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.
>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!
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.
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.
> 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.
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'
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.
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.
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.
Pricing had lots of factors and you don't want to lock pricing to a specific model only to solve this problem. Why not design such that simply prevents reselling? From the article:
> What’s more, fans won’t be able to resell their tickets [...]
This works great for air travel so why not concerts as well? The reason it's not common must be because of collusion or side business with scalping services (which we know that e.g. ticket master has done). Checking an ID card is easy.
> [...] unless they go through the Eventim-distributed website fanSALE
This is potentially dangerous. Scalpers can still transfer ownership for an out-of-bounds payment. So this isn't exactly waterproof.
Here's how I would do it:
- 2 days before release, anyone can sign up to buy tickets. Name and payment details are required and put in escrow or on CC hold (weak rate limit). They are put in an unordered set (no bot advantage)
- at release time, assign tickets those in the set until you run out of tickets.
- create a queue for the remaining tickets. The unlucky ones who didn't get tickets in the former step are moved to the queue (again in random order). Others can also join the queue, but this time order is maintained, for fairness[1].
- You can leave the queue anytime and get your escrow money back. In this case, you cannot choose who will get your ticket, it goes to the person who is first in line.
This doesn't solve all intricacies like group bookings, different kinds of tickets etc, but that should be solvable without breaking this scheme.
[1]: Technically you can just keep the unordered set, but you cannot just make returned tickets available suddenly, because of bot advantage)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Back in 2015 I bought 2 tickets for AC/DC through them and I paid ~£270. When I got the tickets in my hands I saw that the price was ~£75-£80 each and Viagogo added more than £100, just because they could.
Kudos to Rammstein and I hope more bands will follow and help us get rid of these scammers.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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."
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
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?
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 £10 each for delivery, on two tickets I ordered. Both where delivered in the same envelope using standard postage, which is less than £1
I live in Japan, ticket scalping is almost non-existent here due to the local regulations and all major second-hand sales sites prohibiting resell for profit.
What we have now is lotteries, lotteries everywhere.
You need be sure to track the upcoming concerts, through all the bullshit ways the band may promote them — via twitter, facebook, their fanclub subscription (each email from it may get to spam) or whatever.
If you've missed the lottery submission period, you're screwed. If you've lost the lottery, you're screwed.
I do understand that scalpers don't create value, but I'd rather have the bands set market-based prices that avoided the necessity for lotteries.
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.
A good decision, because everyone can have an opinion. But it's the decision of the artists/organizers how much a ticket costs. If they want to make money, they can charge it, if they want equal opportunities for their fans, they decided it that way. You have no say in that and neither do scalpers or resellers.
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.
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.
[+] [-] sschueller|3 years ago|reply
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)
[+] [-] mhuffman|3 years ago|reply
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!
[+] [-] imglorp|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] psytrx|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] Silverback_VII|3 years ago|reply
I guess most organiser are angry only because they sold their tickets at too low of a price.
[+] [-] pan69|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] ChildOfChaos|3 years ago|reply
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|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] reaperducer|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] krn|3 years ago|reply
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
[+] [-] klabb3|3 years ago|reply
> What’s more, fans won’t be able to resell their tickets [...]
This works great for air travel so why not concerts as well? The reason it's not common must be because of collusion or side business with scalping services (which we know that e.g. ticket master has done). Checking an ID card is easy.
> [...] unless they go through the Eventim-distributed website fanSALE
This is potentially dangerous. Scalpers can still transfer ownership for an out-of-bounds payment. So this isn't exactly waterproof.
Here's how I would do it:
- 2 days before release, anyone can sign up to buy tickets. Name and payment details are required and put in escrow or on CC hold (weak rate limit). They are put in an unordered set (no bot advantage)
- at release time, assign tickets those in the set until you run out of tickets.
- create a queue for the remaining tickets. The unlucky ones who didn't get tickets in the former step are moved to the queue (again in random order). Others can also join the queue, but this time order is maintained, for fairness[1].
- You can leave the queue anytime and get your escrow money back. In this case, you cannot choose who will get your ticket, it goes to the person who is first in line.
This doesn't solve all intricacies like group bookings, different kinds of tickets etc, but that should be solvable without breaking this scheme.
[1]: Technically you can just keep the unordered set, but you cannot just make returned tickets available suddenly, because of bot advantage)
[+] [-] scrollaway|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bheadmaster|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] benburton|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] cortesoft|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] dec0dedab0de|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dangero|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] noxvilleza|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] t-writescode|3 years ago|reply
Of course, it can go too far and become a monopoly, just like anything in capitalism without restraint; but they do have a purpose
[+] [-] sakisv|3 years ago|reply
Back in 2015 I bought 2 tickets for AC/DC through them and I paid ~£270. When I got the tickets in my hands I saw that the price was ~£75-£80 each and Viagogo added more than £100, just because they could.
Kudos to Rammstein and I hope more bands will follow and help us get rid of these scammers.
[+] [-] unclekev|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] eh9|3 years ago|reply
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|3 years ago|reply
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."
[+] [-] wincy|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kwhitefoot|3 years ago|reply
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/
[+] [-] alistairSH|3 years ago|reply
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
[+] [-] izacus|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sschueller|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cortesoft|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] raverbashing|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] djitz|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ChildOfChaos|3 years ago|reply
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 £10 each for delivery, on two tickets I ordered. Both where delivered in the same envelope using standard postage, which is less than £1
[+] [-] jen729w|3 years ago|reply
Source: I put on a large event once and we had to use Ticketmaster. I hate them like nothing else.
[+] [-] KMnO4|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Karellen|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maxgashkov|3 years ago|reply
What we have now is lotteries, lotteries everywhere.
You need be sure to track the upcoming concerts, through all the bullshit ways the band may promote them — via twitter, facebook, their fanclub subscription (each email from it may get to spam) or whatever.
If you've missed the lottery submission period, you're screwed. If you've lost the lottery, you're screwed.
I do understand that scalpers don't create value, but I'd rather have the bands set market-based prices that avoided the necessity for lotteries.
[+] [-] ravenstine|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] rspoerri|3 years ago|reply
edit: fix wording
[+] [-] seandoe|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jwhite_nc|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tpmx|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dqpb|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tonfreed|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Havoc|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] devteambravo|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spyremeown|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] echelon|3 years ago|reply
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.