How to sell tickets fairly

https://barnabas.me/blog/2022/11/selling-tickets-fairly/

by barnabask • 4 years ago

202 352 4 years ago

hluska• 4 years ago

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…

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/pearl-jam-taki...

ssttoo• 4 years ago

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.

musicale8• 4 years ago

I think I can live with the approach of banning transfers but still offering refunds.

Seems like it would make deter scalpers since they'd have to show up at the concert or provide you with a fake ID which might not work.

pythonaut_16• 4 years ago

What about a system where only some fraction of the ticket sale has to present matching ID?

Example 1: Limit of 6 tickets per purchase. I buy 6 tickets, I invite 5 friends. I show ID at the door and it doesn't matter which 5 friends I bring with me.

Example 2: Same deal, but instead we're allowed 1 "flex" ticket in case someone backs out. Or some proportion allowed as flex.

Obviously this still allows scalping, but it seems less attractive for a scalper to have to attend with the people they're scalping to. Especially if you make 50% of the group show ID.

glitcher3• 4 years ago

Curious how was the show? Had you seen them previously and if so how did it compare?

pbreit2• 4 years ago

The transfer limitation is specifically to mitigate scalping. What would you prefer?

yehSooBit• 4 years ago

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

neilfrndes• 4 years ago

I too feel that cover bands nail the vibe of the original. I live in a metro, but I've had a hard time figuring out when and where cover bands play. Some bands don't even have a website.

How do you find out when a cover band of your favorite artist is playing in your city?

hiccuphippo2• 4 years ago

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?

mason55• 4 years ago

Most major and minor venues have exclusive ticketing contracts. You can sell tickets to a high school gym but if you want to play anywhere that can handle a real crowd you’re stuck with the monopoly.

cortesoft3• 4 years ago

What does Ticketmaster do that is better?

A large war chest with which to pay venues for the exclusive right to sell tickets there.

gnopgnip• 4 years ago

Most artists don’t want to charge $20, they want to charge $200 and blame it on someone else. That is a big part of the value proposition for ticket master. And they can allow ticket resale so the artist/promoter gets another cut, so shows sell out faster.

glitcher3• 4 years ago

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!

glitcher3• 4 years ago

Arpeggiator track:

https://youtu.be/14UBxTCPwjw

TylerE• 4 years ago

The other big thing Fugazi did was completely ignore the traditional venue system.

They’d rent out bowling alleys, Elks Lodges, places like that. Hauler their own PA and lights around

pbreit2• 4 years ago

"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.

libraryatnight• 4 years ago

Do you go to a lot of shows? Ticketmaster is very bad. Abusive even. Regardless of demand.

fivre• 4 years ago

TicketMaster has used their market dominance to be display incompetence in customer service with no consequences. Emailed me a "make sure to have your tickets at the show, we mailed them" the day of, sending me into a panic because I hadn't received them. Support was something like an hour-long queue to maybe chat with someone in the Philippines with no info, so I said fuck it and bought another ticket will-call in a nicer section--the show in question wasn't something I'd likely have the opportunity to see again for at least a decade.

Got to the venue to discover that I now had two will-call tickets, since that's how I'd originally purchased the first one, but TicketMaster somehow broke that record on their end.

Never encountered that level of bullshit from any of the smaller providers. TicketWeb was great when I lived in a market where they were the majority and Eventbrite is fine AFAIK. But now I live in a major market and TicketMaster is the only option for all but the smallest venues. What are you gonna do if you don't like them, anyway? Buy out the venue yourself?

paxys• 4 years ago

You underestimate Taylor Swift fans.

etothepii3• 4 years ago

While this might maximise the amount of money the organisers get for an event it doesn't handle variable fixed costs.

That is I might need no capital at all to run my tour if I sell tickets at a highish (but sub-optimal) price early on.

smachiz3• 4 years ago

What are the variable "fixed" costs? And when are they incurred?

This is about revenue maximization, not user enjoyment maximization or fairness maximization.

Ultimately I don't think most artists actually want revenue maximization - they're probably far more interested in fairness maximization in ensuring their fan base of all economic strata get to see them live.

etothepii3• 4 years ago

As in if I know I will make $1m in sales I might choose to use better audio equipment.

fparlane• 4 years ago

I wonder if you'd see "bank runs" happen spontaneously as nervous fans see the number of available tickets start to drop, causing a spontaneous feedback loop.

the_mungler4• 4 years ago

Hmm, that actually seems quite likely to me.

projektfu• 4 years ago

Congratulations, you've found the market-clearing price.

pclmulqdq8• 4 years ago

That's not a bank run or a feedback loop, that's price discovery. Exactly the behavior you want.

adam_arthur4• 4 years ago

I don’t understand at all why prices aren’t raised in these severe demand/supply imbalance situations.

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

lotsofpulp• 4 years ago

Because sports teams and singers need broad audience interest to maintain their brand’s popularity, which can drive things like merchandise sales, future concerts, music streaming, etc.

If they simply sold to the highest bidders, the populace at large will stop being fans and they will move onto the next entertainer. In the short term, you might make a little extra from richer people, but longer term you will fall out of popular culture, and the rich will move on or not be sufficient in quantity to maintain as profitable of a following.

googlryas3• 4 years ago

But for many big artists the tickets are sold out immediately and it is just scalpers trying to get what they can for them. I'd like to know how many people attending a big concert got their tix directly vs got resold ones not at face value.

adam_arthur4• 4 years ago

The scalpers grab most of the tickets at open anyway.

And I doubt that a very large number of fans are concertgoers at all. How many football fans actually go to the superbowl?

I looked it up and it's ~80k, while 100M watch on TV. The cheapest tickets are ~$5000 dollars

dqpb4• 4 years ago

This argument makes no sense. A stadium excludes the same number of fans regardless of your selection criteria.

dec0dedab0de3• 4 years ago

Sometimes promoters hold tickets and put them on the secondary market themselves. But they sell tickets to scalpers as a way to gaurantee a certain level of profit. Which lowers their risk of losing money, especially when spread over a large amount of events. The scalper business model is to buy risk from the promoter, and then selling the convenience of not planning ahead to consumers. Said differently, If promoters try to capture maximum value for every ticket, they will risk making less money at a slower rate.

That said, I think it might work if they start every sale of tickets with an initial high price that reduces on a defined schedule. So people with more money to spend can gaurantee a spot for themselves, while everyone else waits for the tickets to get cheaper.

Edit: ha! I obviously didn't rtfa before my comment.

adam_arthur4• 4 years ago

Yes, or could simply be a live market for the tickets where people can put in limit orders etc. Then would converge to fair market value quickly and people would still have the option to bite the bullet and pay the higher prices.

Though volume/liquidity would be at question, but bots/arbitrage would hopefully help there.

If they really want to set artificially low prices and prioritize fans over scalpers then they need a queue and a process by which they verify the queued person is human. Lots of labor involved. Though maybe using SSN (in the US) to limit tickets per buyer?

munk-a• 4 years ago

Because their product is essentially unpriceable. If the concerts were priced by demand their demand would dry up considering that instead of forty people wanting to hear jazz on a saturday night you've got 30 million people screaming their lungs out - the only reasonable market response to this is for the pricing to adjust so that only the most wealthy can attend but then you'll get an issue where the performer will lose mass appeal since they so infrequently perform for "regular people" and it will cheapen their brand. It's a weird catch-22 and the real honest solution is that recordings are the solution to this problem but people still obsess over live performances.

Fezzik3• 4 years ago

They are. Ticketmaster does dynamic pricing now for big shows. Accurate pricing is basically inaccessible beforehand; there’s no chart like in the past with various sections costing specific $s. For the Taylor Swift show in Seattle they published a range of ticket prices from $49-$199… we paid ~$600 for seats in section 131 that were VIP seats by default (that also added to the price; but the pricing was totally opaque).

koolba• 4 years ago

$600 per ticket?

filmgirlcw• 4 years ago

Can confirm this.

So I got tickets to the Sunday 7/23 show in Seattle and the 5/27 show in New Jersey (and would have had seats for the 4/29 in Atlanta but my dad’s phone was on silent and he missed the 2FA code for his capital one card — I’ll have to get those from scalpers) and what’s interesting is that I got floor seats for a VIP package in New Jersey and “regular” non-VIP floor seats for Seattle. It was $190 difference after fees between shows.

For New Jersey, it was $749 list for floor VIP and then $866 per with fees. For Seattle, it was $539 list and $650 with fees. Getting the LED laminate thing and the other collectible stuff isn’t worthless but it’s not a $200 upcharge.

But as you said, the whole thing was so opaque, I just bought what I could buy. I would’ve paid more if I’d needed to. A friend who is going on 7/22 in Seattle (we were on Zoom doing it together) wound up paying $900 after fees for her floor seats that were in a differently named (but identically featured, perk wise) VIP package, meaning some of them went even higher.

So the whole thing was just totally opaque but there wasn’t even choice for people who were indiscriminate on pricing (buying from scalpers aside). It was madness just trying to get tickets at all. I needed six seats for 5/27 and I’m still not sure how I was able to get six floor seats together, VIP or otherwise. After doing the whole thing in three cities across two days, every ticket they had available sold, regardless of price. If they’d raised prices 50%, I don’t think it would have changed anything. Some of it is demand but some of it is absolutely people buying on speculation to try to flip.

Unless an industry connection comes through, I’ll wind up paying well above list for the Atlanta show I want to take my mom to, I know that. My only issue is that StubHub/Vivid/others charge at least 50% on top of the resale price in fees. So even if I was willing to spend $1500 a ticket for 100 section seats (and to take my mom, I would), I’d wind up paying another $600 or $700 per ticket just in fees. And that’s when I get pissed off and start to try to wait out the people who bought tickets just to speculate until they lower their prices to be more aligned with market forces.

naniwaduni• 4 years ago

Scalpers provide them the service of absorbing demand risk and having someone to blame for the gap between perceived and market value. (It doesn't have to be scalpers; see also Ticketmaster. The point is that it's valuable to farm this out to third parties that everyone can agree to hate on.)

leni536• 4 years ago

So the obvious arbitrage is to scalp their own tickets. Capture both the gap and save face, just don't let anyone know. /s

allanrbo2• 4 years ago

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.

judge20209• 4 years ago

They had a Verified Fan system to limit how many could purchase during a presale, but all that really required was being signed up for Taylor's email list and having purchased a Midnights CD from her online store.

I think they messed up here by only running one fan presale, since it made them predict how many tickets each person with a code would actually purchase. They probably underestimated this number (eg. from people tagging along with their friend who got into the presale), so they ended up selling way more than they thought they would. I suspect this because, at one point, I had 16k people in front of me for 1 night at Mercedes-Benz[0], which is a lot given concert capacity is probably around 50k.

With a two-wave presale (or even "verified fan presale only"), you can put out tickets in even smaller waves and continuously evaluate how many you're giving out based on demand and order ticket quantities.

0: while the queue-it frontend was set up to hide any number above 2,000, the API faithfully showed the actual amount of clients ahead of you in line.

judge20209• 4 years ago

If you are unable to go, your ticket just goes back to the lottery pool.

This is tough to enforce unless you have a "1/10th extra fee if you don't show up" policy or allow refunds.

allanrbo2• 4 years ago

Oh yea I meant they go back to the pool and a refund is issued. This is of course utopic. Just a dreaming about what the most customer friendly and fair system might look like. Will probably never be aligned with what maximizes the profit of TicketMaster.

patmcc• 4 years ago

The obvious fix to bots and scalpers is just to not allow ticket transfers - you give your name when you buy the ticket and show your ID at the door. Why this isn't the current process is left as an exercise to the reader.

googlryas3• 4 years ago

Because people drop out last minute and might want to take a different friend.

kodt3• 4 years ago

I’ve been to events that do this and if someone can’t make it tough luck. But it prevents scalping at least. Every system has pros and cons.

dec0dedab0de3• 4 years ago

I went to a concert that requires you to match your ticket, but allowed you to sell tickets on a site they control for the face value. I think the buyer has to pay a transaction fee as well.

I got the tickets by signing up and they took my credit card, and charged me when I was next in line and someone had tickets for sale. It was pretty neat, though I suspect I lucked out because a bunch of people sold their tickets when they announced vaccines would be required (September 2021).

musicale8• 4 years ago

Some venues do this, but it does slow down entry (though during the pandemic some venues where checking IDs anyway along with covid test results, etc..)

AXS requires that you use their app and it must be logged into the account that purchased the tickets. The QR codes need to be refreshed before entry and expire in 60 seconds.

This presumably requires scalpers/bots to create an account per ticket purchase, and there is probably a limit on the number of accounts that can share the same payment method and address.

BoorishBears2• 4 years ago

AXS allows them to resell on their own platform, so "the account that purchased the tickets" doesn't have to be the one that originally purchased the tickets.

musicale8• 4 years ago

I remember Green Day doing a local show where you had to pay cash at the door.

This seems to address botting, though scalping organizations can still pay people to stand in line (and presumably take a cut when they are paid to give up their spots.)

Personally I think this approach helps out kids who have time to wait in line but don't necessarily have the money to pay huge markups and fees from the secondary market.

malermeister• 4 years ago

To prevent scalping, one could just write the name of the person on the physical ticket at purchase time and then check ID at the entrance.

pclmulqdq8• 4 years ago

The simple solution to getting fans rather than grifters is to make the tickets cost something other than money. Time is a nice obvious cost element to add.

If only we could channel that time more productively (and in a more palatable way) than having people wait in line.

foresto• 4 years ago

"Papers, please."

How could it be done without invading privacy?

musicale8• 4 years ago

I'm not sure it can be easily.

However, many venues were already checking ID for over 18/21 shows and also covid test results during the pandemic.

Also regular buyers already have to provide contact and payment info (usually very personally identifiable.)

Some venues have tried to fight scalping by requiring presentation of the card used for payment - though obviously that disadvantages cash buyers and scalpers can still use burner cards which they provide with the ticket.

HWR_142• 4 years ago

I'm not sure "privacy preserving" is enough of a selling point.

hiccuphippo2• 4 years ago

Remove the reason why showing your papers is a privacy issue in the first place.

stevefan1999• 4 years ago

zero knowledge proof

judge20209• 4 years ago

This is what newer Pearl Jam concerts do - they sell on Ticketmaster, but made a deal where you can't transfer the tickets to anyone else, and must present a Photo ID upon entry to the venue with a name that matches the name on the billing address.

glandium• 4 years ago

So, you can't offer tickets?

ydnaclementine• 4 years ago

Ticketmaster collects a "service fee" when you resell on their app

iopq5• 4 years ago

I wasn't able to go to a convention because my girlfriend already bought plane tickets to Las Vegas. If I weren't able to sell the ticket, there would be no way for me to recoup the cost

notyourwork2• 4 years ago

Shit happens? Lots of things have the same problem but if you bought steaks from a butcher and you came home to find that your girlfriend already prepare dinner?

FateOfNations7• 4 years ago

If they make tickets non-transferable, they should also make them refundable. We're talking about events that are guaranteed to sell out, they should have a problem finding someone to buy returned tickets, even at the last minute.

justinlkarr4• 4 years ago

In New York State, it is illegal to prohibit the transfer of tickets, which complicates most obvious approaches to stopping scalpers. https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/ACA/25.30

bombcar2• 4 years ago

This appears to mainly apply to season tickets and subscription-based tickets, at least at first glance.

judge20209• 4 years ago

If I'm not mistaken, this[0] seems to be a commentary on the law. As I understand it after having read that article, the law seems to be in an effort to encourage reselling by the regular person in case of travel/event plans changing, while introducing fines to prohibit egregious scalpers. However, it seems it's just some fines for these activities, and I can't find any case where scalpers were convicted and fined under this statute (but maybe my Google-fu is weak).

0: https://brooklynworks.brooklaw.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?artic...

dboreham• 4 years ago

John Mayer did shows here in Montana with that model. People still drove to the venue to get their paper tickets then handed over to their saplees.

llamataboot• 4 years ago

And if you get sick or if you don't know if you can go but want to?

diiaann• 4 years ago

I went to Roland Garros and this is how they did it. You also were allowed to return the ticket to the pool and the event resold it at face value.

littleJeck2• 4 years ago

Australia has a few “major events” laws aimed at preventing the worse of scalping. They mostly require that any reselling not be more than a fixed percentage of the original resale price (I think it’s 20% from memory). While not perfect, it does prevent the insane ticket prices.

This is all managed through an offical resale partner with ticket tek and ticket master. You can only transfer tickets officially though the site, with options to do it for no (or low) charge if you’re sending it to a mate.

I’ve used the service quite a bit, picking up tickets on the day of an event. I’ve had some wins buying tickets for ~30% of the original price, but also plenty of times paying slightly over the original price or I’ve missed one event as there were no available tickets. It’s just something I’ve come to expect for the flexibility it provides.

I think the majority of people use this service rather than trying a third party as it’s official, easy for the seller and no one wants to support insane scalpers.

The only problem I’ve seen with the system is events can elect to not allow reselling on the platform till the event is sold out. This can prevent people recouping their losses if they can’t attend the event, and stops me from potentially getting a small deal.

woeirua• 4 years ago

Or you could just be like Garth Brooks and keep adding shows until they no longer sell out. Boom, problem solved.

musicale8• 4 years ago

Adding shows seems like the best response if it's possible.

More work for the artist though, and for the mega-popular (Taylor Swift atm) it might be hard to schedule enough shows.

mertd• 4 years ago

It can be less work if they have to travel to less towns in total.

judge20209• 4 years ago

They/she added more shows after the initial announcement[0], but they're still in insanely high demand.

0: 11/1 email with 27 show dates, then 11/4 additional 8 show dates, then 11/11 an additional 17 dates.

duped3• 4 years ago

There are not enough stadiums in America for Taylor Swift to do this

Waterluvian2• 4 years ago

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.

judge20209• 4 years ago

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.

https://www.theverge.com/2022/4/21/23020823/sony-direct-play...

Waterluvian2• 4 years ago

90 mins after the article was posted it was updated with “sold out”. Was this not a real long-term queue?

conductr• 4 years ago

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.

ripe• 4 years ago

Yes, I think this kind of price-reducing auction would work and would be fair and not user hostile.

For Taylor Swift’s tickets, I wonder what the starting price would need to be at a typical Northeast venue like Gillette Stadium…

bo1024• 4 years ago

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).

danuker• 4 years ago

These are called Sybil attacks.

judahmeek• 4 years ago

If they want to sell tickets below market price, there's not a good solution.

If they want some people to be able to buy tickets below market price, then they could use some form of scholarships.

Ferret7446• 4 years ago

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.

blowski7• 4 years ago

The market! The market! The market! This invisible beast which controls everything for all eternity!

There are always ways of influencing the market. Taxes, subsidies, regulations, advertising. It requires imagination, but let's not feel ourselves enslaved completely to the invisible hand of the new leviathan.

deanc2• 4 years ago

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.

cortesoft3• 4 years ago

This is the solution. Strong authentication into a lottery.

I really don't like using a lottery, because it assumes that everyone who wants to go to a particular concert has the same level of desire to go.

A lot of people might just kind of want to go, while for others going is the most important thing in the world. With a lottery system, each of those people have an equal chance of getting to go. It seems unfair to me.

I want a system that allocates tickets to the people who want to go the most. I know an auction type system isn't completely fair, since some people have more money than others, but it least it has some semblance of trying to distribute tickets to people who want to go the most.

dqpb4• 4 years ago

Lotteries aren't fair.

dwild• 4 years ago

I don't understands how that system would help, can't you have multiple bank accounts? Except if all the banks transfer some strong common identifier like the social security number (and that sound pretty dangerous to share). Open 5 accounts in 5 different banks (I'm pretty sure you could even do it all at the same bank), and there you go... you will exist, but Ticketmaster would have no idea whether you are 5 different deanc or all the same one.

jzwinck• 4 years ago

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.

pas4• 4 years ago

sell low price vouchers, require ID for them, make them refundable in 90+ days or in person with ID only

set up a membership/trust/reputation system for fans and/or frequent venue goers (eg. locals), and if they actually show up to gigs, then you can reduce the refund wait time for them, etc.

matwood3• 4 years ago

But a lot of artists want to sell tickets below market price.

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.

maerF0x02• 4 years ago

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?

FateOfNations7• 4 years ago

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).

the_mungler4• 4 years ago

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.

elil172• 4 years ago

The system proposed in this post has the advantage of correctly pricing every seat individually without anyone having to put in multiple bids. The people buying earlier are paying the highest price and get to choose the best seats. Those buying later would pay less but the good seats would already be taken.

A Vickery auction would not, I think, lend itself to that kind of price discovery.

the_mungler4• 4 years ago

Good point, but you could address that by splitting up the seats into multiple auctions depending on the quality of the seats.

People could even bid "conditionally" for multiple sections, and once bidding closes you resolve the separate auctions in order from best to worst. If a person with multiple bids gets a good seat, their bids in the other sections get cancelled.

Seems to me that this could have very similar results as the dutch auction method, but each ticket is more fairly priced. Your ticket costs the same as the next guy, assuming they have a seat in the same section as you.

Edit: also, as mentioned somewhere else here, you're likely to have a threshold where everyone wants to buy once they see available seats start to disappear, causing a kind of "bank runoff" where everyone rushes to buy tickets all at once, putting us back where we started.

pabzu• 4 years ago

As far as I know all the auction mechanisms are equal[1], in the sense that: 1. the items are assigned to the same bidders (paying the same) 2. the revenue of the auctioneer is the same

In that sense you could chose the system that fits you the most. I personally think that selling tickets via auction is indesirable for other reasons.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenue_equivalence

etchalon• 4 years ago

There is no such thing as a "fair" way to sell anything where demand vastly outstrips supply.

There are just choices about what resource you want to prejudice for: money, time or luck.

barnabask5• 4 years ago

This really made me reconsider my phrasing, and then the basis for my assumption about “fairness”. Thank you for your thought provoking comment.

elefantastisch• 4 years ago

Right, this is a values problem, not a technical problem.

Who should get to see Taylor Swift? How much should they pay? How should profits be distributed?

These are philosophical questions. If you assume a particular set of answers to these questions, designing the correct sales process is not difficult. But everyone has a different set of answers.

jonas21• 4 years ago

It seems like this would produce the same outcome as Ticketmaster's dynamic pricing. According to this article, fans hate it [1].

[1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7gx34/blink-182-tickets-are...

barnabask5• 4 years ago

Interesting, thanks for the link. Similar outcomes perhaps. I guess the difference is that the auction clock is public so it may feel a little less arbitrary than an opaque algorithm.

whartung• 4 years ago

Back in the day, The Who was presenting "Tommy". First time they were doing it live again. The "cheap" tickets were $75. This was a smaller venue.

$75 was a bit of money to be sure.

Back then you waited outside record stores to buy tickets. You'd line up, and sometime before the sale, they'd come out and hand out numbers, say 1 to 100. Then you'd sort by the number. Then they'd come out and say "We're starting the line at 37". 37 would be the front of the line, everyone else would sort behind that, wrapping around at the back. #36 would be the last in line.

When I went to buy Tommy tickets, they were also selling another acts tickets.

Since the tickets were so expensive, I went out of my way to go to a lower income neighborhood with the hope that there would be less folks in line to buy tickets, simply due to the price.

In the end, I got my ticket and the lady behind me did not. If they weren't selling the other act, maybe she would have made it.

When the Rolling Stones with Guns and Roses in LA went on sale, they gave out wristbands days in advance. My spot in line was around the building, the first show was sold out before I got there. The seats I did get were basically lousy when I did get them. That took an afternoon.

When I went to buy tickets at the venue, they handed out numbers, but they didn't scramble them. The numbers were random, but #1 was first in line. As soon as I got my number, there was a guy offering to buy low numbers. I had not doubt he was going to buy the 8 ticket limit. He wasn't a fan, he was a professional scalper.

U2 tried to sell tickets over the phone in LA, trying to route around TicketMaster. It literally disabled the Los Angeles telephone system for several hours. You'd pick up the phone and not be able to hear a dial tone (I was listening to the modem trying to dial in to a client site). It would take up to 30 seconds to get a dial tone, and good luck getting your call through anyway. Total disaster.

Taylor Swift sold out 2M tickets. I don't care what the time frame that was in, that's a boat load of traffic. Think not of the 2M they sold, think of how many were not sold. I think there are few companies that could handle that load, especially something as specific as selling seats A29, A30, A31, and A40 to Bob Jones. Let's see a paper on that locking problem.

The production company sets the ticket prices, TM sets the service fees, if you want to save on service fees, go to the venue. I'm not defending TM, they certainly don't need me, but it's been an intractable problem for a long, long time, at all sorts of levels. If you think TMs fees are bad, try StubHub.

zetsurin• 4 years ago

Taylor Swift sold out 2M tickets. I don't care what the time frame that was in, that's a boat load of traffic. Think not of the 2M they sold, think of how many were not sold.

Shopify did 3.1M sales per min last year during peek season https://www.shopify.com/ca/blog/bfcm-data. There's more contention for this use case, but I don't think this is as an intractable problem. I do think an alternate model like the post proposes would greatly help.

graup• 4 years ago

I think randomized queues are pretty fair. You give everyone who arrives within a certain time the same chance. This wouldn't be too hard to implement as a system either.

Say ticket sales open at 2pm. From 1:45pm, everyone who gets to the site gets assigned a random queue number. Then from 2pm, users are given access to the ordering system in the order of their queue number. We can even limit throughput with that (e.g. let in n users per minute).

Ticket sites in South Korea already implement queueing systems to control server load. When sales open at 2pm, everyone refreshes the page at exactly that time, but the request is put in a waiting queue. This can be considered randomized in a way (the time someone refreshes the page is somewhat random), but I'd like to see the concept of "advance queue building time" added to that to reduce the stress of "I have to refresh the page exactly at the right moment." Give me a few minutes to get to the queue.

musicale8• 4 years ago

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.

mhb2• 4 years ago

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.

SeanLuke• 4 years ago

Did you see the part about selling to kids who don't have much money?

tgsovlerkhgsel• 4 years ago

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.

(Your first paragraph remains valid of course.)

matwood3• 4 years ago

Yeah, people forget scalpers also have downside. When I lived in a big city my partner and I would routinely go to sporting events by paying under face value on the tickets simply by waiting for the event to start. Of course, we had to be ok if it didn't work out, but most of the time it did. Worst case, we walk back across the street and watch the game from the bar.

alar44• 4 years ago

It's straight up supply and demand. I have no idea why anyone is surprised why scarce goods are expensive. Their is no solution. Idk unless you want to socialize entertainment or something. Give out entertainment credits.

underyx• 4 years ago

Two buyers might try for the same exact seats at the same moment, but that is much less likely in a slow single-bid auction like this

Well except that everyone would try to grab the very last ticket, which would be the cheapest.

dsalzman• 4 years ago

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.

function_seven• 4 years ago

Non-starter. Fans would hate the uncertainty, and most of them would end up spending $20 and getting nothing for it.

Also you have to navigate gambling laws in all the different states, provinces, and countries you're selling in.

And you also lose the freedom to bring a different friend if your original date drops out.

The Dutch Auction idea in the article is actually really simple and cuts out the complexity that comes with transfer limits, ID-must-match rules, etc.

mosseater• 4 years ago

An NFT solution to ticketing seems like it would be trivial given how NFTs operate already. One ticket could be verifiably owned by one person. If that person wanted to resell the ticket, there could be restrictions on how much they could sell it for. If bots can't make a profit there's no use in buying out all the tickets. It would also decentralize the space. Sure you need a marketplace for the NFT tickets, but that could easily be a open source software suite that the venues themselves host. Gas price will probably be a lot less than ticketmaster fees.

Honestly it seems like the biggest problems here are that Ticketmaster in particular has a huge sway in the current venue and artist market, having contracts that require an artist or venue to exclusively use their ticketing system.

pclmulqdq8• 4 years ago

NFTs actually can't algorithmically restrict transfer prices or algorithmically take fees. The fee taking that happens today is done by an exchange as a courtesy to the "artist."

This is one of the limitations of the NFT model.

thrtythreeforty2• 4 years ago

I was under the impression you can run arbitrary code in the blockchain?

bigjump• 4 years ago

This is what https://www.get-protocol.io/ are doing.

“ Tickets become tradable digital collectibles (NFTs), with a variety of awesome possibilities for fans & event organizers.”

tigrezno• 4 years ago

NFT are the solution to this problem.

iopq5• 4 years ago

Or, you release tickets for auction starting from 6 months prior slowly. Whatever the auction price is, that's what they are sold for. Start with the best seats, then the auction results might inform buyers how to bid on the next seat.

wskish• 4 years ago

Here is the system that the Grateful Dead developed to bypass Ticketmaster BITD:

https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~mleone/gdead/faq/tickets.html

wombat-man2• 4 years ago

- 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.

StingyJelly• 4 years ago

I don't like that idea. First, personally, I'll rather pass than install that app.

Second, it would need to heavily rely on device fingerprinting and obfuscation to give scalpers hard time trying to modify the app. Software protection will likely fail anyway when both scalpers and people buying from them have aligned interests. Even if the software protection holds, the price of second-hand phones may be too low compared to price of the tickets, so the "transferability fee" has a practical ceiling, especially since the phone can be sold again afterwards.

wombat-man2• 4 years ago

really? I already use axs and ticketmaster apps for tickets. Are you using pdfs or something? The app is nice because it rotates the barcode every minute, and idk how else you'd achieve that. I guess a webapp could work.

I don't think you need to rely on device fingerprinting, just make sure they're logged into their ticketing account. You might see people start to sell accounts with single/pair tickets but that just sounds like a pain, and we could mitigate it if it becomes a problem.

Marsymars2• 4 years ago

That works in one sense, in that it reduces demand overall.

I used to go to lots of shows; any time there was a show I was interested in, I’d check the online used goods marketplace 2-72 hours in advance and see if I could get tickets below face value. Often I could. Sometimes I couldn’t, and I wouldn’t go to those shows.

As the result of the move of big shows to digital-only tickets, I’ve just stopped going to big shows. I just go to local venues where I can pay in cash on entry.

somehnacct37575• 4 years ago

I don't get what this has to do with combating scalping. This is just a new auction game to play. It levels the playing field for a time, as all new games do, but the scalpers will eventually win it.

In this case the game is to find X where X is the percent of concert goers willing to pay scalpers. Then you buy the bottom X% of tickets for the current price and list them for more money. This is easy to do because the auction site tells you the number of remaining tickets.

Since there's no supply of auction tickets left, scalpers can now set the price. And since they paid the lowest price out of any of the ticket holders, they hold all the power.

mabbo• 4 years ago

The idea is that everyone willing to pay more than $X for tickets bought their tickets before the scalpers can buy it for $X.

somehnacct37575• 4 years ago

X isn't the price in my solution it's the percent of concert hopefuls who will hold their nose and pay a scalper. Once there's exactly that many tickets left, there's no point running the auction anymore. Scalpers should use their bots to completely buy up all remaining tickets, as they do now, and then set them for a higher price on the secondary market.

Buying the first 1-X% tickets nearly guarantees you will pay more than the scalp price except for a thin band right before X where the prices are within the scalper's margin.

Basically this system only beats scalpers if everyone is richer than scalpers, which most concertgoers are not. If you're rich you might like the sound of this new system on paper but it's actually cheaper for you to stay with the current system and buy all your tickets on the secondary market.

whall6• 4 years ago

As an artist, connect with your top listeners on Spotify / Apple Music and give them a onetime use link to buy $20 tickets and allocate the rest of the tickets by auction.

Apreche• 4 years ago

Talk about fair distribution all you want, it doesn't matter. People who buy tickets are not the customers of Ticketmaster. Ticketmaster does not have any incentive to implement any system that better serves the people who actually attend ticketed events.

The customers for Ticketmaster are venues. That's the only party that Ticketmaster cares to please. Of course Ticketmaster wields their monopoly power such that venues have little choice but to go with them. But even if they did not do that, Ticketmaster serves the interests of the venues very very well.

If you want to defeat Ticketmaster with a market solution, you can't do it by creating a Ticketmaster competitor. No matter how good it is, venues can't be swayed. You will have no customers. The only market solution is to own venues. As a venue owner you could refuse to renew with Ticketmaster and use any other system you wanted.

Of course, if you do that, good luck booking anyone to perform in your venue. It better be a big famous one that they can't ignore.

langsoul-com• 4 years ago

This isn't fair to those who can only afford standard priced tickets.

It will maximise profits, but is not fair.

Other platforms do waves, split across time zones. That would distribute the load to prevent crashes.

pclmulqdq8• 4 years ago

The current system isn't very fair to those people either.

Professional scalpers act like high frequency trading firms (some HFTs are ticket scalpers), and employ tens of thousands of dollars worth of computer equipment to get those seats before the poor rubes who hoped for standard priced tickets.

By contrast, an auction system actually levels the playing field by removing the technological advantage.

They don't have to run a Dutch auction specifically, other kinds of auctions exist too.

8note5• 4 years ago

The technological advantage is meaningless though. Anyone wealthy enough can set up the same tech solution, so it's just as fair. The wealthiest get the tickets in both cases

The unfairness remains, in that who gets to go to the concert is decided by who can spend the most in going to it.

If fairness is what you care about, any auction system is irrelevant

jwithington• 4 years ago

Worked in the sneaker resales world. Artists, sneaker companies, etc., are all aware that the Dutch auction could solve the problem.

But they choose not to pursue because of reputational/brand damage. It’s a shame!

justinlkarr4• 4 years ago

Northwestern University uses (or used) a version of this for their basketball team, which they call "Purple Pricing".

https://blogs.cornell.edu/info2040/2022/10/25/sports-ticket-... https://hbr.org/2013/05/any-business-trying-to-sell

ljw1004• 4 years ago

In what sense is this solution "fair"? What definition of fairness is being used?

This seems like a solution where rich people get the good things and poor people don't. I wouldn't call that fair.

In a democracy, everyone has an equal weight, an equal say, in the governance of the country. We often call that fair, or sometimes just.

In capitalism, every dollar has an equal weight, an equal say in what gets produced or built or done.

dojomouse• 4 years ago

In the case of transferable concert tickets that’s already the ‘solution’. Even if someone ‘poor’ is lucky enough to beat the odds and buy a ticket under the current system at the initial offer price, they still have the same opportunity cost to weigh up - it’s just they’re deciding whether to resell their ticket and realise a gain, or go to the concert and forfeit the gain.

This proposed system would be fairer in that it would at least deliver whatever the maximum amount a rich person is prepared to pay to the artist, rather that some scalper intermediary. Those at the lower end of the willingness-to-pay spectrum are no worse off, except to the extent that you think they’re disproportionately lucky, disproportionality motivated (which I accept is possible), or are themselves looking-to/willing-to scalp tickets.

It also seems however that it’d be pretty trivial to just prohibit resale of tickets and require ID at the venue. Artists/promoters might make less money but it’d preserve equality of access and largely eliminate scalping.

8note5• 4 years ago

What it doesn't include is the maximum an artist is willing to accept for a ticket

iambateman2• 4 years ago

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.

billyt555• 4 years ago

Ticketmaster could have done everyone a huge favor by simply staggering the sales for separate dates a bit and not trying to sell tix for every show all at once.

timpetri• 4 years ago

I feel like Dice.fm already solved this. You can buy an untransferable ticket and if you cant go, you simply return it to a wait-list of people who have signed up. You get your money back, and they pay the same price. Maybe there are some transaction fees involved but overall this eliminates the ability for someone to buy just to sell?

romdev• 4 years ago

John Oliver had an expose of all the things I already knew about how corrupt Ticketmaster is. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_Y7uqqEFnY

littleJeck2• 4 years ago

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.

fredophile• 4 years ago

Some artists and promoters are already doing a money grab and hiding behind scalpers to do it. For big shows, a portion of the tickets may be removed from retail sales entirely and go straight to websites that are used for scalping tickets [0]. This let's artists be seen as offering tickets at reasonable rates while getting closer to market rates.

[0] https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vox.com/platform/amp/the-go...

matai_kolila6• 4 years ago

Shameless plug: I understand how to make and launch exactly this kind of system, at least technically. If you want it built, please contact me.

I cannot roll my eyes hard enough - if you can, then do it already. Why the hell do you need the encouragement?

TaylorAlexander4• 4 years ago

I think they mean "if you want to pay for it".

matai_kolila6• 4 years ago

It costs nothing but time to build the service. His hesitancy is a red flag for potential partners.

barnabask5• 4 years ago

Yep.

Nursie• 4 years ago

Yeah this doesn't feel "Fair" to me. It would likely reduce the scalping problem, sure, but it also introduces a whole lot of "Well this is the price I want to pay, but what if it sells out? Should I stretch and pay more?" type feelings.

Maybe scalpers get in around this "stretch" point and then when there are no tickets left at all, people realise they really want to go and stretch a bit further to buy from the scalper.

As others have pointed out too - this really selects for wealth. As someone with a decent income, I might get to go and see all my favourite bands, but lower income folks might be priced out of the market entirely (which they already are by scalpers to a greater or lesser extent).

duped3• 4 years ago

Something not talked about here is that there's a finite number of seats that can be sold for all the tours in the year.

At a smaller scale, look at Broadway productions. There are 41 "broadway" theaters in New York, each with between 500-2000 seats performing 8 shows each week. Ballparking because I don't have the exact numbers, that's a total number of tickets you can sell of under about 350,000 tickets for all broadway shows that can be sold each year. Even if you include all the touring and local productions of shows in cities, there are not enough theaters to meet the demand for live musicals and plays (and while locally, shows will underperform and not sell out, and there are periods of downtime between shows changing, it's still capped).

Now these massive tours are limited in a similar way. There are only a few dozen arenas that can seat tens of thousands of people year round, and only so many nights they can operate. But unlike those shows, a single production team can't "own" a venue for months at a time. So they need to tour, which is about the most expensive way to get a production of that scale off the ground. Moving a production and staffing it throughout a tour is so expensive that guaranteeing the endeavor is profitable is still difficult - many of the "biggest" tours with sellout crowds across the country have been financial disasters.

Basically my point is that the issue isn't just in fairness in ticket sales. It's lack of venues. Which makes sense. If we had cities operate like Las Vegas, and have venues that put on high profile shows for months at a time with residencies, the access to the shows might be (paradoxically) improved despite being hyper local. If you can guarantee a low risk/profitable production and rely on people traveling to the show (which many do! look at broadway - people can and do see shows affordably with the highest cost being the plane ticket) then the problem might be better mitigated. Or maybe not. I'm not an economist, but the point is that the supply problem goes a lot deeper than people trying to buy tickets at the same time.

buro94• 4 years ago

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.

mahkeiro• 4 years ago

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.

coffeefirst• 4 years ago

Except extracting as many dollars as possible isn’t the goal. Many bands try to keep their tickets affordable.

The solution is to break up Ticketmaster. The companies they gobbled up handled this fine. Imperfectly, sometimes shoes sold out in minutes, but the prices and the fees were fair, and Will Call can wipe out the scalpers.

buro94• 4 years ago

My point on artists is that maximising value extraction isn't their priority.

I worked in the industry for almost a decade, had 2 record labels, and signed a number of bands that became famous (for some definition of that) as well as worked with bands that were famous (for any definition of that)... so I have some experience here even though that experience has aged a bit.

Artists are balancing revenue now, with future growth, with record sales, with drawing in new fans, with taking the tour to as wide a representation of their fanbase as possible... and it really truly isn't as simple as "charge the highest price possible".

Far better models can be seen in sales of things like the Glastonbury Music Festival (real identity required, but administered by See Tickets) and Dice ( https://dice.fm/ which allows fan to fan resale ).

Those are better because 1) they limit the ability of scalpers, and 2) the fan-to-fan resale also allows flexibility (less need for thundering herd, as there are always people who cannot attend and now they can safely and respectfully sell to their peers).

Both processes generate a vast amount of data on the sales process, as well as the resale process - which better informs promoters of venue sizing and ticket pricing in the future. Both are good platforms for future evolution of fan-to-fan resale in a way that can enable more of the value to be returned to the artist whilst balancing the other criteria well. What they do is provide promoters with richer data, which allows promoters to make better sizing and venue decisions earlier.

To the separate questions elsewhere in the thread as to how to tackle Ticketmaster, the answer is to not fight them in their space... i.e. to not sell tickets for venues under their exclusive control. Here you see Dice succeeding as they focused on major nightclubs, including Ibiza super clubs... they're selling larger venues than most rock venues, on a daily or weekly basis... outside of Ticketmaster... with more revenue going to the venue, artist and promoters despite the ticket price only having increased a few % points. Ticketmaster control some large venues... but think of festivals, smaller venues, theatres, nightclubs... Ticketmaster really only are present for a small number of super-sized venues, more of the industry exists outside the Ticketmaster venues than in it. Don't go for the red ocean market, go for the blue ocean market ( https://www.blueoceanstrategy.com/tools/red-ocean-vs-blue-oc... ).

Data and time create a fairer market... not exclusive venue control or making people pay as high a price as possible.

timenova• 4 years ago

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.

mananaysiempre• 4 years ago

[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.

manholio3• 4 years ago

The model that works is to build relationships with fans and afford them privileged access, and sell everything else at market clearing prices.

Ticketmaster tried too offer that through a "verified fan" route, but it failed under the weight of its own monopolistic ineptitude. Whoever cracks the fan management+ticketing service and offers it to bands will have an incredibly strong moat.

dqpb4• 4 years ago

implicit barrier that may seem less outrageous on the surface but at the end of the day is not that much better

Not better at all, in fact.

gljiva• 4 years ago

Why not have a random draw?

silvestrov• 4 years ago

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.

JKCalhoun2• 4 years ago

I guess I see the entertainment industry in two tiers. There are the mega-stars like Taylor Swift, etc. that occupy one tier, and then the majority off smaller artists, up and coming artists that represent the lower, if you like, strata.

Perhaps you are describing, and perhaps the author are tackling the upper strata. For myself, I swore off big venues decades ago. If I am unable to set my beer behind the monitor speaker, I'm not going.

I wonder if the lower strata could use a kind of "artists coop" to manage ticket sales. All smaller venues (bars and the like) could participate, all smaller artists could as well.

I think more artists would handle selling their own tickets if it was easy to do. In that way the artists are served (of course) and presumably they will do what is best for their fanbase.

Connecting artists and venue owners with a web portal, allowing ticket sales to fans via the same site shouldn't be heavy lifting for a lot of the readers on HN.

lotu• 4 years ago

Ticketmaster if I recall correctly has even stated this in its shareholder meetings. Artists can even get a share of Ticketmaster’s fees.

dan-robertson2• 4 years ago

Seems like it’s not so simple to say that ticketmaster is getting artists/venues max profits. If you look at how much money could be made by scalping (before it became harder), that was money people would have potentially paid to the artist/venue instead.

Spooky232• 4 years ago

The problem with Ticketmaster is the same as any consolidation play. If you let a middleman control the wholesale and retail side of the transaction, you’re gonna get a bad deal.

The solution is really simple, but the government no longer has the regulatory ability to do anything. You segment the distributor function from the retail, and end up with a bunch of retailers running volume driven low margin sales channels.

Ticketmaster brilliantly positioned itself as distributor, retailer and supplier for resale. So they have an exclusive on a venue, get a fee for the sale, get a seller commission for the resale, and a buyers fee for the resale. They “own” the customer and the venue.

CPLX• 4 years ago

But it is all their fault. They’re an obviously illegal monopoly that was allowed to thrive during our multi-decade experiment with not enforcing antitrust laws.

If artists literally ALL wanted to hire a scapegoat that rips off fans then sure. But many don’t. The fact that there’s no other alternative is WHY it works.

Also there’s no such thing as “venues and artists” since they own the venues too. Which is another part of the overall problem.

8note5• 4 years ago

Prices don't necessarily have to be high if artists know who they want to sell tickets to and who they don't.

Raising prices is a filter on who can buy to reduce demand, but it's not the only way

dqpb4• 4 years ago

"I have more money and deserve more to have a ticket over someone that doesn't have as much money"

The "free market" is the closest thing we have to a meritocracy. It's also the only mechanism we have for decentralized decision making.

kjrose2• 4 years ago

For music or artist based shows I agree.

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

cbsmith2• 4 years ago

Little known secret: Ticketmaster has an auction system for selling tickets (I believe it has actually built more than one). No one uses it.

stevage2• 4 years ago

If you're selling Taylor Swift tickets with a floor of $20 you are definitely selling out any venue.

poopsmithe• 4 years ago

YES! I love this concept. The big clock featured in the post was described in a Tom Scott video[1] earlier this year. It's the Royal FloraHolland's flower auction in Aalsmeer. Fascinating to see how it worked then and how it works now. Same concept, just computerized and accessible remotely by bidders.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAdmzyKagvE

GrumpyNl• 4 years ago

The biggest problem is ticket scalper. We have developed a ticket system with personalized encrypted tickets. When you are not able to go the event, you to give your tickets back at us and we will refund the money. Because the tickets are personalized and encrypted, you can not swap them.

kqr• 4 years ago

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.)

blowski7• 4 years ago

I need to buy non-refundable hotels, train tickets, childcare, plus book time off work. Finding out whether all that's necessary with a few hours notice doesn't work.

If you could do something like this for some large proportion of the tickets, and give a month's notice, it might work.

FateOfNations7• 4 years ago

Prepayment isn't required. You'd could give folks a few days after winning tickets to make good on their payment. Many people would put down a credit card, and it would only be an issue for them if it was declined, etc.). Tickets that aren't paid for would be added back to the next batch of tickets to be distributed (or if close to the date of the show, sold at the door).

punnerud• 4 years ago

In Norway you are not allowed to sell the tickets to a higher price, than the listing price.

You can actually go through with the buying from a third party, and demand a refund for the additional price afterward (and keep the ticket)

onion2k• 4 years ago

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.

aetherson2• 4 years ago

I think the point is, you start at the maximum price you think any significant number of people will pay. If that's $4000, it's $4000.

detaro2• 4 years ago

If you want your marketing signaling to be "this artist is for rich people, normal people have no chance to see them anyways", sure. Many probably don't want to do that - indeed the strength of the lottery system is that it does signal the opposite.

Morgawr• 4 years ago

This is actually how they do it in Japan. They love the lottery system and as a customer it's honestly a huge pain in the ass but once you see the kind of scalping and sleazy tactics that go on overseas you kinda start to appreciate it.

There's a few ways it is implemented and not all artists/venues do all of these but things I've seen are:

- Priority purchase for "fan club" registered members. Most artists have a LINE group fan club with a yearly subscription (like $50 or whatever), then if you are in this group, you get priority access to that artist's events. This means if you're a "real" fan you get to access tickets before everyone else.

- Lottery system based on price "bands". I've seen a few artists let the fans decide how much they want to pay based on tiers. Months before the event, the artist will send out a survey with price ranges you can choose (only one) like: $10, $15, $30, $50, $90 and then seats will be allocated based on a priority level as a self-chosen value. So if there's 5 people who chose $90, 10 people who chose $50, 30 people who chose $30, 200 people who chose $15, and 1000 people who chose $10, if the venue can only host 250 people then 5 + 10 + 30 + 200 (= 245) people will get in at their price, and only 5 remaining people will get in at $10 price point.

- Totally random lottery based on "waves". X people will apply to wave 1, and out of those X people let's say only 70% will get chosen. Then the artist/venue decides on a more approachable size and might host a second wave, another X people will apply to that second wave (including the previously excluded 30%) and another 70% will get chosen, then repeat until the venue is full or the artist decides they cannot host more events. Those who don't get chosen have to suck it up and try again another time.

It's far from perfect, and as I said it can be extremely frustrating, but it has its good sides too.

matwood3• 4 years ago

Personally, if I was selling tickets, I'd just not sell them "fairly". Accept that tickets are a luxury item, like Ferraris.

Agreed. Tickets are a luxury item. The only fix is for the artists to do more shows. Obviously this is hard on the artists, but I wonder if they could do short term residencies in a place like Vegas? If Taylor Swift played every other night for 3-6 mos. in a fixed location, it seems like everyone could eventually see her show if they wanted. Fans would probably spend less than 2-4k each even accounting for any travel.

I also don't find the lottery method 'fair' either. Random yes, but not necessarily fair if a person can only see a show on a certain date and doesn't win the lottery.

dan-robertson2• 4 years ago

This doesn’t sound very true to me. My guess is that there are a much smaller number of people willing to pay $4k to a scalper for tickets and the price reflects the small supply of scalper tickets.

qeternity• 4 years ago

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.

After centuries of failing to manipulate natural market forces, I don’t understand why people continue to think it’s possible. All that a lottery does is incentivize everyone to participate, even those who have no interest in going. Then a secondary market will engage in actual price discovery and you’re left with the current system.

There is really no way to beat the system. Prices are what people are willing to pay. I’m not sure how any other system is fairer? Let’s say I’m a middle class Taylor Swift mega fan and save up for years to drop $4k on a ticket. Instead, we move to a lottery system and I don’t get picked. I want to go way more than most people, as evidenced by the amount I’m willing to pay. But now I don’t get to go. How is that fair?

yardstick3• 4 years ago

All that a lottery does is incentivize everyone to participate, even those who have no interest in going. Then a secondary market will engage in actual price discovery and you’re left with the current system.

How would the secondary market work if you have to put peoples names on tickets upon buying the ticket. No renames allowed (bring your name change deed poll and old and new IDs I guess). Can’t make the concert? Tickets can be refunded for the original price (maybe minus a token handling fee), and the ticket goes back into the next lottery sale pool.

chickenimprint• 4 years ago

I fear that if there is hundreds of thousands of dollars in demand pressure on getting some rich guys in, the chain will break somewhere. Maybe they'll bribe the entrance staff, or someone sells access to a VIP guest list, but it's bound to happen eventually.

2OEH8eoCRo0• 4 years ago

Accept that tickets are a luxury item, like Ferraris.

Exactly. High demand and low supply means not everyone gets to see Taylor Swift. That's life. I don't see the issue.

sopooneo2• 4 years ago

I believe the problem is that fans perceiving a “that’s life” sentiment from Taylor Swift will hurt her total long term profit.

And that’s in addition to Taylor Swift, personally, wanting non-elites to share in the show experience, which I have no proof of but happen to believe

itake• 4 years ago

How is that any different from the current system? The current system randomly selects web browsers to add tickets into the cart.

The scalpers have more lottery tickets than everyone else (via bots).

I guess the main difference is to not allow ticket transfers?

FateOfNations7• 4 years ago

Yes, a lottery system would require non-transferable tickets, but those tickets could be refundable, and returned tickets could be redistributed in a subsequent lottery round.

sopooneo2• 4 years ago

The perception of profit maximizing ticket sales at each event will hurt total profit of the artist over their career.

lifeisstillgood• 4 years ago

Just want to support this - and agree that the implication is the people who don't implement this are the artists (or managers) themselves who, y'know, like money.

tromp2• 4 years ago

How about an auction of lottery tickets where the price is fixed but the probability of winning increases over time? Still identity verified so that each person can buy only one ticket and if they win they must attend themselves.

wanderingbort• 4 years ago

I will start to sound like a broken record soon but blockchain has provided a wealth of information about “fair” distribution games and their downfalls.

The NFT summer of 2021 saw first come first serve distros gamed by parties with superior network positioning.

Dutch auctions (from the article) strongly favored the wealthy buyers not fans or parties who “pay” with other things of value like their time.

Lotteries were easily games by sock puppets.

Lotteries with “strong” identity verification created grey markets for identities. Think about mechanical Turk but peoples task is to get a lottery ticket and remit the winnings.

People tried social credit systems where participating in community activities like discords earned you the spot in line. Again, services arose to farm these spots.

Fascinating microcosm of human behavior.

I agree with commenters that suggest refundable non-transferable tickets however, for goods this scarce where a secondary market is valuable, I don’t think we have a simple good solution.

8note5• 4 years ago

The block chain imposes limits that ticket sales don't have.

The cost of meat space sock puppets is much higher than coming up with a billion secret keys

bluelightning2k• 4 years ago

Hard not to read this as "I have a lot of money. I shouldn't have to wait in line with commoners!"

Sorry for the almost political comment but that's how it hit me

barnabask5• 4 years ago

That was not my intention, sorry. Thanks for your perspective.

e12e• 4 years ago

Meh. I like the Fusion Festival raffle system better.

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

mrozbarry• 4 years ago

This isn't to be argumentative, but life isn't fair. This article discusses how to make buying a Taylor Swift ticket fair, meanwhile there are much larger social issues, like homelessness. I'm not a concert guy, and all the more power to those who do enjoy it, but it's absolutely a luxury to those that want to go.

alexchamberlain• 4 years ago

Is the algorithm proposed fair in that sense? I'd argue it isn't anyway.

e-clinton• 4 years ago

This model assumes that everyone is just sitting around paying attention to your concern tickets. If I see your prices are $2000/seat, I will just find somewhere else go spend my $300.

tamaharbor• 4 years ago

Is Taylor Swift that good? I must be very old.

jethkl2• 4 years ago

Yes. "As of 2022, Swift has broken 84 Guinness World Records, of which 13 times she broke her own record or regained it, and 74 remain unbroken." [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_awards_and_nominations...

jethkl2• 4 years ago

Weird that this got downvoted. In response to "Is ${artist} that good?", I link to an objective list of awards and accolades showing that ${artist} is very good at their job. Compare Swift's success against the Beatles, Dolly Parton [1,2] or anybody else, and it's a very strong showing. If you don't like the art, that's a completely different matter. But in the sense of whether Swift is good in the way that matters here, the answer is clearly, "Yes."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_awards_and_nominations...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_awards_and_nominations...

Euphorbium• 4 years ago

Interesting how there is absolutely none of this problem in Europe, as tickets are tied to an ID and there is no reselling or scalping.

dottedmag• 4 years ago

In Estonia, Germany, Malta or Iceland?

I have never had a ticket tied to ID anywhere in Europe.

leejo• 4 years ago

We attended a few gigs in Italy this summer. Two of them we bought tickets first hand, they were indeed tied to a name with ID required. Was ID checked? Nope, of course not. One was a medium sized venue (3000), one a stadium, and one small (c. 300).

Tying to an ID is a nice idea in principal...

Another gig we bought tickets second hand, the seller had to go through the original site to return their tickets and then we could purchase them (I wrote a script to poll the site to find available tickets as they had sold out quickly). Did they check our IDs? Nope, of course not.

Requiring ID and having to return the tickets to the original site for resale is probably the optimal solution. But in reality if IDs are not checked it pretty much falls apart.

throwawaaarrgh• 4 years ago

Burning Man-style ticket sale systems require a lot of extra workflow features, like a waiting room, ticket claim, raffle selection, identity confirmation. They have multiple phases of sales where the price increases. They have hardship tickets, if you can prove you simply can't afford the normal price.

Resale for above original value is not allowed, and if you're reported the ticket may be forfeit and original seller banned. You can transfer a ticket to another person using their ticket management system, and I imagine you could also "sell back" your ticket to be given away at the box office as hardship tickets.

Most people do buy as many as they can and sell or give away the extras to their friends or people on forums looking for tickets. While controversial, it is nice to go to an event with your friends, and it does feel like you're helping strangers who are interested enough that they hunt around on forums for a ticket.

Spooky232• 4 years ago

I have an idea. Hire a bunch of lobbyists to advocate legalizing scalping, then allow the biggest monopolist ticketing middleman to setup the largest resale marketplace.

Then, we act surprised when “hackers” somehow are able to defeat the anti-bot systems and resell (with another set of fees) bulk quantities of tickets on said resale marketplace.

TarasBob3• 4 years ago

The process needs to be modified slightly. Everyone should end up paying the same amount for the ticket in the end. Those who bought early should not be penalized. When the the last ticket is sold, everyone should pay the same price as the last ticket. So when you buy early, you are just indicating the Maximum price you are willing to pay.

There should also be an option to automatically place a bid once the price reaches a certain level.

That’s the most fair way to auction off a bunch of identical things.

Another modification I would add to this is that let’s say 20% of the tickets should be sold for very cheap using a lottery system. So that not only the richest people could go to the concert.

TarasBob3• 4 years ago

Also, if the artist doesn’t want to maximize their profits through this auction mechanism, the extra money received should be donated to charity.

TarasBob3• 4 years ago

The mechanism should also include the possibility of figuring out the optimal venue size in advance. I’m not sure what’s the right way to modify it in order to accomplish this goal.

fedeb95• 4 years ago

Depends of the definition of "fair". To me, giving away infinite free tickets to interested people and then extract with a uniform distribution would be fair. Of course you need to provide some kind of ID and go at the concert with that. Comes the problem of fake ID, but that seems negligible.

SergeAx• 4 years ago

I have a very valid question: if this method was used to sell tulips in XVII, how it can be patented in 2020?

FateOfNations7• 4 years ago

Probably something specific about applying it to concert tickets and/or over the internet. In the US, patents are good for 20 years, so a patent expiring in 2020 would have been issued during the dot-com bubble.

Also, although the patent office does review the applications, they aren't perfect: it isn't uncommon for patents to be invalidated if they are challenged or there's a lawsuit.

zelienople• 4 years ago

It's not the ticket system that is broken; it's the people.

The problem with stadium tours is that 95 percent or more of the seats are awful. They provide an extremely poor concert experience.

The sound is very bad for most of the audience. Many technological innovations in stadium sound have tried to address this, but the underlying physics has been resistant to an acceptable solution.

The visuals are even worse. An enormous fraction of the audience cannot resolve the headliner on stage as a result of the size of the performer and the distance to the viewer. The visuals then devolve to the viewers ability to see an enormous television screen.

So why would anyone want to go to a stadium show, if not for the visuals and the audio?

It comes down to human competitiveness. Bragging rights. Ingesting mass media nonsense about how a product or experience will make one feel, and then disgorging it to a peer group as a method of creating an artificial distinction between the "haves" and the "have-nots".

Taylor Swift, in particular, has been a genius at creating hysteria among her fans. They have ingested the idea that, if Taylor is in town, and you are not there, then you are a resident of the outer, miserable, darkness.

The truth, however, is that if you attend a stadium show, the only positive aspect is that you "were there". You will not see, hear, or in any meaningful way, experience the object of your hysteria. You will be packed into a seat with a group of strangers also experiencing a mass-media induced mental derangement.

The foregoing may lead you to believe that I am not a fan, but you would be wrong. My opinion was formed by the experience of going to all the Taylor Swift stadium tours, up to a certain point.

What changed was that I stopped fighting Ticketmaster at one point. I opted out and did not buy a ticket. However, I still wanted to go to the show. All seats were prohibitively expensive on the secondary market; good seats, even more so.

There were two shows in my city on subsequent nights. The first night, I watched prices on the scalper sites and I discovered that, in the last few minutes before the start time of the show, prices for even the best seats tumbled dramatically.

This was simple economics; unsold seats are a cost that subtracts from overall profit. It makes sense to dump them for any amount, even at a loss.

The second night, I waited until the price for a single front-row seat fell below the original price of the least expensive seat anywhere. I bought it, printed my ticket, and went to the show.

This was a transformative experience because I was literally a few metres from the stage. I could get out of my seat and stand by the barricades and see and hear as if the show was at at my neighbourhood folk club or an open mic night. I then turned around, with Taylor directly behind me, and I could see the view of a packed stadium waving lights and singing along, just like what those on stage would see.

I learned the difference between what the few who had the money or influence to obtain the best seats experience, and what the great majority of stadium show concert-goers endure.

I was cured. I have never, since that day, had any desire to attend a stadium show or buy a ticket for a standard seat in any large venue.

Unfortunately, it isn't really practical to educate a significant fraction of fans by demonstrating this.

Maybe there is a technological solution, though. If we could arrange for people to have a feed from a front row observer in fully immersive VR, we could perhaps recreate enough of the experience that the rush to purchase a grossly substandard product would diminish.

There are probably significant economic forces that would oppose this (Ticketmaster, obviously) because education is often the enemy of mass-market driven capitalism.

The longer-term solution is probably to recognize that the innate social behaviour of humans has been exploited to our total destruction by those who would hoard all wealth for themselves, and to begin another great eugenics experiment: breeding selfishness, conflict and the tendency to self-destructive herd behaviour out of the human genome, But that is beyond the scope of this discussion.

stevage2• 4 years ago

Interestingly a major band I saw last night, Crowded House, just came out against any kind of demand driven pricing, and forced TicketMaster to refund all premium ticket charges.

milderworkacc• 4 years ago

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.

wkdneidbwf• 4 years ago

a dutch auction seems neither fair nor in line with how artists would want their tickets sold.

sure, some artists may want as much money as they can make but surely the majority want their fans to be able to see them affordably? at least, i hope.

asurty2• 4 years ago

I think ticket master attempted to do something similar to what you were saying as mentioned in this freakonimics podcast -

https://freakonomics.com/podcast/why-is-the-live-event-ticke...

I believe the problem they cited with this approach is it provides a poor UX where someone would have to keep checking the site to see if the ticket price has hit their desired target.

It would also still leave room for bots front running although still a better solution since the effects are dampened. Still, it's a lot easier for a bot to watch for a 'good price' to come up than a 'true fan'.

Perhaps to get around that there could also be an ability to make automatic purchases for a user once the ticket price reaches desired target? Something like a batch auction that randomizes winners in a cohort might work.

There are also people working in this area that would like to simply prevent resales. The problem there is it also might discourage purchases since people might be more reluctant to make such a big purchase if there is no way to recoup their money in case something happens that prevents them from going.

Perhaps another alternative to discourage scalping is if there was an identity system that requires each ticket holder to prove their identity. That, however, would also decrease the UX dramatically and would be a tough sell. But maybe the time is right to make such a hard sell?

type-r2• 4 years ago

Setting aside the issues that revenue maximization is not typically the only (or even the main) concern for those selling tickets, I still think this system isn't very good. One key issue is that it assumes that the underlying value of the tickets themselves does not change over time (in the article's specific case, 6 months). But an artist's popularity can be extremely unpredictable, and over the course of 6 months could change drastically. This would likely mean leaving money on the table, especially if that rise in popularity comes close to the actual event date.

I think a better approach that could deal with this would be to avoid trying to come up with the 'max' and 'min' amounts and instead simply let people submit bids for how much they are willing to pay for tickets. You would pre-authorize that amount at order time, but it wouldn't yet be deducted. At the end of every day, the top n bids would 'win' and actually actually purchase the ticket.

In the simple case where the artist's popularity stays the same over time, this would probably result in a similar outcome to OP's suggestion. But if the artist undergoes a big increase in popularity, the ticket price would rise again to a much higher value later.

How to sell tickets fairly

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