Most computers are sold through middlemen because the manufactuers want it that way. They don’t want to deal with the consumers directly. Dell would rather eliminate the middleman, and pass the savings on to the customers. It’s their decision.
Similarly, stadium owners can use resellers (like Tickermaster) if they want to, but if they don’t, why should we allow people to artificially constrain the supply so they can set themselves up as an unwanted extra layer of middlemen?
It’s not just the event organizers that want to discourage scalping. Most people with incomes south of six figures would generally support laws that help keep tickets at face value, even if the market value might be higher. Regardless of whether the laws are intellectually consistent with a free market ideology, I’d wager to say that an attempt to get rid of those laws would be pretty unpopular among working people and families who like to go to a ballgame, concert, or circus now and then.
There have been a fair few threads on this over the years. A bit from what I’ve said before:
I certainly remember playing in bands where the quality of the audience affected the quality of the show and therefore the value of the show to the audience. A lot of people who only knew the single made for a crap show.
Understandable, but should the desire of the promoters to create the right atmosphere be enfored with the police and judicial system?
Well, that’s not a factual question, is it?
The other reason, which nobody has mentioned, is to protect consumers from getting counterfeit tickets. If you go to the ticket booth at Yankee Stadium, you know the little piece of paper you fork over $60 for will get you admission to the game. When you hand your cash to some guy in a dirty t-shirt on 157th street, you may not be getting a genuine ticket. Some jurisdictions attempt to address this issue by licensing ticket scalpers, but in my mind, folks that can counterfeit tickets can produce a genuine looking ID card just as easily.
As Ravenman says, it’s not a factual question. But my little list of four possible motivations for intervention should help a bit.
For those who doubt that something like this “quality of crowd” effect exists, note that you rarely see scalping for cinema tickets or even for crank-it-out live theatrical events.
You rarely see scalping for cinema tickets because the theaters rarely fill up and if they do you can see the movie tomorrow. Without the scarcity of tickets scalping is not profitable.
[hijack]
I have always wondered why the airlines don’t do what alot of carriers in Europe do for unsold seats within a specific time frame before departure.
They dump the seats to the public and sell them at a much cheaper rate and even a standby rate rather than having the seat go empty.
Now, I understand the crappy or business routes could not do this, but for vacation destinations, it would be a boon for those who don’t mind flying at the last second. If I only paid $100 for a roundtrip flight to someplace sunny in the dead of winter, I wouldn’t complain about the seat one bit. But if I paid $1200 and practically live on a plane, then grrrrr. [/hijack]
When I worked as a manager at Lincoln Square in NYC (a movie theatre) we had some scalpers. We frequently sold out and scalpers would come in in the AM and buy a large number of tickets for the evening shows using the automatic ticket machine and advance sales. They would stand in the lobby and wait for walk ups to look at the board and see their show was sold out and then offer to sell them tickets.
When you only have 350 tickets for the 8:00 show and someone buys up 20 to 50 of them with the sole intention of increasing demand, well, that aint right. It is more than an inconvience for the customer. They may have been able to get a ticket at face value if it wasn’t for the scalper.
Plus, I think the general idea is that you sell something you create. If you buy something and move it from a distributor to your store, you’ve created the buying oppurtunity for the customer. The scalpers only create more demand for the ticket.
We put a stop to the movie ticket scalping by only allowing the machines to sell 2 tickets at a time.
Maybe that’s why Dell is #1 in PC sales.
Doesn’t seem to work as well as for Dell.
But the tickets would be “scarce” if the cinema consistently sold the tickets at a lower price than would sell all the tickets - and that’s what’s required for there to be regular scalpers.
Zebra, I think your experience is interesting. Do you know why you didn’t just put the price up? Was it a glamorous location in a chain of cinemas where the price was the same for a ll the theatres? Did there tend to be long queues for tickets in the evenings?
If the punters would have got tickets in the absence of scalpers, the scalpers won’t be able to charge more than face value for the tickets. (OK, except for a few idiots.)
The “walk-up” thing is interesting. Part of what makes a successful neighborhood restaurant is that it is busy, but you can get a table if you feel like popping out for a bite on the spur of the moment. What you’re saying scalpers spoiled sounds a bit like that.