I recently bought NBA tickets to Game 3 of the Western Conference Finals (Oklahoma City Thunder vs. Golden State Warriors), and I was absolutely pissed off at the whole process.
I went on a small Twitter rampage to vent about it, with a picture that shows NO TICKETS available LITERALLY THE SECOND they went "on sale" (10AM Thursday May 19, 2016), and then beside it another screenshot of ALMOST 1,300 TICKETS FOR RESALE at the exact same time.
I learned the system was rigged against me the hard way, and it totally sucked. It was painfully obvious that all the tickets were sold out well before the game, and that a whole lot of scalpers were making lots of money on reselling tickets that were not fans, and never had any intention of going to the game in the first place. The kicker is that the system actually seemed designed intentionally for this to happen, screwing the actual fans in the process.
That's pretty intentional. A venue really doesn't care how many people go, they care that the show gets "sold out".
A couple of my friends are scalpers. They said there's a limit of 8 tickets for most shows per address, but if you walk in with thousands of dollars in cash that limit goes away. Online it's a little different since you need to put your address in for your credit card, but there's plenty of ways to get multiple addresses with your name for credit cards.
They make more than me as a software engineer, but they can easily lose thousands if a show doesn't pan out. They follow tours across the US and hope they find "the one" that makes them rich.
I recently experienced the same scenario with comedy show tickets, Dave Chappele did a few last min shows in Portland and getting tickets through the sales site was absolutely impossible.
Not only were they sold out within seconds, I also got the impression the process was designed to make sure anyone with an automated process would "win". Being a developer and knowing how people would use a system like theirs, it blew my mind they took basically no precautions to stop automated buyers from buying everything immediately.
i was able to see an on broadway, original cast, performance of book of mormon.. for free
my sister had a friend from college who grew up on the upper east side who in turn had a friend from childhood who 'invests' ~10,000$ every year by buying tickets to broadway shows and reselling them
when we went looking four tickets were offered to us for free because 'i've made 4000x on this show already'
What's wrong with blindly auctioning off all of the tickets?
That way more tickets will be sold, the artist can't be accused of being greedy, there won't be much profit in the resale market, and everyone who attends the show will have paid an amount they thought was reasonable during the bidding process.
Because if the supply of tickets is lower than the demand, which it obviously is, tickets will essentially only go to the people able to spend the most money on them.
It feels like the ticketing process in general is broken. There's too much demand for events, making the entire market dysfunctional.
Why don't we 1) make tickets non-transferrable (but refundable), 2) start pricing half the tickets as what the person will pay via auction and the other half as a fixed-price lottery? I'm not aware of many other ways to make things fair when demand outstrips supply so much.
I can't relate to any of the arguments in this thread!
Why does it need to be fair? It's a private business putting on an event that nobody needs to go to except as a luxury entertainment. It's not access to food and water. We don't expect that other limited luxuries should be available to everyone, so why concerts and sport events?
Surely tickets going to the people who'll pay the most is fair?
> 1) make tickets non-transferrable (but refundable)
This is apparently what Louis CK is doing for his latest tour. I ordered tickets and I have to pick them up from the box office with ID starting 1 hour before show starts. Or I can request a refund.
A few years ago Louis CK started selling tickets for his shows exclusively from his website. His post announcing the process is worth a read. I bought tickets for that show from him and the process was as simple as he describes it.
Good analysis that makes me slightly less upset about the difficulty of gaining entrance into the Western States 100. The WSER event organizers implement this article's primary recommendations: transparency and non-transferability despite the huge supply and demand disparity and market forces driving their automatic entry vs. lottery process: http://www.wser.org/entry-process/
I think this is like asking for 'Right to redressal for hurt feelings'. Simple economic logic dictates that those who pay highest for music/sporting events get privilege to watch that live.
These fans seems to be asking for Right to watch live. What if less popular artists/sports teams ask for Right to Audience? I think government should start looking into that also after all there must be lots of mediocre artists/sports persons/chefs etc looking for patrons.
That is one solution for how to distribute a good that's available in limited quantities. It's not the only solution, or necessarily the "best" solution for any given circumstance.
Other examples include "Who's willing to wait in a 15 minute line for the water fountain," "Enter a lottery for the limited number of season football tickets," and "Only people with an even numbered license plate can buy gas today."
I think there are longer-term factors for the NBA here. If your fans can't get reasonably priced tickets to any of the games they're excited about because of scalping, some percent of them are going to get fed up and do something else with their lives. The NBA gets long term value out of fans being able to connect with their brand at the prices that the NBA is setting, but scalpers are scraping up the benefits from both sides and pocketing it.
NBA doesn't get the money that they could have earned by charging higher prices, and fans don't have a shot at affordable access to events.
Nontransferable tickets seem terrible, mostly because they screw regular people as much as "devious resellers." Would no longer be possible to gift tickets or recover costs in the case of an unexpected cancellation.
I'm more curious why they have to be sold on a FCFS basis rather than an auction or via random selection.
Probably because it wasn't substantive. There's also something uncivil about reducing a complex thing like lutefisk's comment to the most-easily-denounced bit, then denouncing it. It shuts down conversation instead of taking it in an interesting direction.
[+] [-] zippergz|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pappyo|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vlucas|9 years ago|reply
I recently bought NBA tickets to Game 3 of the Western Conference Finals (Oklahoma City Thunder vs. Golden State Warriors), and I was absolutely pissed off at the whole process.
I went on a small Twitter rampage to vent about it, with a picture that shows NO TICKETS available LITERALLY THE SECOND they went "on sale" (10AM Thursday May 19, 2016), and then beside it another screenshot of ALMOST 1,300 TICKETS FOR RESALE at the exact same time.
https://twitter.com/vlucas/status/733315798068953089
I learned the system was rigged against me the hard way, and it totally sucked. It was painfully obvious that all the tickets were sold out well before the game, and that a whole lot of scalpers were making lots of money on reselling tickets that were not fans, and never had any intention of going to the game in the first place. The kicker is that the system actually seemed designed intentionally for this to happen, screwing the actual fans in the process.
[+] [-] lutefisk|9 years ago|reply
A couple of my friends are scalpers. They said there's a limit of 8 tickets for most shows per address, but if you walk in with thousands of dollars in cash that limit goes away. Online it's a little different since you need to put your address in for your credit card, but there's plenty of ways to get multiple addresses with your name for credit cards.
They make more than me as a software engineer, but they can easily lose thousands if a show doesn't pan out. They follow tours across the US and hope they find "the one" that makes them rich.
[+] [-] Implicated|9 years ago|reply
Not only were they sold out within seconds, I also got the impression the process was designed to make sure anyone with an automated process would "win". Being a developer and knowing how people would use a system like theirs, it blew my mind they took basically no precautions to stop automated buyers from buying everything immediately.
Someone is making lots of money.
[+] [-] justifier|9 years ago|reply
my sister had a friend from college who grew up on the upper east side who in turn had a friend from childhood who 'invests' ~10,000$ every year by buying tickets to broadway shows and reselling them
when we went looking four tickets were offered to us for free because 'i've made 4000x on this show already'
[+] [-] aianus|9 years ago|reply
That way more tickets will be sold, the artist can't be accused of being greedy, there won't be much profit in the resale market, and everyone who attends the show will have paid an amount they thought was reasonable during the bidding process.
[+] [-] danbruc|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] mmastrac|9 years ago|reply
Why don't we 1) make tickets non-transferrable (but refundable), 2) start pricing half the tickets as what the person will pay via auction and the other half as a fixed-price lottery? I'm not aware of many other ways to make things fair when demand outstrips supply so much.
[+] [-] chrisseaton|9 years ago|reply
Why does it need to be fair? It's a private business putting on an event that nobody needs to go to except as a luxury entertainment. It's not access to food and water. We don't expect that other limited luxuries should be available to everyone, so why concerts and sport events?
Surely tickets going to the people who'll pay the most is fair?
[+] [-] mifreewil|9 years ago|reply
This is apparently what Louis CK is doing for his latest tour. I ordered tickets and I have to pick them up from the box office with ID starting 1 hour before show starts. Or I can request a refund.
[+] [-] syphilis2|9 years ago|reply
https://louisck.net/news/im-going-on-the-road
[+] [-] baddox|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gratalis|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] geodel|9 years ago|reply
These fans seems to be asking for Right to watch live. What if less popular artists/sports teams ask for Right to Audience? I think government should start looking into that also after all there must be lots of mediocre artists/sports persons/chefs etc looking for patrons.
[+] [-] wlesieutre|9 years ago|reply
Other examples include "Who's willing to wait in a 15 minute line for the water fountain," "Enter a lottery for the limited number of season football tickets," and "Only people with an even numbered license plate can buy gas today."
I think there are longer-term factors for the NBA here. If your fans can't get reasonably priced tickets to any of the games they're excited about because of scalping, some percent of them are going to get fed up and do something else with their lives. The NBA gets long term value out of fans being able to connect with their brand at the prices that the NBA is setting, but scalpers are scraping up the benefits from both sides and pocketing it.
NBA doesn't get the money that they could have earned by charging higher prices, and fans don't have a shot at affordable access to events.
[+] [-] admn2|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kelukelugames|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] guelo|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Glyptodon|9 years ago|reply
I'm more curious why they have to be sold on a FCFS basis rather than an auction or via random selection.
[+] [-] burkaman|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chinathrow|9 years ago|reply
You have bad friends.
Edit: Aren't scalpers viewed as the scum? Why the downvotes?
[+] [-] dang|9 years ago|reply
We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11837077 and marked it off-topic.