[HN Gopher] Why scalpers can get tickets
___________________________________________________________________
Why scalpers can get tickets
Author : bookofjoe
Score : 67 points
Date : 2023-09-23 15:10 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.404media.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.404media.co)
| kelnos wrote:
| Ignoring how Ticketmaster is complicit in all this... it makes me
| really sad for humanity that people choose a "job" that is 100%
| about exploiting people. And that's it entirely legal and
| "normal" for the most part.
|
| A decade ago or so I went on a first date with a woman who was a
| professional scalper. Unfortunately I didn't have the balls to
| ask her about the ethics of what she does. (I expect it would
| have been something like, "if I don't do it, someone else will".)
| But it really grossed me out; I just can't respect someone who
| does something like that.
| [deleted]
| clircle wrote:
| Why are tickets priced too low?
| utterstep wrote:
| I just _love_ how the links to the "browsers which are helping
| scalpers" are marked with "?ref=404media.co"..
|
| Just in case, you know..
| jessenaser wrote:
| I think they do that for every website they link to.
|
| For example on this page: https://www.404media.co/ios-17-could-
| break-diabetic-glucose-...
|
| They link to CNN using the same reference:
| https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/07/health/abbott-recall-freestyl...
| coding123 wrote:
| Make tickets online $500. When you arrive you're given a special
| ticket-locked voucher that lets you go back to the website and
| get $480 back (assuming tickets are still $20 like when I was 20
| years old).
| ip26 wrote:
| Probably doesn't work. Buyers would happily pay scalpers $550
| knowing they will get $480 back.
| cousin_it wrote:
| The reason why artists don't sell all tickets to rich people is
| because they think poor people deserve nice things too, so they
| lower the price. But surely all poor people deserve nice things,
| not only your fans? Why not sell tickets to rich people and then
| donate the proceeds to help poor people? It seems to me that this
| way everyone wins: artists take the same monetary hit they
| would've taken anyway if they lowered the price, but the
| difference goes to poor people instead of scalpers.
| azinman2 wrote:
| My impractical solution: no resale of tickets, and check of ID at
| the door. It'll slow things down for check in, and people sick
| will miss out, but it will collectively bring prices down and
| increase seat availability.
| umvi wrote:
| The article talks about how scalpers circumvent no ticket
| resale - sell the entire account containing the tickets.
| gxs wrote:
| Presumably OP is saying the name on the actual ticket never
| changes.
|
| That is, even if you sell the account, the ticket is tied to
| the person.
| DanHulton wrote:
| The last Nine Inch Nails concert I went to was like this. Fans
| on the email list got advance sales for the event, and you
| could buy up to two tickets, and had to have your ID match the
| tickets. It was great, I was able to watch right from the front
| of the pit, I didn't have to fight through any weird browser
| nonsense, and I paid exactly the price of the ticket, no more,
| no less.
| anonymouse008 wrote:
| This is the only true solution. There's a few things to work
| out legally - but they are all solvable. Perhaps there should
| be a seat transfer portal that opens 24-48 hours before (or at
| some specified time) for those true extenuating circumstances
| so family members or friends could get access to tickets.
| Otherwise, first principles says end transferability to end the
| secondary market.
| bufferoverflow wrote:
| Or just make it an auction. Every ticket goes to the highest
| bidder.
| bastard_op wrote:
| This has been the same scam for decades, there's always
| motivation, financially, for people to subvert the rules, and
| ticketmaster wins either way. After stubhub/ebay basically
| legitimized scalping, it was all over.
|
| Know how I dealt with ticket scalping? I stopped going to shows
| like that in the 90's, then stopped buying cd's, and eventually
| stopped supporting the music industry (and media cartels in
| general).
| [deleted]
| firesteelrain wrote:
| I don't know if I buy the premise of the article. We were able to
| have an opportunity to buy tickets after being waitlisted (I
| think it was 48-72hrs after the initial presale). But the tickets
| were extremely expensive. Ticketmaster was scalping not the
| scalpers.
|
| We did buy Taylor Swift tickets for next year however it was $1k
| for three tickets.
| nayuki wrote:
| > Ticketmaster was scalping not the scalpers.
|
| If I understand correctly, the definition of scalping is to buy
| and sell quickly in the hope of a profit. Ticketmaster is the
| originator of the tickets (it is not reselling from anyone
| else), so it cannot be a scalper.
|
| You can't just make up meanings and assume that scalping means
| selling at an uncomfortably high price.
| costco wrote:
| Ticketmaster has something called Official Platinum seats
| where the prices are dynamic and roughly reflect market
| prices. See https://ticketmaster-us.zendesk.com/hc/en-
| us/articles/978244...
|
| Not all events have this though.
| firesteelrain wrote:
| Look don't be a dick. I am just using an analogy
| codelikeawolf wrote:
| 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.
| TylerE wrote:
| Scalping is legal in most jurisdictions, sometimes with
| restrictions ("no selling within 1000ft of the venue for more
| than 20% over face".
| SoftTalker wrote:
| As it should be, without restrictions. Basically First Sale
| doctrine. If I buy something, I own it and should be able to
| sell it at market price.
| driscoll42 wrote:
| There's a significant difference between buying something
| and reselling, and then having bots buying
| hundreds/thousands and reselling.
| bombcar wrote:
| They started out as plain scalper marketplaces but now have
| deals with most venues to give the venue a cut.
| jaybrendansmith wrote:
| I think unique identity is worth something. This is what the
| government (federal, state, local, doesn't matter) ought to have
| a role in protecting. If we had laws that said, for example, you
| must have proof of identity in the country or state or region
| where the arena is located, would that not solve this? We used to
| do it in the 90s by using phone area codes, and this worked
| pretty effectively: the early 90s was a golden age of low concert
| ticket prices.
| nayuki wrote:
| So tell international fans to f*ck off, right? I know many
| friends who fly to Japan to attend concerts because they
| genuinely like those artists. Way to stifle free trade and
| trample on people's preferences.
| thriftwy wrote:
| Why not raise prices until you hit the supply demand cross? Yes
| you will visit one event out of three (just as today), but the
| dignity will remain with you.
| mattnewton wrote:
| I posted this elsewhere in the thread[0], but tldr I believe
| that concerts give value to fans and artists beyond the ticket
| price as a giant ad for the band's brand and a community that
| forms around it, both pressures that put the optimal price for
| fans and artists below the market for it as a one time
| entertainment option. The optimal price point for the artist
| playing a repeated game is therefore lower than the optimal
| price point for an event venue or scalper.
|
| [0]
| https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=37624742&goto=item%3Fi...
| thriftwy wrote:
| This only works if buying that ticket does not become a
| nuisanse.
| neilv wrote:
| Could Ticketmaster have any incentive to permit scalpers?
|
| (Besides the potential for personnel to be bribed individually.
| I'm wondering about whether there's hypothetically an angle for
| the company to permit scalpers. Maybe to be involved in scalping,
| as a kind of double dipping.)
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| Who?
| chevman wrote:
| Protip I've used the last couple years (worked before that as
| well, but not as much need) - just check StubHub or other second
| hand markets a week or so before the show.
|
| Generally the scalpers over buy and will start to panic and
| unload tickets at very good prices the closer the show gets.
| crazygringo wrote:
| This is not true at all as a general rule.
|
| It all comes down to whether or not there's enough demand to
| fill the venue.
|
| If there's plenty of demand, StubHub prices will remain much
| higher than face value. They absolutely do _not_ ever become
| available at good prices.
|
| On the other hand, if the venue is larger than demand, then yes
| -- you can easily score half-price tickets a few days leading
| up to the show.
|
| But good luck trying to figure out which one will be the
| outcome. If you delay purchasing, prices are just as likely to
| keep going up as they are to go down.
| kelnos wrote:
| I guess this sort of advice is good for the kind of person
| who sees a show coming up, and thinks it would be cool to go,
| but is completely fine missing it if the price isn't on the
| lower end.
| screwturner68 wrote:
| Nothing new here. I remember when the Cubs stopped selling
| tickets via a line wrapped around Wrigley to a wristband "to cut
| down on scalpers". I lucked out and ended up 57th in line. You
| could only buy 4 tickets per game so in theory only 240 tickets
| would have been sold by the time I got to buy. I was only looking
| for bleacher seats (cheap and fun at the time) and there were
| about 5000 seats available. By the time I got to buy every
| weekend bleacher seat was sold out with the exception of April,
| May and September. Who bought the other 4700 seats? The answer of
| course was the scalpers. Back then (90's) bleacher seats were $12
| and the ball park was down the block so it was a nice option on
| the weekend to go see the game, have a few beers (4 for $18), it
| wasn't much more expensive than going to the movies. Now it's $35
| for the same seat and beers are $18 each, Wrigley is still down
| the block but at those prices I'll just catch the matinee for $12
| and a $12 popcorn.
| [deleted]
| xnx wrote:
| Based on nothing, I think tickets for high-demand events should
| be allocated: 1/3 first-come first-serve for in-person sales (you
| pay with your time), 1/3 random assignment (you have to get
| lucky), 1/3 auction to highest bidder (pay with your money).
| nayuki wrote:
| This sounds like the
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_Marathon . It has
| different entry classes such as lottery, previous participant,
| or pay a high price.
| hackeraccount wrote:
| It's been a long time since I did that but they also had a
| deal where if you ran a certain number of local NY races you
| got the chance to buy a bib number. Come to think of it I
| think you can also get a chance to buy if you have a fast
| enough time in a qualifying race.
| bagels wrote:
| In the time of box offices, ticket scalpers still thrived.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| The article addresses the problem with random assignment: each
| scalper can enter the lottery hundreds of times, but each
| regular person can enter only once.
| pimlottc wrote:
| > 1/3 first-come first-serve for in-person sales (you pay with
| your time)
|
| You can pay people to wait in line for you
|
| > 1/3 random assignment (you have to get lucky)
|
| Scalpers have the means to can create hundreds of accounts
| nayuki wrote:
| Good points. Then, I guess the solution is that only
| auctioned tickets can be anonymous, whereas queued and
| lottery tickets must be sold to the real name of the person
| who requested it.
| slau wrote:
| Make the tickets named, and require ID upon entry. Completely
| kill the resale market.
|
| If people can't make it, they can return the ticket for the
| same amount of money they bought it, up to one week before
| the event. Or they can get cancellation insurance just like
| some would on holiday plane tickets. Returned tickets go back
| on sale into the main pool.
|
| As far as I can tell, the scalping problem would be gone
| instantly.
|
| But there's a reason nobody is doing it: they're making money
| hand over fist.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| The problem is legitimate ticketholders don't like this.
| You're going to a concert with your SO that you had to buy
| tickets for six months in advance, then you break up and
| get together with someone else. Now instead of transferring
| the ticket you paid for to your new SO, you're stuck either
| going with your ex (that'll go over well) or going by
| yourself. People don't like this.
| kelnos wrote:
| Wouldn't this account for well under 10% of potential
| ticket buyers, though?
|
| Sure, if you're in a relatively new relationship,
| planning anything at all 6 months out is a gamble. That's
| just life.
|
| At any rate, you'd still have the option of returning
| your ex's ticket, and buying a new one in your new
| partner's name.
|
| Or you can return _both_ tickets, and buy a new pair that
| are guaranteed to be seated next to each other. Sure,
| presumably you didn 't get full price on the ticket
| return, but, again, that's life.
|
| The funny thing is that, while on occasion this situation
| might come up, and someone will end up paying a little
| more to see the show, _overall_ they (and everyone else)
| will pay less to see shows in general, since scalping has
| been (in theory) eliminated. So for most people who see a
| show every now and then, they 'd still come out ahead
| under this system.
| slau wrote:
| I'll take not having shared seating with a potential
| future partner due to the breakdown of my relationship
| with my current partner over spending $450/person to see
| a band I liked back in high school.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| But you still don't even get to see the band, because if
| they sell the tickets below the market clearing price
| they sell out before you can get one and then aren't
| available at _any_ price.
| [deleted]
| dilyevsky wrote:
| That is completely made up example - I've been to events
| that do this and you're typically allowed to purchase 2-4
| tickets per id
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| That doesn't work for honest people when the person who
| used their ID is the one who can't go.
|
| And you now have a new scalping model where you create a
| website for people to submit their IDs ahead of time and
| pay a fee to have someone try to get them a ticket in the
| two seconds before they sell out, but they buy 2-4
| tickets per ID and resell the others.
| kelnos wrote:
| Simple fix for that: require the concertgoer to
| physically present the ID when arriving at the concert.
|
| They can also just disallow multiple tickets per ID.
|
| To clarify the proposed process: you buy one or more
| tickets online, and you're required to put full names to
| those tickets when you purchase them. You are not
| permitted to change those names later. You can return the
| tickets (minus some "restocking" fee), but that's all
| you're allowed to do; no transfers.
|
| When the time comes to attend the concert, everyone
| brings their ID, and the ticket checker matches the names
| on the IDs with the names on the tickets. No match, no
| entry.
|
| There is certainly one hole: tickets are still scarce, so
| someone could set up a website where they claim they'll
| guarantee you a ticket (because they have fast internet
| connections and legions of low-paid grunts clicking
| furiously at the website), and then charge a large
| premium on top of the ticket price in order to do so. You
| either give them your Ticketmaster (or whatever) account
| credentials, or they even "give" you an account after
| buying the ticket for you, all with your name on it. I do
| think this would inflate some ticket prices, but I feel
| like the situation would still be much better than it is
| now.
|
| On top of that, the ticket seller can just ban these
| sorts of websites. Again, not perfect, as they'll do
| everything they can to circumvent the ban, but you can
| probably make things difficult enough for them that their
| value prop doesn't really work out all that well, and
| they fail to get tickets often enough that they end up
| with a bad reputation.
|
| Really, ticket scalping should just be illegal, and law
| enforcement should crack down hard on these kinds of
| outfits.
| kelnos wrote:
| I think the point is that under this proposed anti-
| scalper system, you get 1 ticket per ID. Otherwise it's
| gameable.
| thechao wrote:
| I've been exposed to precisely this mechanism at "mom &
| pop" venues; it works great, and no one's upset (there's a
| loss of last-minute transfer between friends, but that's
| the cost). Ticketmaster self-scalps: it's in their best
| interest not to have this mechanism.
| phantomathkg wrote:
| In some countries, the ticket tied to government issued ID and
| that should reduce the scalper a bit I guess?
| hyldmo wrote:
| I'm not going to speak on how this could be hard to implement in
| other countries, but in my country selling a ticket above the
| price it was bought for is illegal, and as a result (maybe there
| is other factors in in play but) it's basically a non-issue here
| notyourwork wrote:
| I've never heard this, what country?
| uptown wrote:
| This seems like a situation ideally suited for biometrics at time
| of purchase. It limits/complicates the hoarding of tickets and is
| likely something many actual fans would accept in order to secure
| tickets for an event.
| josephcsible wrote:
| Why 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?
| delusional wrote:
| I think live performance music is still one of the few things
| in this hyper capitalist world directed by the performers. I
| base this absolutely no information expect the interviews I've
| seen, but it's my impression that performers are heavily
| involved with everything in a live performance, including the
| price setting.
|
| That is to say. I think the artist just like the idea of the
| tickets being affordable to allow their younger and less well
| off fans access.
|
| I think any argument here has to acknowledge the artists rights
| in this. Charging more might alleviate the issue, but if
| private ownership of the performance is to have any meaning, it
| must include the right to set a price below the market rate. If
| the artist wants to be "economically inefficient" we as a
| society must protect that right.
| TylerE wrote:
| Oh lawd.
|
| Most venues ARE hypercapitalists.
|
| That club down on the corner where the cool touring bands
| play? They take a 15-20% cut on the hands merch in exchange
| for the oh so vauablr service of providing maybe a beat up
| old folding table.
| hooverd wrote:
| I don't know if artists negotiate ranges on ticket prices. But
| I assume most would want to make an acceptable amount of money
| and allow most of their fans to afford tickets, not just the
| rich ones.
| nickelpro wrote:
| Most of their fans aren't going to the show at all. Demand
| far outstrips supply.
|
| In effect the number of less wealthy fans who can get into a
| show is a lottery. Ideally you would do just that, lottery
| off some tickets at affordable rates and sell the rest at
| market rate.
|
| But the market has adjusted to that too and re-sellers
| dominate such lotteries. If you offer the opportunity for
| arbitrage, the market will take advantage of that
| opportunity.
|
| So just sell at market rate, cut out the re-sellers entirely.
| sneak wrote:
| 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.
| ChadNauseam wrote:
| The logic doesn't quite work because the same number of
| people would get to go in either scenario
| flangola7 wrote:
| 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.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| The artists may not be MBA types but their managers are.
| If the artists really cared they could do like Garth
| Brooks (?) and book repeated nights in one venue until
| the shows no longer sell out.
|
| (I may be wrong about the artist but recall reading about
| at least one act that toured like this).
| throwawys93 wrote:
| [flagged]
| scott_w wrote:
| 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 probably Man City now) where ticket
| prices are out of reach of working class fans. The visiting
| fans make a point of trying to out-sing the local support then
| insulting them for only being there because the club is winning
| trophies. All football fans know the song "where were you when
| you were shit!"
| jvm___ wrote:
| Toronto Maple Leafs games too, if you're watching wearing a
| suit because you're actually using it as a client bribe, then
| you're not as into the game as you could be.
| throwawys93 wrote:
| [flagged]
| peteradio wrote:
| Why is it that rich people are solemnly staring in general?
| You'd think they'd be whooping it up on account of being
| made.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| Probably a case of people knowing how to reach their mouth
| shut climbing hierarchies faster ;)
| analog31 wrote:
| From a cynical marketing standpoint, the perceived composition
| of the audience is part of the product. The same is true, oddly
| enough, for universities. Whom you're sitting next to matters,
| or whom others think you're sitting next to.
| mattnewton wrote:
| Ticket revenue is just one source for the artist who is betting
| they make more from the lifetime value of a fan buying their
| brand (merch and historically listening to their music, but I
| don't know if streaming changed those numbers). It's like a
| giant advertisement for their brand - early on in a band's
| life, it can even be a loss leader after all the crew is paid.
|
| A key part of that concert experience is other people's
| excitement too. For one extreme, a Grateful Dead show was
| basically a mini festival with one act. The crowd before, after
| and during is an integral part of the experience. Empty seats
| don't tell others about the event or participate with the other
| ticket holders, degrading the value for artists and many
| concert-goers.
|
| So, a Dead show that sells just a few hundred many-many-
| thousand-dollar tickets might sit on a maximum supply / demand
| curve for the venue or scalpers just looking at ticket revenue,
| but could destroy much of the value of the event for the band
| and it's everyday fans who want the event experience and want
| it for as many people as possible.
| supportengineer wrote:
| Rolex has the exact same problem.
| bbreier wrote:
| Rolex actively engineers this situation, though
| username332211 wrote:
| 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 40$ ticket
| and a 30$ ticket, fans just swear at Ticketmaster.
|
| I'm confident in a few years we'll read about how scalping
| enterprises do profit sharing with artists and producers.
| bradleyankrom wrote:
| Artists do not get most of the money from Ticketmaster fees.
| username332211 wrote:
| Yes, most go to the venue, which the artist/producer would
| have had to pay for (from the ticket price) otherwise.
| Because money is fungible it doesn't really matter if they
| pay the artist, or if they pay for the artist's expenses.
|
| What matters is how much fees they charge and how much do
| they keep. Can't find it right now, but I remember an
| article claiming they rarely keep 50% of their fees.
| hackeraccount wrote:
| I don't have a source but I've read the same thing; that
| a lot of what ticket master takes in is getting bounced
| around. It's a view I find very plausible intuitively.
| The artists (esp. the "name" artists) have all or nearly
| all of the leverage - whatever the ticket costs above
| what you'd paid if you bought at the gate is money
| they're leaving on the table.
| bombcar wrote:
| It's not just Ticketmaster.
|
| Many "event platforms" allow you to add fees that cover
| the credit card percentage, but if they're higher you
| just get to keep the extra.
| [deleted]
| readams wrote:
| 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.
| TylerE wrote:
| Just like the job of every sports league president isn't to
| keep the fans (or the players) happy. It's to distract
| anger from the team owners.
| capableweb wrote:
| Artists generally want to have a diverse crowd in terms of
| disposable income, they don't want to have a crowd of just the
| people who can/will pay the most.
| reidjs wrote:
| I don't think the artist has much say in the matter at that
| scale
| fps-hero wrote:
| Touring artist's absolutely have a say in their ticket
| prices, after all it directly correlates to how much they
| will be paid. Once tickets are handed over to promoters and
| distributors then it becomes out of their control.
|
| Festival appearance rates are agreed on in advance of
| ticket sales, so tickets prices are the responsibility of
| festival organisers.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| Triple the ticket price but give half away by lottery.
| Although, I guess scalpers ruin lotteries as well :(
| armada651 wrote:
| The article itself mentions how scalpers just register
| hundreds or thousands of accounts to dramatically increase
| their odds at winning fan lotteries.
| jppittma wrote:
| Do fan-club registration in person.
| 13of40 wrote:
| 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.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Then they just pay homeless people to register. Whatever
| clever you can come up with, they will figure out a way
| around it.
| rasz wrote:
| Thats ok as long as those homeless will show up with a
| ticked and ID at the gate to enter the concert.
| jppittma wrote:
| They're going to pay thousands of homeless people to
| register for the fan clubs of how many artists? Nevermind
| the logistics of the hiring, the payment alone eats into
| the margin.
| nayuki wrote:
| When you're rich, you can do that. Being rich, by
| definition, means having more options available to you.
|
| That's really what money is - a transferable token to
| persuade other people to do stuff on your behalf.
| lizknope wrote:
| If the scalpers pay homeless people 10% of their profits
| rather than taking 100% then that's still better than the
| current situation.
| fps-hero wrote:
| Every action directed at making tickets more affordable will
| have the opposite effect of making scalping more profitable.
| Im amazed that a reverse auction style approach hasn't caught
| on, when you are capacity limited it seems nearly optimal for
| extracting profit and kills the ticket scalping business
| model.
| slg wrote:
| >it seems nearly optimal for extracting profit and kills
| the ticket scalping business model.
|
| Also seems nearly optimal for alienating all but your
| richest fans. The extra profit you might extract from the
| concert might not actually put you ahead in the long term
| when fans stop caring about you because of your profit
| maximizing business practices.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| What good is that when the scalpers and not your fans are
| the ones to benefit? All you're doing is screwing your
| fans even more because now they have to risk getting
| ripped off by a scam since tickets are only available
| from shady third party jerks.
|
| If demand is so high that people can't afford tickets and
| you want to do something for the fans, put the game in a
| bigger stadium.
| slg wrote:
| Because it is the scalpers charging that price and not
| the artist so people get angry at the scalpers and not
| the artist.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| 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.
| ChadNauseam wrote:
| This has to be what TicketMaster is doing, right?
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| The theory seems to be that they give the money to the
| venue instead of the artist, which causes the artist to
| not have to pay for the venue. Which is _totally_
| different, as you can imagine.
| somerandomqaguy wrote:
| > It has been long known among industry figures that
| artists regularly move tickets through backdoor channels
| to directly profit from resale marketplaces while
| shunting blame to "scalpers" when fans are unable to get
| tickets at face value. Ed Sheeran's management admitted
| the practice itself just last year, while rumors have
| swirled about other big names doing the same via their
| own held-back tickets that fans never have a shot at. The
| same regularly happens with professional sports teams.
|
| > Barry Kahn, of Texas-based dynamic ticket pricing
| consultancy Qcue, doesn't believe artists should be
| judged for using tactics including scalping their own
| tickets (or it's newer twin, "Platinum" and dynamic
| pricing to demand). "The issue is the transparency," he
| told Billboard. "If they get caught doing something they
| have said is wrong, then they are deceiving their fans."
|
| > In this specific instance, Billboard says that
| Metallica's management moved up to 4,400 tickets per show
| over 20 concerts on the tour through intermediaries,
| masking the process by packaging the tickets as if they
| were held back for a sponsor.
|
| - https://www.ticketnews.com/2019/07/live-nation-admits-
| artist...
|
| Take it worth a grain of salt, I have no idea how true it
| is but it's at least a plausible explanation as to why
| artists may not want scalpers eliminated.
| c-linkage wrote:
| [flagged]
| BazookaMusic wrote:
| They might be doing that already by acting as scalpers. I don't
| see why the solution isn't simply what airlines are doing where
| you register a ticket to a name and it's non-transferable.
| ajb wrote:
| Well, one reason is that it would let venues in for a lot
| more work to properly check everyone's ID. At an airport,
| Homeland Security pays for that part
|
| Both venues and airlines normally segment the market by how
| good a seat you get.
| aschobel wrote:
| > Ticketmaster now requires text message phone number
| verification, but they can bypass this by buying "Mobile Virtual
| Network Operator" phone numbers in bulk from eBay
|
| I'm surprised SMS verification is this ineffective at testing for
| "human-ness".
| acheong08 wrote:
| I use smspool for non-voip numbers. Very effective.
| thfuran wrote:
| SMS are plaintext that can be obtained via web API. It seems on
| the face of it to be just about the least effective possible
| means of verifying human-ness.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| The reason SMS verification is popular isn't because it's
| effective against sybil attacks. It's not. You can get access
| to phone numbers in bulk for little money.
|
| It's because most _honest_ users only have one phone number,
| which makes it a useful unique ID for tracking the _honest_
| users. Anyone using it should immediately be under suspicion
| of selling you out.
| [deleted]
| kmeisthax wrote:
| The problem is that we're not testing for human-ness, we're
| testing for uniqueness. What we want is a button that, when
| pressed by a particular person, gives them one ticket, and then
| stops giving them tickets. This requires positive
| identification of each person buying tickets, which means
| spending lots of money to prevent people from obtaining
| multiple identifications.
|
| I _suspect_ verifying government IDs would be a viable
| uniqueness criterion, except the only thing those IDs can buy
| you is voting rights in a particular country, which are usually
| worthless, so these systems aren 't attacked. Now imagine if we
| decided that Taylor Swift ticket purchases had to be verified
| with ID. You could see, say, a particular country in the global
| south deciding they're going to just invent people on paper to
| go buy Taylor Swift tickets specifically so they can scalp them
| on the open market.
|
| The underlying problem is that _so long as a particular
| economic opportunity exists_ , whoever is trusted to stop that
| opportunity from being exploited has an incentive to stab you
| in the back. Mobile network operators were never intended to be
| a 2FA code delivery system or Sybil resistance system, so they
| will totally just let people SIM-swap you or sell numbers in
| bulk to spammers, because not doing so was never in their job
| description and their business is not built to defend against
| such things.
| danaris wrote:
| At least in the US, a government-issued ID
|
| a) is not required to vote in many places (and pushing for
| that requirement is, in fact, one of the major methods of
| classist/racist voter suppression), and
|
| b) _is_ required to do various other things, like purchase
| alcohol, drive, or buy plane tickets.
|
| Due to (b), there is already a thriving black market in fake
| IDs for various reasons, and of various qualities.
|
| Government-issued ID systems are _absolutely_ attacked,
| fairly aggressively.
| jsnell wrote:
| It depends on how much money there's to be made, just like
| every other counter-abuse measure.
|
| Proof of work is useful for protecting things worth like a
| thousandth of a cent per transaction. Captchas for something
| worth 1/10th of a cent. Phone number verification for something
| worth $0.1-$1. Real-world presence and real-world id checks for
| things worth $100.
|
| The amount of money you can make scalping tickets is way higher
| than that, so it's not a useful defense. Doubly so when the
| cost of the phone verification isn't even per-transaction, but
| once per account.
|
| For the ticketmaster case, I think what you'd want is some kind
| of proof of stable liveness at every transaction. It's easy
| enough to game proof of liveness, or proof of unique identity,
| at account creation time. Just the classic method of paying
| people at a parking lot $5 to pass a "wave to the webcam"
| captcha. But they can't get those same people back for another
| captcha every time they want to use that account for another
| ticket. (Though it's possible that deepfakes have rendered
| webcam captchas effectively worthless in the last year or two,
| I don't know where the state of the art on deepfake detection
| for this kind of usecase is.)
| hedora wrote:
| I'm pretty sure they do this so they can sell your personal
| information.
|
| I avoid them whenever possible, but I recently bought a ticket
| for an event weeks after they went on sale (there was
| essentially no activity on the map of available tickets that
| day).
|
| They "unknown error"'ed me at the end of the purchase flow
| (inside their reservation timeout window). 60 seconds later,
| the tickets I had tried to purchase were being resold by a
| scalper.
|
| So, whatever their API is, it allows scalpers to get a feed of
| tickets that are in the middle of being purchased, then to buy
| them in the reservation window and offer them for resale with
| super human speed.
|
| That company is clearly run by crooks. They've repeatedly been
| brought under investigation for exactly this behavior (for over
| a decade), so presumably, they are also good at paying out
| bribes.
| hooverd wrote:
| Scalping is such an ugly term for "the market efficiently
| allocating resources." This is just completely normal price
| discovery. /s
| nayuki wrote:
| 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 the problem isn't scalpers; it's the original
| concert seller either setting too low a price or too low a
| quantity.
| [deleted]
| whartung wrote:
| 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.
| MSFT_Edging wrote:
| > The root cause of the problem isn't scalpers; it's the
| original concert seller either setting too low a price or too
| low a quantity.
|
| Imagine viewing a pricing scheme that allows more
| socioeconomic groups access to the arts as the core problem.
|
| We're experiencing a great decline and fall as social
| services are failing, wages stagnating, and common cultural
| experiences are being squeezed for profit, only enabling the
| richest among us to experience any kind of common social
| event.
|
| And of course, the response is "keep increasing prices until
| its unbearable", just like we're doing with rent and housing
| prices, and calling this efficient.
|
| Inflating prices until few can afford it isn't efficient, its
| just short sighted greed.
|
| Finding a way to suppress prices and remove scalpers is a net
| benefit for the artists, venues, and patrons.
| hackeraccount wrote:
| I'm flummoxed by this view but at least empathetic when it
| comes to food and shelter. When it comes to Olivia Rodrigo
| tickets I'm legitimately confused.
|
| If Rodrigo decided to abandon her career and only do
| private shows for Bill Gate's who's business would that be
| but hers? I think there's room for either disdain or pity
| for the person who cares about nothing other then money but
| who's going to make that judgement about another person's
| motivations? And who would jump in take action on that
| judgement?
| amenhotep wrote:
| Few people think it's _good_ that this is how things work.
| It would be great if artists could set affordable prices
| for their concerts and anyone who wanted could come! The
| contention is simply that _that 's not how it works_, that
| supply and demand is _a law_ not a guideline we can opt out
| of if we think it 's inconvenient. It would be great if we
| could all just flap our hands and fly wherever we wanted,
| but gravity has something to say about that just as
| economics has something to say about "irrationally" priced
| tickets. Inventing the aeroplane is a laudable goal but go
| into it with clear eyes, not wishful thinking, and don't
| think you can keep gravity at bay by shaming it.
| Ferret7446 wrote:
| The core problem is reality. Scarcity is reality. Free
| market economics, supply and demand is reality.
|
| You can try to ignore the equilibrium price point, just as
| you might ignore gravity, but reality will assert itself.
| Scalpers will always exist to rebalance the supply and
| demand equality.
|
| If you want to make something available to more
| socioeconomic groups, increase the supply. Simple as.
| philwelch wrote:
| Access to arts and culture is broader now than it has been
| ever before in human history. If I want to listen to any
| Olivia Rodrigo song, I can go to YouTube, Spotify, or Apple
| Music, search for "Olivia Rodrigo", and be set. Other than
| the price of internet access and a device that can connect
| to the internet, it costs literally nothing, unless maybe I
| want to pay extra to get rid of advertisements.
| armada651 wrote:
| The problem with raising the prices is that people are
| willing to pay so much for a ticket exactly because they're
| difficult to get.
|
| If the tickets were actually easily obtainable but more
| expensive then paradoxically people wouldn't be willing to
| pay as much for the ticket because of a perceived loss of
| value.
|
| And as mentioned in the other reply, many people disagree
| with the "greed is good" philosophy, hence the /s.
| philwelch wrote:
| The root cause of scarcity here is the number of seats
| available. The biggest tours routinely book stadiums and
| arenas with tens of thousands of seats, and despite the
| scalping and high prices these venues usually sell out.
| It's not like they're all playing tiny downtown clubs. So
| how exactly are you going to make tickets easier to get?
| nayuki wrote:
| Scarcity - exactly. Say that an artist is holding a
| concert and 20 thousand seats are available. But she has
| 50 million fans all over the world. How do you allocate
| these 20 thousand seats - who will get them? You can
| either satisfy the highest bidders, the first in line, or
| a random lottery. But you cannot choose to disappoint no
| one. Economics is all about making hard choices, and you
| can't simply wish them away.
| jessenaser wrote:
| The problem is that the first hand the ticket touches is a
| reseller instead of a person that genuinely wants and enjoys
| the concert.
|
| If the price is set from the Artist, venue, Ticketmaster at
| prices from $50-200 then they have made that decision.
|
| The local mini libraries on the sides of streets have free
| books. You could take a book and sell it, but you are not the
| intended person. The intention of the transaction is for the
| genuine reader to read the book, put it back, or give new
| books. This intention is set by the originator of the
| transaction.
|
| If the Artist wanted the most money, they would set the price
| accordingly.
| [deleted]
| tornato7 wrote:
| IMO, Comic Con has done a pretty fine job at eliminating
| scalpers. They do this in a few ways:
|
| - Random selection over an hour at ticket sale time that is
| unique per device, with some 'are you human' checks along the way
| to make it more difficult to bot.
|
| - Requiring physical delivery of the badge with a maximum number
| per address, or government issued ID to pick it up in person.
|
| - Random ID checks during the con.
|
| - The first round of sales goes exclusively to people who had a
| badge before. I.e. you need a code from the back of the badge. So
| even if you bought it from a scalper, you would now have the code
| for next year's presale.
|
| None of these are perfect, but it's still the best ticketing
| process I've seen in recent years.
| chii wrote:
| > So even if you bought it from a scalper, you would now have
| the code for next year's presale.
|
| i would imagine a scalper would record the code from the badge
| as well, before giving it to you. So this means they're going
| to be able to buy just as well, and may be invalidate the code
| before you get to use it!
| tornato7 wrote:
| Both the scalper and the buyer might be attempting to use the
| same code in the presale in that case. I'm not sure how they
| handle that but I imagine that invalidates it for both
| parties.
| kelnos wrote:
| I doubt it; I'd expect first to use it gets it, and second
| gets an error.
| hedora wrote:
| If they wanted to eliminate scalping, they could just make the
| tickets returnable but non-refundable:
|
| Put your name on the badge. If you want to sell it, they buy it
| back at face value minus a restocking fee, and then resell it
| at original price.
|
| This would be much less of a pain in the ass for everyone
| involved.
| giantrobot wrote:
| Once a venue/promoter/whatever has your money they do _not_
| want to give it back. They 're not concerned with the
| secondary market so long as tickets sell. A venue is in the
| venue business, not the convention of concert business.
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