Nope, it happened way back in the days when you literally stood on line at Ticketron to buy tickets. Just like people are paid to buy tickets online now, they were paid to stand on line to buy tickets then. It perhaps wasn’t as big or as organized a business before the resellers were able to set up websites , but that goes for a lot of things.
Right, exactly. I mean, can you imagine airlines or hotels putting up with this situation?
Sure. There’s a no perfect system for doing this. Someone is also going to be left out or inconvenienced by whatever system they use.
In this case, it’s bad luck for grandma and granddaughter, i guess.
If a system like this manages to prevent the majority of the third-party profiteering, and ensures that the people who want to see the music are the same people who actually get to buy the tickets, i’d be willing to bet that the number of people who benefit from the system is probably larger than the number of people who are inconvenienced by it.
I’m not. Because not only will Grandma be inconvenienced, but so will anyone who wants to buy tickets as a gift. Or who needs to buy the tickets for their 13 year old (who doesn’t have a debit or credit card) but doesn’t actually want to attend the event . And anyone who doesn’t want to wait outside the venue for God knows how long for the other three attendees to show up , or who has to waste four tickets if the ticket-buyer suddenly can’t attend ( because I’m sure they won’t start offering refunds).
These are all problems that can be dealt with in a manner that prevents scalping. Want to give tickets away as a gift? No problem, when you order to give that person’s name, rather than your own, as the name to which the ticket will be issued. Changed your mind or some problem comes up that prevents your from attending the event? No problem, you return the ticket to the vendor, who will give you a refund and sells it again; or you sell it on a trading platform operated by the tciekt vendor to ensure that a price that does not exceed what you paid for it can be paid. I’ve seen or heard of all of these things implemented.
I’m just having trouble understanding why the people who have this scarce good should feel compelled to sell it for far below what the market would bear, and what the demand suggests, and then further implement elaborate systems to prevent market forces from coming into play to bring it to its true price.
As has been mentioned previously, this is done primarily for public-relations reasons. The performers do not want to give the appearance of being too greedy, and risk alienating fans. Your pricing model (start with a vaguely reasonable but somewhat high price, and slowly reduce the price until the venue sells out) might work, although you might have to think a bit about how to avoid letting people game the system somehow. But the main issue is that fans may resent you for it.
Trent Reznor of the band Nine Inch Nails wrote a post on the NIN forum regarding his perspective on ticket reselling, which I found informative.
That’s some expensive PR. But I agreed with about 80-90 percent of what Reznor said there (bolding mine):
This also seems to indicate that at least in his experience, it’s not that every seat disappears instantly into the hands of scalpers (as seemed to be described by NPR), just the best seats. As I noted upthread, it shouldn’t be a problem to charge market prices for 20% of the best seats, if there are plenty of cheaper ones available for fans with more modest budgets to get in.
As for PR, what if bands held free contests on their websites for hardcore fans (those known to participate in forums etc.) to provide them front-row-center tickets and backstage passes? With the increased revenue from the other good seats they are selling at market prices, they could easily afford to give away a few seats and their net PR would be positive, I would think.
When Garth Brooks tours now, if a city or venue quickly sells out, he will open up a second show for later that same night or the following night. If that one sells out quickly, he will do a 3rd show the following night. Recently in Wichita, KS he did 5 performances over one weekend. There is no incentive for resellers to quickly buy up tickets and raise the prices as more seats at face value are coming.
Who knows. The only way to know for sure is to try to raise face-value prices, even if only on a percentage of the total seats, and see how fans react. Fans can be very sensitive even to perceived price increases (nevermind that you may not be able to reasonably buy the ticket at face-value to begin with). The artists themselves seem unwilling to take the chance on possible backlash, though. Understandable, when your livelihood depends on staying in your fans’ good graces. But ticket face-value underpricing relative to market value does appear to be a somewhat intentional decision.
It does, but I wonder how stable it is over the long run. If Trent Reznor is frustrated that the scalpers are getting so much money when is the one “busting his ass” onstage, how many other performers must feel this way?
Reznor’s prediction is probably 99% likely to happen and I’m mildly surprised it hasn’t already, to be honest.
Virtually every other system for preventing scalping can be circumvented. Last year my fiancee, who is a huge Supertramp fan (despite being born after almost all their albums were released) and I drove all the way to Casino Rama, a solid two hours, to be the first to purchase tickets to see Roger Hodgson. The tickets were very reasonably priced and the venue has two ways of preventing scalping;
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Many of the best seats are earned not by buying them but by spending a lot of time in the casino, and
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The tickets could only be bought in person and then only eight per customer.
It was painfully obvious neither system worked. Tickets were on Stubhub for five to ten times face value before they even opened the box office - the product of gambling addicts who earned the tickets but didn’t like Supertramp so they passed the tickets on to scalpers. Then people were showing up with a bunch of buddies, some a half dozen or more, and each buying sheets of tickets for every show that went on sale that week. We were the 80th and 81st person in line and by the time we got to the ticket window the thousand best seats were gone.
That’s a great reaction. Garth just sells more tickets overall and makes more money, and fans can see him without having to pay a scalper. Only the scalper loses by not being able to sell steep prices to desperate fans. As long as Garth has the energy to do all those performances back-to-back.
I’m not sure if the venue loses because the shows stop being sold-out though. That could be the flaw in the plan.
It also makes scheduling a hassle, and if you plan to have 3 nights in one area due to potential demand but only get demand for 1 show, you’re out 2 nights of profit. I suppose the kinds of people who put on shows at the level of Garth Brooks have a feel for demand to plan things appropriately, but there’s always that risk.
Pretty easy to deal with this: At the time you buy the ticket, you provide the name of the person who will use it. That person must present the ticket and a photo ID.
In this episode of the Planet Money podcast (from 2013, but new to me as it was “rerun” this week in their feed), Kid Rock confirms that artists do indeed get involved in corrupt bargains with scalpers, secretly selling them front row seats for thousands of dollars, or thousands more for adding a “meet and greet”. They split the profits while keeping the appearance of slime off the performer.
But as gross as that was, what bothered me most about listening to this was hearing from a Taylor Swift fan who gladly (excitedly!) paid scalpers $500 for two tickets to a TS concert. When interviewed, though, she said that if Swift had actually sold the tickets for $250 originally, she would have refused to buy them because that would have seemed really greedy and slimy on Swift’s part. So she’d rather most of that $500 go to some shady scalpers who didn’t do anything to earn the money, instead of the actual performer?!? :smack: This kind of irrationality galls me so deeply, I feel like I need a paper bag to breathe in. All the more so because it wasn’t some unconscious bias that she felt chagrined about when it was pointed out. This woman was 100% aware of what she was saying and had zero problem with it. Sigh.
Because people are intolerant of other people’s cultures.
Then why haven’t I been able to unload my Paul McCartney tickets for more than face price 6 weeks after buying them the day they went on sale?
The producers of the Broadway smash (and cultural phenomenon) *Hamilton *have responded to the huge markups scalpers are selling tix for by massively hiking the face value of their premium seats, to a Broadway record of $849. But they are also doubling the number of front-row seats they sell by lottery daily for $10 each. Seems like a good compromise.
One of the biggest music concerts in the world, the Glastonbury festival, uses this technique. Only registered fans, who have purchased tickets, can attend the concert venue, upon production of registration doc plus verifiable proof like drivers license or passport.
There is no market for glastonbury tickets on websites.