The proposed idea is a technical one that doesn't work for the promoters or artists or venues.
The promoters want to know very early whether the venue is the right one for the number attending and whether to upsize, add dates, or even to go the other way to a smaller venue. The time to book a venue is very long... So they need as complete data as they can about sales as early as possible (they would love if 80% of the tickets that will sell can be sold in the first week - as then they can quickly make a decision about whether this is the right venue and if more dates are needed).
The artists want to enable as many fans to get in as possible, including young and poorer fans... Who tend to be more evangelical about an artist and drive their growth more and ultimately are more loyal and spend more over the lifetime of being a fan. They are poorer but more sticky. The artists also want to play to as full a venue as possible as that is the best atmosphere.
The venues want to have surety in their bookings (see the promoter dilemma as to whether to change venue) and for the capacity to be as close to full as possible as they will make more revenue from bar and food sales than from pure ticket sales.
All of these... All of them... Are not solved by the technical solution proposed except when it doesn't matter... When you're absolutely sure you're going to sell out. In which case you also don't need to change anything or invest in anything new because you're going to sell out anyway.
There are solutions that can threaten the current model... But this blog is not one of them.
In fact, the idea that "I have more money and deserve more to have a ticket over someone that doesn't have as much money" is antithetical to the thinking of every artist I've ever worked with.
There is the old trope that McDonalds is primarily a real estate business.
In the same line of thinking, you could say Ticketmaster is a "scape goat" business so the artists and venues can get max profit while still coming of as innocent angels.
It is now all Ticketmaster's fault. Venues and artists are innocent.
This would explain why you can't fix it: where would the scapegoating go? When you have larger demand than supply, then prices will always be high. And when venues + artists prefer full venues, then demand must be higher than supply.
I agree that the idea may not be the best for promoters, artists or venues, however, in my opinion, it's the worst for buyers, specially those who cannot spend a lot of money.
The process of purchasing a ticket will induce a lot of anxiety in the purchase process. They don't know the lowest price they could buy the ticket on, before it gets sold out. They have to pick a price and hope that it is available when the price reaches that value eventually. Many people may decide to go above their limits just to get tickets of popular concerts, decreasing their disposable income unnecessarily.
In theory this process sounds wonderful and exactly like an economics textbook envisions a free-market purchase, but I don't think buyers will enjoy this process. There are lots of other factors to consider in the purchase process apart from economics and API rate-limiting. I don't have a better solution to add for this though.
> [T]he idea that "I have more money and deserve more to have a ticket over someone that doesn't have as much money" is antithetical to the thinking of every artist I've ever worked with.
The problem is, with a limited supply of tickets you’re going to draw the line somehow whether you want it or not. Price sets the barrier explicitly. Attempts to avoid using that (e.g. in various social welfare programs all over the world, but also throughout the late Soviet consumer economy) have usually ended up instituting a different, implicit barrier that may seem less outrageous on the surface but at the end of the day is not that much better: networking or bribery skills, amount of time to spend standing in queue or refreshing the website (frequently turned back into price by various enterprising people—I wonder if the US Consulate in Moscow realizes the reduction in visa interview capacity a couple of years ago had as its main effect funnelling applicants’ money to a small, untaxed, and technically illegal industry of bot programmers).
If you’re trying to extract as much money from each customer as possible (as airlines and other “discriminating monopolies” do), those additional barriers might be intentional. Otherwise they don’t seem that much better than the original money one—I guess you could claim the most passionate fans will be able to buy cheap tickets that are sold out in hours (one possible barrier) but you’re automatically cutting off people who can’t afford the necessary time off work to monitor the sale as well, for example.
I don’t like this. But I don’t see a workable economic mechanism that can do substantially better, either.
If you are sure to sell out you want to invest in such a system as this is the best way to extract maximum money from your fans. You still have a chance to sell out in the first days for multiple time the usual price.
This system is not used as it will be seen very negatively by fans.
However this could work really well for sporting events. The Leafs usually sell out all of their tickets and a good number to scalpers, having at least a more legit way to buy tickets for a game would be helpful
Starting at $2000 for a concert where demand outstrips supply to the point where people will pay $4000 to a ticket scalper just means the minimum ticket price will be $2000. All the tickets will still sell out immediately. The audience will be entirely made up of wealthy people, or people who are willing to break the bank to see Taylor sing.
The only "fair" way to sell a good that's in high demand and you want everyone to have the same level of access regardless of their background is a lottery. Tell people what the price is, let them apply for tickets, and sell to people at random. Scalping can be stopped by not allowing people to transfer tickets to other people - people should get a refund in full and their tickets get resold to other people in the lottery if someone changes their mind.
The obvious problem with the lottery approach is that it entirely fails to maximize profit.
Personally, if I was selling tickets, I'd just not sell them "fairly". Accept that tickets are a luxury item, like Ferraris.
Pearl Jam tried to beat Ticketmaster. At the risk of sounding like the big fan I am, if Eddie Vedder and co. (at their commercial peak) can’t beat Ticketmaster, I’m not convinced that software can.
I’ve been pasting this Rolling Stone link since I was in my teens. I can’t believe how old I am…
Recently I went to see PJ with a friend. I had the tickets but I was going to be late so tried to transfer one ticket. Nope, not allowed. Both of us had to be there with my app. If I wanted to sell it I can but not to a person. I can just release it back at the original price and no fees. So PJ are still fighting the good fight and TM plays along. Unfortunately most artists don’t have PJ’s influence, so probably not an option for everyone to set the rules.
Ticketmaster is a logo that represents decades of deal making with venues to achieve the status quo.
The only way to defeat it is a RICO case brought by the Federal government, as venues, artists (not all, but many), are collaborating behind closed doors to enable it.
I gave up on big acts long ago because of TM and stick to local bars and local bands. Relativity and all that; I’m in a major metro with many cover bands that nail the vibe of the original and novel acts; not lacking options here. YMMV
Fugazi is a great example, although not as popular they refused to charge more than $5 for their shows. I saw one in a small venue and it was raw and in your face and just awesome. They also didn't want anything to do with merchandising, insisting that if you wanted a Fugazi shirt then go make your own!
"beating" ticketmaster is pretty easy: play at venues that are not locked up by TM.
But TM really isn't that bad. There's always going to be a problem when demand far exceeds supply. If you went with pure supply/demand sales rich people would buy all.
Why can't they beat them? Advertise your website, people go to your website and click the buy button, a form shows up to fill their card data. What does Ticketmaster do that is better? Don't they have the same workflow?
I think this is great if your goal is to clear the market at a competitive price. But a lot of artists want to sell tickets below market price. That makes the problem a lot harder. The obvious thing to do is have a lottery, but it's hard to stop people from using multiple identities (especially scalpers).
It’s really easy in many European countries to prevent identity abuse. In Finland there is a system called “strong authentication” where you log in with your bank. It’s directly tied to your social security number and banks do a very strict job of identifying you in person before you open your accounts. It works and I’ve not heard of anyone gaming this system. It’s used by the banks themselves, the government, tax office etc.
This is the solution. Strong authentication into a lottery.
Sell a fraction of tickets at higher prices (perhaps via auction) ahead of time, and sell the rest at the door. Scalpers cannot pretend to be multiple people if they have to enter the venue and pay.
The known-price door tickets set a bound on the value of advance tickets, with the latter having a premium for certainty of getting in. Younger people with less money will place less value on certainty (they can wait in line at another concert).
Scalpers can still buy advance tickets and scalp them, but they have reduced pricing power because buyers might rather take a chance at $50 door tickets than pay $500 to a scalper. And there may be less bad press about tickets costing $500 if most of them are sold at the door for $50.
> But a lot of artists want to sell tickets below market price
And I want to experience being a dragon, unicorn, billionaire, etc. We can want impossible things, but ignore reality at our own peril.
You can't "beat" the market, you just force the market underground (black market, scalpers). The market ALWAYS pays what it can afford. If demand is greater than supply, and someone is willing to pay more for it, refer to Economics 101.
Not particularly hard... you give a name at time of lottery entry that must match photo identification presented at the door. Making the tickets refundable would probably help too (they could be sold in a subsequent lottery round, or at the door).
> But a lot of artists want to sell tickets below market price.
IMO artists should stop trying to sell below market and instead move the market by increasing supply. TSwift tickets wouldnt sell for $1000 a ticket if she played 3 nights... It's also a contradictory goal to what basically everyone else in the industry cares about (eg vendors, venues, crews etc).
Perhaps for super super stars like tswift she'd literally end up playing 24/7/365 ... But for a lot of artists additional nights would really change the curve.
I'm curious how alternatives might effect elasticity, something like simulcast at theaters for less than live in person?
I think one reason why artists don't take the Dutch Auction approach is that they want to recruit new fans, including kids who might not have much money. They also probably don't want to be seen as greedy.
In the absence of some system that prevents resale, scalpers will likely still buy up all of the Taylor Swift tickets before they drop to a price that is affordable for these less-affluent fans.
The bots will likely still win if they can determine how many tickets are left and how fast they are selling.
The scalper can only make profit if he can buy the ticket at one price, and later sell it not just at a higher price, but a price sufficiently higher to cover the costs of the process (advertising, bot development, customer support, transaction fees, ...), and the profit needs to be worth both the effort and the risk.
In this model, anyone willing to pay more than the scalper paid already had the opportunity to buy at the higher price, so the only people the scalper could sell to would be people who really want to go, are willing to pay a high price, but weren't organized enough to actually buy when the ticket was being sold at that price.
That will almost certainly limit the profit so much that it isn't worth it at all, and even if it doesn't, anyone who plans ahead will be able to get the ticket directly from the system.
In the end, it's an auction system. Which auction system is chosen doesn't matter much economically. You could get similar results by having people bid on the available tickets. But psychologically, that will alienate fans more than a system like this. This only works for shows that will definitely sell out though, because otherwise it creates an incentive to wait for a lower price, deterring people from buying.
I don't see why the Dutch auction doesn't address your concerns. The starting price can be higher, the price drop can be non-linear and third party software using the concert's API can serve customers by providing them with the same information scalpers would have.
It’s a trivially solvable problem to engineers because it’s not an engineering problem. They want all the hype and rush. It’s become a piece of culture to “wait in line.”
I once had a company put me in an async queue for months to wait for my brand new gadget. I wish Sony had done the same with the PS5.
The psychology of people waiting and wanting to give relatively large sums of money away is absolutely what's being optimized. The proposal from author is quite the opposite as it encourages waiting or leaves you wondering if you overpaid as a consumer. Probably not the psychology that's best for business.
Or how about a lottery system. You get an email if you win the privilege of buying a tickets. Tickets are named and require ID check, to prevent scalpers. If you are unable to go, your ticket just goes back to the lottery pool.
I could imagine the Dutch auction would only change the strategy of scalpers, besides being a massive money grab for artists, venues and ticket master.
The strategy for scalpers now appears to be get in as fast as possible and buy as many tickets as they can. But if we can assume the event will sellout completely and there is sufficient demand (e.g. Taylor Swift which I think I read would need to do 900 concerts to meet the initial demand) then scalpers could still win. Scalpers would just need to set a desired amount of tickets to buy and attempt to buy them at the last possible moment. They will get the tickets for the cheapest price for the event and could then sell them for a markup.
I think people would buy the scalpers tickets since they may have been waiting to see how low the prices can get, or they are able to obsess over remaining ticket numbers like a bot could and just missed out.
The only benefit I could see to the Dutch auction is it increases risk to scalpers by making them pay larger prices and get the last pick of seats, but only for events with allocated seats. So maybe instead of half the tickets for an event being scalped, they may only have the risk appetite for 10% of the tickets.
Here's an even simpler method, that's actually more fair because it doesn't bias toward those with big pockets or much time or technical skill:
Open up for registration. Keep registration open until the date of the show. Registration costs the price of the ticket. As the show comes close, for as long as there are tickets not sold, randomly select some people every day who receive a ticket. On the day of the show, refund -- with interest -- the money of the people who were never offered a ticket.
I've never understood this obsession with first come, first served for extremely limited resources. Due to technical limitations it pretty much always turns out to be a lottery anyway, and we would save both customers and sysadmins trouble by explicitly turning it into one instead.
(Back in the days when it required camping outside the ticket office, it instead unfairly favoured those with lots of time on their hands, and/or lots of money.)
(I'm assuming "fair" here means that everyone has an equal chance, uncorrelated with any other aspect of their life. A random selection is the only method that can guarantee this property.)
Why not have a big closed auction? Everyone has a week or so to submit how much they are willing to pay for a ticket. Once the auction closes, sort by price and take the number of seats available. Everyone pays the minimum price that still fits in the seats available.
I'm imagining a large scale Vickery auction, sorry if I'm not explaining super well. Everyone pays the same, but people get a price they think is fair.
What a lot of the comments in here are bumping up against with regards to “fairness” is the fact that willingness to pay is a function of both preference intensity and ability to pay.
The way to make sure TS tickets go to the biggest TS fans is to remove the influence of ability to pay and sort only by preference intensity.
Solving wealth inequality fixes this problem entirely - among others!
Edit: like all good economists, I leave solving that particular bit of the problem as an exercise to the reader.
I like the idea of demand pricing as a way of increasing access but I don’t think it would work in practice.
Too many people would be thrown off by the falling price, and want to wait. Friends who bought earlier than other friends feel like suckers for spending more money on the same thing.
Lastly, what we call scalping _is_ a service to the ticket-buyer. The scalper is providing a market for the ticket at a price which is agreeable to the buyer. Dads love to complain about the “high” price of a ticket while they stand in line for $15 popcorn. Meanwhile, scalpers effectively do the work described in the article by adjusting prices very quickly based on actual demand. As an event gets close to starting, unsold inventory drops precipitously in price until it’s sold.
The reason scalping has a bad reputation is that most entertainment pricing is set well below the actual value of the event.
- Digital only tickets
- By default, the tickets are not transferrable. Use your app on your phone to get in.
- You can pay a fee to make tickets transferrable/scalpable.
- The fee increases as more tickets are sold with this option (set ceiling on max number of tickets with this option sold)
So okay, you want to scalp tickets, you have to pay more and people who don't want to transfer pay less.
Make it a lottery. A toy example, instead of selling 10,000 tickets that sell for $1000 sell 500k “lottery” tickets for $20 each. A lucky 10,000 get to the concert. The artist/venue makes the same amount. Everyone gets a chance at seeing the artist for a reasonable price. Would work for very popular artists with young fans like T Swift. Lottery tickets would need to be non-transferable as well.
[+] [-] buro9|3 years ago|reply
The promoters want to know very early whether the venue is the right one for the number attending and whether to upsize, add dates, or even to go the other way to a smaller venue. The time to book a venue is very long... So they need as complete data as they can about sales as early as possible (they would love if 80% of the tickets that will sell can be sold in the first week - as then they can quickly make a decision about whether this is the right venue and if more dates are needed).
The artists want to enable as many fans to get in as possible, including young and poorer fans... Who tend to be more evangelical about an artist and drive their growth more and ultimately are more loyal and spend more over the lifetime of being a fan. They are poorer but more sticky. The artists also want to play to as full a venue as possible as that is the best atmosphere.
The venues want to have surety in their bookings (see the promoter dilemma as to whether to change venue) and for the capacity to be as close to full as possible as they will make more revenue from bar and food sales than from pure ticket sales.
All of these... All of them... Are not solved by the technical solution proposed except when it doesn't matter... When you're absolutely sure you're going to sell out. In which case you also don't need to change anything or invest in anything new because you're going to sell out anyway.
There are solutions that can threaten the current model... But this blog is not one of them.
In fact, the idea that "I have more money and deserve more to have a ticket over someone that doesn't have as much money" is antithetical to the thinking of every artist I've ever worked with.
[+] [-] silvestrov|3 years ago|reply
In the same line of thinking, you could say Ticketmaster is a "scape goat" business so the artists and venues can get max profit while still coming of as innocent angels.
It is now all Ticketmaster's fault. Venues and artists are innocent.
This would explain why you can't fix it: where would the scapegoating go? When you have larger demand than supply, then prices will always be high. And when venues + artists prefer full venues, then demand must be higher than supply.
[+] [-] timenova|3 years ago|reply
The process of purchasing a ticket will induce a lot of anxiety in the purchase process. They don't know the lowest price they could buy the ticket on, before it gets sold out. They have to pick a price and hope that it is available when the price reaches that value eventually. Many people may decide to go above their limits just to get tickets of popular concerts, decreasing their disposable income unnecessarily.
In theory this process sounds wonderful and exactly like an economics textbook envisions a free-market purchase, but I don't think buyers will enjoy this process. There are lots of other factors to consider in the purchase process apart from economics and API rate-limiting. I don't have a better solution to add for this though.
[+] [-] mananaysiempre|3 years ago|reply
The problem is, with a limited supply of tickets you’re going to draw the line somehow whether you want it or not. Price sets the barrier explicitly. Attempts to avoid using that (e.g. in various social welfare programs all over the world, but also throughout the late Soviet consumer economy) have usually ended up instituting a different, implicit barrier that may seem less outrageous on the surface but at the end of the day is not that much better: networking or bribery skills, amount of time to spend standing in queue or refreshing the website (frequently turned back into price by various enterprising people—I wonder if the US Consulate in Moscow realizes the reduction in visa interview capacity a couple of years ago had as its main effect funnelling applicants’ money to a small, untaxed, and technically illegal industry of bot programmers).
If you’re trying to extract as much money from each customer as possible (as airlines and other “discriminating monopolies” do), those additional barriers might be intentional. Otherwise they don’t seem that much better than the original money one—I guess you could claim the most passionate fans will be able to buy cheap tickets that are sold out in hours (one possible barrier) but you’re automatically cutting off people who can’t afford the necessary time off work to monitor the sale as well, for example.
I don’t like this. But I don’t see a workable economic mechanism that can do substantially better, either.
[+] [-] mahkeiro|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cbsmith|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] kjrose|3 years ago|reply
However this could work really well for sporting events. The Leafs usually sell out all of their tickets and a good number to scalpers, having at least a more legit way to buy tickets for a game would be helpful
[+] [-] stevage|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dqpb|3 years ago|reply
The "free market" is the closest thing we have to a meritocracy. It's also the only mechanism we have for decentralized decision making.
[+] [-] onion2k|3 years ago|reply
The only "fair" way to sell a good that's in high demand and you want everyone to have the same level of access regardless of their background is a lottery. Tell people what the price is, let them apply for tickets, and sell to people at random. Scalping can be stopped by not allowing people to transfer tickets to other people - people should get a refund in full and their tickets get resold to other people in the lottery if someone changes their mind.
The obvious problem with the lottery approach is that it entirely fails to maximize profit.
Personally, if I was selling tickets, I'd just not sell them "fairly". Accept that tickets are a luxury item, like Ferraris.
[+] [-] hluska|3 years ago|reply
I’ve been pasting this Rolling Stone link since I was in my teens. I can’t believe how old I am…
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/pearl-jam-taki...
[+] [-] ssttoo|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yehSooBit|3 years ago|reply
The only way to defeat it is a RICO case brought by the Federal government, as venues, artists (not all, but many), are collaborating behind closed doors to enable it.
I gave up on big acts long ago because of TM and stick to local bars and local bands. Relativity and all that; I’m in a major metro with many cover bands that nail the vibe of the original and novel acts; not lacking options here. YMMV
[+] [-] glitcher|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pbreit|3 years ago|reply
But TM really isn't that bad. There's always going to be a problem when demand far exceeds supply. If you went with pure supply/demand sales rich people would buy all.
[+] [-] hiccuphippo|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paxys|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bo1024|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] deanc|3 years ago|reply
This is the solution. Strong authentication into a lottery.
[+] [-] jzwinck|3 years ago|reply
The known-price door tickets set a bound on the value of advance tickets, with the latter having a premium for certainty of getting in. Younger people with less money will place less value on certainty (they can wait in line at another concert).
Scalpers can still buy advance tickets and scalp them, but they have reduced pricing power because buyers might rather take a chance at $50 door tickets than pay $500 to a scalper. And there may be less bad press about tickets costing $500 if most of them are sold at the door for $50.
[+] [-] Ferret7446|3 years ago|reply
And I want to experience being a dragon, unicorn, billionaire, etc. We can want impossible things, but ignore reality at our own peril.
You can't "beat" the market, you just force the market underground (black market, scalpers). The market ALWAYS pays what it can afford. If demand is greater than supply, and someone is willing to pay more for it, refer to Economics 101.
[+] [-] matwood|3 years ago|reply
Then do more shows. If the goal is to satisfy as many fans as possible across all economic spectrums, then more shows is the only answer.
[+] [-] judahmeek|3 years ago|reply
If they want some people to be able to buy tickets below market price, then they could use some form of scholarships.
[+] [-] FateOfNations|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maerF0x0|3 years ago|reply
IMO artists should stop trying to sell below market and instead move the market by increasing supply. TSwift tickets wouldnt sell for $1000 a ticket if she played 3 nights... It's also a contradictory goal to what basically everyone else in the industry cares about (eg vendors, venues, crews etc).
Perhaps for super super stars like tswift she'd literally end up playing 24/7/365 ... But for a lot of artists additional nights would really change the curve.
I'm curious how alternatives might effect elasticity, something like simulcast at theaters for less than live in person?
[+] [-] danuker|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] musicale|3 years ago|reply
In the absence of some system that prevents resale, scalpers will likely still buy up all of the Taylor Swift tickets before they drop to a price that is affordable for these less-affluent fans.
The bots will likely still win if they can determine how many tickets are left and how fast they are selling.
[+] [-] tgsovlerkhgsel|3 years ago|reply
In this model, anyone willing to pay more than the scalper paid already had the opportunity to buy at the higher price, so the only people the scalper could sell to would be people who really want to go, are willing to pay a high price, but weren't organized enough to actually buy when the ticket was being sold at that price.
That will almost certainly limit the profit so much that it isn't worth it at all, and even if it doesn't, anyone who plans ahead will be able to get the ticket directly from the system.
In the end, it's an auction system. Which auction system is chosen doesn't matter much economically. You could get similar results by having people bid on the available tickets. But psychologically, that will alienate fans more than a system like this. This only works for shows that will definitely sell out though, because otherwise it creates an incentive to wait for a lower price, deterring people from buying.
(Your first paragraph remains valid of course.)
[+] [-] mhb|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] e12e|3 years ago|reply
Allow people to sign up to buy, optionally as a group (all/none "win") - then randomly assign "purchase rights".
The main downside might be the need for ID checks to verify no scalping.
https://tickets.fusion-festival.de/faq/#faq-12
[+] [-] Waterluvian|3 years ago|reply
I once had a company put me in an async queue for months to wait for my brand new gadget. I wish Sony had done the same with the PS5.
[+] [-] conductr|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] judge2020|3 years ago|reply
https://www.theverge.com/2022/4/21/23020823/sony-direct-play...
[+] [-] woeirua|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] musicale|3 years ago|reply
More work for the artist though, and for the mega-popular (Taylor Swift atm) it might be hard to schedule enough shows.
[+] [-] duped|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] allanrbo|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] littleJeck|3 years ago|reply
The strategy for scalpers now appears to be get in as fast as possible and buy as many tickets as they can. But if we can assume the event will sellout completely and there is sufficient demand (e.g. Taylor Swift which I think I read would need to do 900 concerts to meet the initial demand) then scalpers could still win. Scalpers would just need to set a desired amount of tickets to buy and attempt to buy them at the last possible moment. They will get the tickets for the cheapest price for the event and could then sell them for a markup.
I think people would buy the scalpers tickets since they may have been waiting to see how low the prices can get, or they are able to obsess over remaining ticket numbers like a bot could and just missed out.
The only benefit I could see to the Dutch auction is it increases risk to scalpers by making them pay larger prices and get the last pick of seats, but only for events with allocated seats. So maybe instead of half the tickets for an event being scalped, they may only have the risk appetite for 10% of the tickets.
[+] [-] kqr|3 years ago|reply
Open up for registration. Keep registration open until the date of the show. Registration costs the price of the ticket. As the show comes close, for as long as there are tickets not sold, randomly select some people every day who receive a ticket. On the day of the show, refund -- with interest -- the money of the people who were never offered a ticket.
I've never understood this obsession with first come, first served for extremely limited resources. Due to technical limitations it pretty much always turns out to be a lottery anyway, and we would save both customers and sysadmins trouble by explicitly turning it into one instead.
(Back in the days when it required camping outside the ticket office, it instead unfairly favoured those with lots of time on their hands, and/or lots of money.)
(I'm assuming "fair" here means that everyone has an equal chance, uncorrelated with any other aspect of their life. A random selection is the only method that can guarantee this property.)
[+] [-] wskish|3 years ago|reply
https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~mleone/gdead/faq/tickets.html
[+] [-] the_mungler|3 years ago|reply
I'm imagining a large scale Vickery auction, sorry if I'm not explaining super well. Everyone pays the same, but people get a price they think is fair.
[+] [-] adam_arthur|3 years ago|reply
Same applies to PS5 etc
There wouldn’t be a shortage at all if it were priced appropriately. And scalpers just end up capturing that value anyway
[+] [-] bluelightning2k|3 years ago|reply
Sorry for the almost political comment but that's how it hit me
[+] [-] milderworkacc|3 years ago|reply
The way to make sure TS tickets go to the biggest TS fans is to remove the influence of ability to pay and sort only by preference intensity.
Solving wealth inequality fixes this problem entirely - among others!
Edit: like all good economists, I leave solving that particular bit of the problem as an exercise to the reader.
[+] [-] iambateman|3 years ago|reply
Too many people would be thrown off by the falling price, and want to wait. Friends who bought earlier than other friends feel like suckers for spending more money on the same thing.
Lastly, what we call scalping _is_ a service to the ticket-buyer. The scalper is providing a market for the ticket at a price which is agreeable to the buyer. Dads love to complain about the “high” price of a ticket while they stand in line for $15 popcorn. Meanwhile, scalpers effectively do the work described in the article by adjusting prices very quickly based on actual demand. As an event gets close to starting, unsold inventory drops precipitously in price until it’s sold.
The reason scalping has a bad reputation is that most entertainment pricing is set well below the actual value of the event.
[+] [-] wombat-man|3 years ago|reply
So okay, you want to scalp tickets, you have to pay more and people who don't want to transfer pay less.
[+] [-] jonas21|3 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7gx34/blink-182-tickets-are...
[+] [-] dsalzman|3 years ago|reply