.
| bheadmaster wrote:
| I disagree with the choice of language you're using, but
| I agree with the sentiment.
|
| Why the hell would a sense of loyalty to fans be called
| "misguided"? What does that even imply - that musicians
| should _not_ be loyal to their fans? That seems like
| quite a businessman 's perspective, looking at music as
| just show-business with the purpose of making money,
| instead of an art form.
|
| Some things are more important than money. Money is just
| a middleman. A lot of people seem to forget that.
| cortesoft wrote:
| I can't reply to the other guy because the comment is now
| flagged, but my question is how do you measure who a
| 'true' fan is? You want to reward your fans, but how do
| you identify who are loyal fans and who aren't?
| Thiez wrote:
| Like with Loki's wager, it's hard to say exactly where to
| draw the line. But I think most would agree that a
| company buying massive amounts of ticket with the sole
| intent to resell them at a profit is most certainly not a
| true fan.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Whether you get rid of scalping or not, you are still
| going to have the "10:00 start, sold out at 10:00:01"
| problem. I haven't heard the solution to that yet. If a
| good is priced far, far below what the market will bear,
| you are always going to immediately sell out of it.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Think about more intermediate situations too. If scalpers
| are buying half the tickets for a concert, and doing so
| in a very effective way, they could be the difference
| between selling out in 2 minutes and selling out in 20
| minutes.
| orangecat wrote:
| It's not "bad" in a cosmic sense, it's just a different
| set of tradeoffs. It leads to shortages and queueing and
| situations where people who really want to attend aren't
| able to even if they would have been happy to pay more.
| googlryas wrote:
| How do scalpers increase demand? The supply is fixed and
| scalpers don't cause more people to want to go to concerts.
| If anything that cause fewer people to want to go to
| concerts?
| m000 wrote:
| They don't increase demand. They only increase prices
| because they buy in a matter of minutes ALL of the
| supply. Then the only way to get a ticket is through the
| scalpers.
|
| And OFC, they will charge you way ABOVE what would be the
| free market price of the ticket, i.e. the amount you
| would have to offer to find an individual willing to sell
| you their ticket, if the direct sales ended up to fans
| instead of the scalpers.
| orangecat wrote:
| _And OFC, they will charge you way ABOVE what would be
| the free market price of the ticket_
|
| They charge exactly the free market price of the ticket,
| which does not necessarily have any relationship to the
| face price.
|
| _i.e. the amount you would have to offer to find an
| individual willing to sell you their ticket, if the
| direct sales ended up to fans instead of the scalpers._
|
| This doesn't make sense. If you had a magical way of
| allocating tickets to the people who genuinely most
| wanted to attend, the price you'd pay to get one of those
| people to sell you their ticket would be even higher.
| googlryas wrote:
| How exactly do they charge more than the free market
| price of the ticket? No one would buy their tickets if
| they charged an amount that was more than anyone was
| willing to pay. And scalpers are very incentivized to not
| sit on unsold tickets, since they are pure loss.
| geraneum wrote:
| > price for an item with limited supply
|
| It's literally the scalper who's acquired a near monopoly on
| the supply and is setting the price, not the "free market".
| Not every dog-eat-dog situation pertains to free market.
| quantum_magpie wrote:
| Because the market isn't free. It is controlled by those with
| most money, political prowess, and fastest bots.
|
| And in this imaginary 'free market', the ones with most money
| buy the political power and the fastest bots.
| [deleted]
| benburton wrote:
| This issue isn't as cut and dry as simply banning scalping. I
| spend most of my discretionary income on music... merchandise,
| vinyl, concert tickets. At any given point in time I have
| tickets to about 7-8 performances in the future. Sometimes life
| gets in the way, and I simply cannot attend an event. In those
| situations, I have a very legitimate reason to want to sell
| concert tickets, and I do. Sometimes I will end up selling for
| under what I paid, other times I will make a small profit, more
| rarely I will say fuck it and just give the tickets away on
| social media to friends or coworkers. In the long term, this
| generally nets me out at zero in terms of gaining/losing money
| on ticket purchases.
|
| My point, I guess, is that there's a legitimate, healthy reason
| for a resale market. Throwing the ticketing resale market out
| with the scalper bathwater is a myopic solution.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| You wrote an entire paragraph that has literally nothing to
| do with ticket scalping.
|
| Reselling your ticket your purchased for yourself at face
| value because you can't go isn't scalping.
| benburton wrote:
| You wrote an entire sentence that has literally nothing to
| do with the ticket resale market and how scalping is
| related.
|
| A secondary ticketing market enables scalping. There are
| legitimate reasons for the resale market to exist. If you
| think that the existence and dynamics of a resale market
| are unrelated to scalping... I would encourage you to look
| into critical reasoning courses which are perhaps available
| at your local community college at a low cost.
|
| How do you propose we eliminate scalping, while preserving
| the secondary market? Go ahead, I'm waiting. Literally all
| ticketing companies are waiting for your profound insight.
| dymk wrote:
| You're describing a secondary ticket market, not scalping.
| tobyhinloopen wrote:
| What's the difference? When does it become scalping?
| benburton wrote:
| Waiting on the response here because there will not be
| one.
| pc86 wrote:
| You know it when you see it.
|
| Buying a bunch of different tickets to different shows
| _you intend to go to_ , and selling some of them because
| things come up or you change your mind, is one thing.
|
| Buying 20 tickets to the same event that you couldn't
| care less about and selling them for cash outside the
| venue is something else entirely.
| chrishare wrote:
| Yeah, scalping provides very little value to society
| except profit to the scalpers. It's parasitic.
| Unfortunately the methods to combat it, like ticket
| lotteries, better identity verification and per-id quotas
| for purchase and transfer, aren't in the interest of
| ticket vendors. Artists generally can't wield much power
| either.
| benburton wrote:
| What's your proposal to enforce restrictions against this
| behavior?
| noxvilleza wrote:
| Pre-COVID there was actually an EU Parliament vote in favour of
| adding extra laws against scalping: https://www.kerrang.com/eu-
| parliament-votes-in-favour-of-new... - although I haven't heard
| much since.
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| Well you could say that the scalper takes risk away from the
| promoter, and allows the lazy consumer with money to see an
| event that they might have missed out on. They also usually
| provide cheap tickets the day of an event that has not sold
| out.
| sschueller wrote:
| Good, Viagogo is a horrible company and has been scaming people
| in Switzerland as well as all over the world. Also not the first
| time they lost in court.[1] Basically the Uber of ticket sales,
| move fast, break laws, make an exit and walk away millionaires.
| This crap needs to stop.
|
| Viagogo purchases tickets with fake names and addresses to then
| resells them for a much higher price. This is illegal in
| Switzerland and probably also in many European countries.
|
| [1] https://www.srf.ch/news/panorama/eintrittskarten-
| zurueckbeza... (German)
| pan69 wrote:
| > Viagogo purchases tickets with fake names and addresses to
| then resells them for a much higher price.
|
| Like corporations buying up all the realestate. Its all just
| part of an anti-pattern fulled by greed and the lack of laws
| that weren't put in place due to lobbying. Our Western idea of
| democracy and capitalism is fucked.
| imglorp wrote:
| In most countries, this would stop if we started holding C
| suite personally accountable for criminal actions of their
| company. If they make the big bucks breaking laws, they should
| be doing jail time.
| consp wrote:
| Then you'd have to get rid of limited liability companies, I
| don't want to be defeatist but that's not going to happen.
| There are some instances where it can be done but usually
| it's hard and I've never seen it happen with big companies,
| only obvious frauds like pyramid schemes.
| Thorrez wrote:
| I thought limited liability was about money, not about jail
| time.
|
| They're about insulating the owner from debt. The LLC can
| go bankrupt without ruining the owner.
| consp wrote:
| To my knowledge it also shields you from most criminal
| parts as you can say "It was the lower downs, not my
| doing" despite it almost always is policy.
| pkroll wrote:
| Having the employees is what provides the shield: it
| becomes harder to prove who exactly, did what.
| quantum_magpie wrote:
| If LLC owner is breaking laws they _should_ be punished, up
| to, and including, jail time.
| Silverback_VII wrote:
| I would understand your anger if it were about
| speculation on the price of rice or wheat. but about
| tickets? come on...
|
| Even in the case of food shortage one must ask if
| speculation does not increase investment and production
| in the long run.
| sschueller wrote:
| You can speculate all you want as long as the law allows
| it but viagogo is actually breaking laws in some
| countries (faking names and addresses to purchase
| tickets, misleading customers, not honering refund
| policies, etc. ) and should either stop doing so or
| prevent customers in those countries from purchasing
| tickets.
| hodgesrm wrote:
| LLC is not a shield for criminal conduct. It protects
| personal assets of the company owners. [0] Generally
| speaking in American law such protections disappear if you
| commit fraud or similar malfeasance. For examples, courts
| will break contracts including liability limits if a party
| commmits fraud. (IANAL but I read a lot of contracts in my
| day job.)
|
| [0] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/llc.asp
| d110af5ccf wrote:
| The relevant term is "piercing the corporate veil" and it
| pretty much only happens if someone intentionally and
| knowingly engages in criminal acts.
| senko wrote:
| > if someone intentionally and knowingly engages in
| criminal acts.
|
| Can you unintentionally and unknowingly engage in a
| criminal act?
| Silverback_VII wrote:
| Is this the fault of viagogo if some people a willing to pay
| almost any price?
|
| I guess most organiser are angry only because they sold their
| tickets at too low of a price.
| psytrx wrote:
| > and has been scaming people in Switzerland
|
| Same here. We issued a restraint order against Viagogo years
| ago, but still receive >30% 'automated traffic' during high
| demand pre-sales, according to Cloudflare.
|
| Even though we put lots and lots of resources into making it as
| difficult as possible for black markets, it still seems to be a
| quick and easy way to make some cash.
| superzamp wrote:
| You piqued my interest and now would love to know more, are
| you selling ticket yourself for your own events and acting as
| a ticket selling platform for others?
|
| It's sad to see you have such a big amount of automated
| traffic, no wonder why it's so hard to get tickets for high
| demand events as a human when you're competing with this.
| mhuffman wrote:
| >Viagogo is a horrible company and has been scaming people in
| Switzerland as well as all over the world.
|
| I went to a very well-known university (in the US), and they
| had business courses that literally invited speakers in that
| had startups that were ticket arbitrage.
|
| I was taken aback that they would be bragging about buying out
| all the tickets for an event and then charging more for them.
| Their response is something along the lines of "well first we
| are getting the 'real WTP' price from the consumer and second
| we sometimes buyout events that turn out bad and lose money, so
| it's fair!"
|
| But the whole time it was discussed by professors as if this
| was a great idea!
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| "second we sometimes buyout events that turn out bad and lose
| money, so it's fair!" Interesting, I always wondered why
| places seem to allow this. I guess this is almost like
| insurance for the event.
| mhuffman wrote:
| Yes, it is only popular events/artists that complain and
| even then they don't complain too hard (see the very
| existence of Ticketmaster).
| code_duck wrote:
| I don't approve of it, but this seems like basic capitalist
| principles to me.
| mhuffman wrote:
| I agree. Pure capitalism has some great benefits for
| entrepreneurial people, but for a whole society it can have
| some pretty negative bad effects.
| d110af5ccf wrote:
| Honestly I've never seen ticket arbitrage as a bad thing.
| These venues are selling below market price and then
| people get upset when the obvious thing happens.
| Essentially they are trying to operate using some sort of
| private club model where it's first come first served
| instead of supply and demand driven bidding. Yet they
| simultaneously want to sell these tickets on the open
| market. So what did they (and everyone else) expect would
| happen?
|
| I see ticket scalping as a natural and good outcome. If
| you want a private club then start a private club but
| honestly you will still have to deal with members
| attempting to scalp since you aren't charging market
| price and our broader economy uses more or less free
| markets.
| jonwithoutanh wrote:
| I am an artist.
|
| I want my fans to be able to come to my shows.
|
| I sell my tickets at a reasonable price to allow my fans
| to come.
|
| All the tickets get bought up and resold for prices a
| large majority of my fans can't afford.
|
| The venue is still full of my fans, but only the wealthy
| ones, and I have no method to allow my less wealthy fans
| to be able to come to my shows.
|
| I've also made notably less money that I would have if I
| sold my tickets at the scalper price.
|
| I am no incentivized to sell at the scalper price
| permanently removing the ability for my less wealthy fans
| to attend my show.
| mhuffman wrote:
| >These venues are selling below market price
|
| Well that is one way to look at it. Let me offer you
| another perspective.
|
| Let's say that I send people to your town to buy up all
| the bread. All of it! Every brand, every size.
|
| Then I raise the price.
|
| Were the people before charging below market price, or
| did I just manipulate the market price and raise it?
|
| Now consider that it wasn't bread, but something like
| insulin or gas. Is that still the "correct" market price
| or am I forcing it?
| spookie wrote:
| Things like this just make me loose all respect for yhese
| degrees...
| quantum_magpie wrote:
| Business degrees were about exploiting others since their
| inception, so they never had any basis for respect
| whatsoever.
| mhuffman wrote:
| What's more is that for any business degree at my uni, a
| "Business Ethics" course is required and at upper-levels
| an "Ethics and Compliance" course is required. However it
| is focused much more on not ripping off investors or
| being unintentionally racist or misogynist, and has no
| focus on, for example, charging a profit-maximizing price
| for insulin or arbitraging food from poor people, etc.
| seandoe wrote:
| Good for them! Online ticket scalping has become such a huge
| problem. Everyone should use services like cashortrade.org
| ravenstine wrote:
| StubHub was acquired by Viagogo a few years ago. I used StubHub
| to get "feuerzone" tickets for the second Rammstein show in LA
| last weekend which, for those of you don't know, are for the GA
| zone that's right in front of the stage.
|
| I really hope this doesn't affect StubHub in the future because
| the experience was great and it came through when Ticketmaster
| was entirely sold out for FZ. I get why there's a restraining
| order for Viagogo; I just hope they don't take StubHub down with
| them in terms of whether I can use them again.
|
| Also, it was an awesome, awesome, awesome... AWESOME show! One of
| the best things I've ever done. Even if you aren't that into the
| music normally, it's a performance like no other that's worth
| seeing in person.
| unclekev wrote:
| In Australia, a lot of the time if you search Google for specific
| concert tickets, Viagogo will come up before the official ticket
| reseller results.
|
| My mum got stung by this and accidentally bought $800 of tickets
| from them for a show in December (that should have cost $400.
| Tickets were still available on Ticketmaster)
|
| Tickets were bought 3 months ago, and Viagogo won't give her the
| tickets or seating Information until 1 week before the show.
| After some reading this is apparently how they work.
|
| Every single aspect of their service is a dark pattern.
| echelon wrote:
| 1. Make an app that is 1:1 tied to a physical person's identity.
| You can only have one account.
|
| 2. Only sell tickets to people with these accounts. Only allow 2
| tickets to be sold to a single account holder per concert.
|
| 3. If someone wishes to sell their ticket (eg. changed plans,
| etc.), they can do so for 95% of the original purchase price with
| 5% going back to the band and marketplace.
|
| 4. As an added bonus, loyal fans can get first dibs at tickets.
|
| 5. Furthermore bad actors at concerts can be tracked and
| permabanned.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| Glastonbury already does this.
| scrollaway wrote:
| Ticket swap comes pretty close to what you describe...
| https://www.ticketswap.com/
| happyopossum wrote:
| > 3. If someone wishes to sell their ticket (eg. changed plans,
| etc.), they can do so for 95% of the original purchase price
| with 5% going back to the band and marketplace.
|
| Why? It's my ticket. Should t I be able to do whatever I want
| with it?
|
| Funny how the same crowd that complains about 'not owning' your
| phone/car/tractor etc is totally fine with not owning a concert
| ticket...
| vkou wrote:
| It's their event, they can choose to let people in by
| whatever criteria _they_ want.
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| >Funny how the same crowd that complains about 'not owning'
| your phone/car/tractor etc is totally fine with not owning a
| concert ticket...
|
| Yeah, "ownership" is not exactly a black-and-white issue such
| that impinging upon it is always bad. People in general want
| good outcomes, not bad ones.
|
| They think that the way John Deere impinges upon the
| customer's ownership of their tractor (to lock it down and
| force you to pay recurring fees, use only licensed mechanics
| who kick back to Deere) is bad, and the way that Rammstein
| impinges upon the customer's ownership of their ticket (to
| keep you from scalping it and making money as a middleman who
| offers nothing of value) is good.
|
| Ownership is one of those concepts where it is difficult to
| draw universally applicable rules. Instead, we investigate
| the specifics of each case to decide whether the
| infringements are ok or not.
| bredren wrote:
| There's nothing wrong with wanting to get face value + fees
| for a ticket in resale.
|
| But a ticket isn't a physical object that produces
| repeatable, expected value to the person operating it. A
| concert ticket is a license to a one time in person
| experience.
| sschueller wrote:
| Viagogo buys tickets with fake names and addresses already.
| Requiring IDs may prevent that but knowing Viagogo gives zero
| fucks about laws they would probably fake that verification as
| well.
| firekvz wrote:
| that already exist in the whole Kpop scene in South Korea
|
| Im not really sure why It has not expended to other regions of
| the world
|
| UEFA/FIFA has managed to deal really good with scalping for
| soccer matches.
|
| Is just matter of time.
| izacus wrote:
| So basically you want the band to scalp people for giving the
| tickets to their friends and family? How is that better?
| cortesoft wrote:
| How about they just do a Dutch auction? Say you are selling
| 10000 tickets to something. Every person who wants to go
| submits a bid with the maximum they will pay for a ticket over
| the course of say, three days. Then, the band looks at the
| 10,001 highest bid, and charges the 10000 people bid higher
| that amount.
|
| Everyone pays the same, and it is the fairest price to sell all
| of the tickets.
| tim-- wrote:
| I tried setting up a platform exactly like this a few years
| ago, and launched it in Australia.
|
| I think you have no idea how deep the hole goes here.
|
| I can only speak of my local experience, but it was so hard
| getting off the ground. Convincing artists and promoters to
| use an unknown site, convincing users that they should place
| fair bids (no, you don't want to pay $9999 for a ticket...)
|
| The number of venues that had exclusive deals with
| Ticketmaster or Ticketek to be the sole seller of tickets for
| the venue also made selling tickets in larger venues
| impossible.
|
| I ended up winding down the platform after running it only
| for a few months. Maybe if I had more capital, and some
| better connections inside the entertainment community, things
| could have been different.
| eh9 wrote:
| They're not the heroes we deserve, but the heroes need.
|
| I'm fascinated by the price discovery problem in concert tickets,
| but I'm incredibly frustrated by the lack of artist involvement
| in that system. I usually hate bringing up NFTs and blockchains,
| but if any industry would benefit from a verified seller market,
| it could be this one.
|
| It's not like Bad Bunny (the company, not Benito) is hurting from
| missing out on the 9X multiple on floor seats, but acts are
| increasingly dependent on performance revenues to make a living,
| and they're largely cut out from that resale market.
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| I think you're taking the wrong approach here.
|
| The artists are not interested in "price discovery" above all
| else. They do not, in general, want their concerts to be
| attended only by those who were willing to pay the most money,
| but rather by their fans. The goal of a band is not to provide
| a return on investment, or to most efficiently extract money
| from the value of the band's brand or music rights or whatever,
| it is to entertain and be artists.
|
| This is the reason that tickets are generally priced well below
| what each ticket could earn in a blind auction or whatever, not
| because the bands are bad at "price discovery."
| robocat wrote:
| I think plenty of artists are motivated by the money, and
| they would be happy to charge huge amounts and get huge
| profits _if_ they could get away with it.
|
| It seems to especially occur with older bands, where they go
| on tour mostly to get money, or they do private shows for
| wealthy corporates, or they sell rights to get money.
|
| There are obvious tells that many younger artists are also
| very interested in profits. Some artists are wealthy enough
| to provide free concerts, but they don't.
| unpopular42 wrote:
| Wtf is "be artists" honestly? This is not a church choir. Top
| bands are commercial enterprises and are able to attract top
| talent (singers, musicians, audio and light engs, etc)
| because they get paid well.
| eh9 wrote:
| Well, yeah, but the people paying 10X are probably luckier
| fans. Fans who can't afford the scalped price have a
| momentary chance to buy from a pool of less than 10% of
| tickets because the events industry still gets the bulk of
| allotments.
| wincy wrote:
| Ticket prices are weird. I saw Roger Waters (Pink Floyd) the
| other night (an amazing show btw) and was literally right next
| to the stage. I paid $150 a week before the concert for the
| pleasure. The lady next to me had bought her ticket two years
| before and had spent $800. She said she got some memorabilia
| and stuff but still. Absolutely bonkers the price difference.
| pkroll wrote:
| Is that really weird? Or is that "two years previous we made
| a bet on how popular these tickets will be, and priced them
| at $800. With a week to go, we still have some tickets: price
| them down so we make SOMETHING on them."?
| sakisv wrote:
| Viagogo is one of the worst out there.
|
| Back in 2015 I bought 2 tickets for AC/DC through them and I paid
| ~PS270. When I got the tickets in my hands I saw that the price
| was ~PS75-PS80 each and Viagogo added more than PS100, just
| because they could.
|
| Kudos to Rammstein and I hope more bands will follow and help us
| get rid of these scammers.
| snidane wrote:
| My Viagogo experience in 2019. After an hour waiting in line
| for the event I get my ticket scanned only to realize they sold
| it to somebody else at the same time. Another 30 mins waiting
| at the security trying to get somebody from their call center
| to pick up the phone and tell me I was out of luck that day. I
| only got a refund in form of viagogo credits which expired
| worthless as there were no events happening due to covid. Buyer
| beware.
| cortesoft wrote:
| > Viagogo added more than PS100, just because they could.
|
| It is not 'just because', it's because there are more people
| who want to go than there are tickets. The reason you paid an
| extra 100 pounds is because someone else wanted that ticket,
| too, but would only pay 90 extra. That is the market allocating
| a scarce resource.
|
| If there are only 10000 tickets and 100000 people would be
| willing to pay face value for the ticket, how do you suggest
| the tickets be allocated? A lottery?
|
| If the reseller wasn't selling them for more, you would have
| instead only a 1 in 10 chance to get a ticket at all. Would you
| rather have a ticket and pay 100 pounds more, or pay nothing
| but get zero tickets? That is your choice anyway.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| > It is not 'just because', it's because there are more
| people who want to go than there are tickets.
|
| No, it's Viagogo artificially limiting the ticket supply.
| Then price gouging.
| aendruk wrote:
| > A lottery?
|
| Yes, that's the fair solution. A lottery with some mechanic
| for friends to enter as a group.
| cortesoft wrote:
| I don't think a lottery is very fair. Some of the people
| entering the lottery might just only kind of be fans, and
| are happy to go but wouldn't be that disappointed if they
| don't get tickets. Other people are die hard fans and want
| to go more than they want to do anything else in this
| world. Is it fair that both of those fans get the same
| chance of getting a ticket?
|
| How about instead you give every music fan 1000 music
| points a year, and they can use those points to bid on
| tickets? That way, every fan has an equal opportunity, and
| can allocate their points to the concerts they most want to
| go to? Maybe someone allocates all their points for
| Rammstein because they want to go so bad, and someone else
| instead would rather go to 10 less in demand concerts.
|
| But wait, that still isn't fair... some people like music
| way more than other people. Huge music fans shouldn't have
| the same amount of points as people who only kind of like
| music, but are actually more into sports. The huge music
| fans should get more music points and the sports fans more
| sports points.
|
| To solve this, we could just give out generic points to
| everyone and you could spend it on music OR sports, or
| whatever... so now the huge music fans spend all their
| points on music and sports fans spend it on sports...
|
| But then what about people who would be willing to do extra
| work to be able to do more things, where other people would
| rather relax more and not go to as many things. Maybe
| people could trade their points to other people in exchange
| for goods and services...
|
| Oh wait, we just invented money and the system we already
| have.
| aendruk wrote:
| I don't think it works to handwave away wealth inequality
| as "would rather relax more".
| cortesoft wrote:
| I agree, but it is also is not fair to ignore the
| misallocation of resources that occurs if we just do
| lotteries.
| noxvilleza wrote:
| In some sense there already _is_ a lottery - except the
| scalpers use bots and other methods to firstly inflate the
| number of people seeking a ticket, and secondly to bid
| faster than normal humans can. A lottery of only people who
| actually intend to go to the concert (or resell the tickets
| at face value) would be the best for consumers.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Why have any of such mechanism? I see that as extreme
| discrimination of solo goers. Everyone should be treated
| equally.
| sakisv wrote:
| > It is not 'just because', it's because there are more
| people who want to go than there are tickets.
|
| The emphasis is on the last part, i.e. "just because _they
| could_ ". My point is that they should not have been allowed
| in the first place.
|
| > how do you suggest the tickets be allocated
|
| First come first served. There are usually different price
| ranges anyway, so the market forces are already at play. I
| don't understand why we need to have black-market-as-a-
| service.
| cortesoft wrote:
| First come first serve sucks for people who have jobs and
| lives and can't just wait in line to get tickets, or sit at
| their computer and hit refresh at a specific time
| polygamous_bat wrote:
| > If there are only 10000 tickets and 100000 people would be
| willing to pay face value for the ticket, how do you suggest
| the tickets be allocated? A lottery?
|
| Why not? If the artist prices their concerts at $100 because
| they want all of their fans to be able to attend, and if
| their fans are willing to spend $100 to go see them, why do
| scalpers get to "ackshually free market dynamics" there? I am
| quite happy with a ticket lottery as long as there are no
| sybill attacks possible on the system.
| cortesoft wrote:
| > If the artist prices their concerts at $100 because they
| want all of their fans to be able to attend
|
| But that means all the fans won't be able to attend,
| because there aren't enough tickets.
|
| If I have a 1 in 10 chance of going to a concert I want, I
| would rather save my money and spend more to go to a
| particular concert I really want to go to rather than just
| have a 1/10 chance and end up winning the lottery on one I
| don't really want to go to that much.
| noahtallen wrote:
| Ok, but that's an arbitrary middleman creating artificial
| scarcity without permission from the seller.
|
| 1. That's viagogo making $100 without directly providing
| value, and while creating artificial (e.g. non-free) market
| conditions.
|
| 2. The concert sells out anyways because the scalper buys
| everything. So it's not like the scalper is improving
| availability in general.
|
| 3. The artist _should_ be getting most of the profit from
| ticket sales and even resales.
|
| 4. The artist should be allowed to forbid resale of tickets
| if they want them to be affordable.
|
| And finally, the market is not "solving" a problem here. The
| same number of people attend either way, so the same amount
| of non-monetary value is being received no matter what. The
| only difference is "can a rich person get themselves to the
| front of a line?" Why would that be valuable _in general_ for
| the market?
| zajio1am wrote:
| > The same number of people attend either way, so the same
| amount of non-monetary value is being received no matter
| what.
|
| Well, no. Different people have different preferences,
| therefore assigning tickets to ones that prefer them most
| would create most non-monetary value.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > Would you rather have a ticket and pay 100 pounds more, or
| pay nothing but get zero tickets? That is your choice anyway.
|
| Even if we assume that's the only way to make it work,
| Viagogo shouldn't be the one getting that money. They're a
| minor facilitator, and in a more open market they would only
| get a little sliver of profit or have no role at all.
| Especially when they're buying tickets under false pretenses.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| Why not just insist as Glastonbury does that each ticket is
| personal and that the ticket holder's ID must match the name
| declared when buying the ticket when they enter the festival
| grounds.
|
| Then a second hand ticket is worthless.
|
| "GLASTONBURY TICKET INFO
|
| ONLY SEE TICKETS ARE AUTHORISED TO SELL TICKETS FOR GLASTONBURY
| FESTIVAL No other site or agency will be allocated tickets. All
| tickets for the Festival are individually personalised to the
| named ticket holder and are strictly non-transferable. Security
| checks are carried out on arrival, and only the specified ticket
| holder will be admitted to the Festival."
|
| https://www.glastonburyfestivals.co.uk/information/tickets/
| sschueller wrote:
| Because money, the original ticket sale company like
| ticketmaster make money by selling out (scalper buying the
| tickets).
| izacus wrote:
| Because preventing people from giving their tickets to someone
| else is exceedingly shitty.
| Ekaros wrote:
| I think full refund until reasonable time before event would
| be reasonable compromise. Let's say 24h hours. And maybe some
| extra insurance beyond that, for medical, accident etc.
| jen729w wrote:
| With these tickets you can always sell them back to the
| venue/event, who will put them back in the sale pool. All at
| reasonable percentages of the original.
| raverbashing wrote:
| I guess they wouldn't want anything that involves giving names
| and checking IDs at concerts
| JadeNB wrote:
| > I guess they wouldn't want anything that involves giving
| names and checking IDs at concerts
|
| But they are doing exactly that:
|
| > Further, fans' full names must be displayed on their
| tickets, and they must display proof of identification to be
| admitted into the shows.
| alistairSH wrote:
| That's exactly what the article says they're doing...
|
| _Further, fans' full names must be displayed on their tickets,
| and they must display proof of identification to be admitted
| into the shows. What's more, fans won't be able to resell their
| tickets unless they go through the Eventim-distributed website
| fanSALE_
| cortesoft wrote:
| Sucks if someone gets sick.
| jwhite_nc wrote:
| If Rammstein wants to hurt the resellers and help their fans then
| add more shows at each venue. Quantity will cross a point where
| the price of resell tickets will be diluted.
| tpmx wrote:
| They are humans and as such have a limited time on earth.
| ChildOfChaos wrote:
| Good for them! Love Rammstein.
|
| However, the ticket market is changing and these resellers are
| getting sidelined a little more, but that doesn't mean the market
| is getting better.
|
| Ticketmaster, who are part of live nation who in turn own a lot
| of the big venues and festivals are horrible and owned a lot of
| resellers or were responsible for the reseller market, as it
| started to become more outlawed they simply side stepped it.
|
| Now you have tickets that have dynamic pricing, with prices that
| go well over double the face value, strange extra fees or just
| out right miss-selling.
|
| A concert I tried to book about 2 years ago, was 'sold out' of
| general admission tickets the minute it went on sale, including
| several 'presales' but these 'special access' tickets were
| available for double the general admission price, it was listed
| with the VIP tickets, but when you read the small print, with
| confusing language, it said things such as the ticket would
| ensure you got access to the concert (Shouldn't a standard ticket
| do that?) it was basically just a general admission ticket at a
| 'demand driven price'
| comprambler wrote:
| They don't "own" the venues so much as they obtain exclusive
| rights to all events being held at a facility which is worse.
| Dump trucks of money to venue reps are probably at play here.
| acdha wrote:
| They also are part of the same company as a big promoter so a
| venue which doesn't go along with them has to worry about
| losing the most popular acts, too. They prefer pre-packaged
| slates so that can be a big difference: play the game with
| Ticketmaster and you're basically booked full with popular
| acts, or go it alone and have to spend more time finding
| bands on your own.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _A concert I tried to book about 2 years ago, was 'sold out' of
| general admission tickets the minute it went on sale, including
| several 'presales' but these 'special access' tickets were
| available for double the general admission price_
|
| This used to happen even back in the bad old days when the way
| to buy concert tickets was to use special phone banks in
| certain department stores. It was especially awful for suburban
| kids who would get their parents to drive them two hours to a
| city that had the right department store, then as soon as the
| clock struck 10am, they'd pick up the phone only to find out
| the concert was sold out.
|
| Most large concerts have felt like a scam for as long as I've
| been alive. Maybe that's why I've been to so few of them.
| tomcam wrote:
| True even in the early 1980s, when I somehow managed to call
| in and got two front row seats to Elton John at the Hollywood
| bowl by calling in right at 10 AM. The system was known to be
| rigged by then, and I had called straight into Ticketmaster.
| My victory was so unusual even 40 years ago that I didn't
| actually believe it had happened until they let us into the
| seats.
| djitz wrote:
| Somewhat off-topic, but I wanted to buy some tickets for a
| comedian and the venue uses Ticketmaster. The tickets were $75/ea
| and the service fees were $65/ea. How in the hell are the service
| fees basically the same price as the price of admission?
| KMnO4 wrote:
| Because it's a monopoly. They charge what people will pay, and
| it turns out people will still sell out a venue even after $65
| fees.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| Why is it a monopoly? I think at many venues they only sell
| via TicketMaster; but why have the venues locked themselves
| into this, what do they get out of it? Are there some
| kickbacks for venues or something?
| ChildOfChaos wrote:
| Because ticketmaster.
|
| They used to charge a pretty high delivery fee for e-tickets.
| When they were first introduced they where the same price as
| having an actual ticket delivered. They have since stopped
| that, but will find a bunch of ways to charge you extra fees.
|
| Some venues add restoration fees, why should i be paying a fee
| to help you with the up keep of your building? Surely that is
| the cost of doing business, I don't pay a fee at the
| supermarket because they want to refurbish.
|
| Other annoying things I have had, is ticketmaster charging PS10
| each for delivery, on two tickets I ordered. Both where
| delivered in the same envelope using standard postage, which is
| less than PS1
| jffry wrote:
| Because pushing more of their cost of doing business into
| fees allows them to advertise a lower face price on their
| tickets.
| JadeNB wrote:
| > Surely that is the cost of doing business, I don't pay a
| fee at the supermarket because they want to refurbish.
|
| You probably do; it's just not itemized as such. (I mean, I
| don't know how, since supermarket prices at least at the big
| stores seem to be the same across very different chains--but
| they _do_ refurbish, and the money for that has to come from
| somewhere, so they 're getting it out of you somehow.)
| jen729w wrote:
| Oh and by the way they're also getting some of that $75 from
| the comedian by way of 'inside fees'. Possibly as much as $20
| of it.
|
| Source: I put on a large event once and we had to use
| Ticketmaster. I hate them like nothing else.
| djitz wrote:
| Wowwwww
| Karellen wrote:
| Ticketmaster's motto: Because fuck you, that's why.
| dqpb wrote:
| As a consumer, I hate scalping. But as a seller, I imagine
| scalpers might provide some value as a kind of risk-free price
| discovery service?
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-10-01 23:01 UTC)