Why scalpers can get tickets

https://www.404media.co/why-scalpers-can-get-olivia-rodrigo-tickets-and-fans-cannot/

by bookofjoe • 3 years ago

251 463 3 years ago

Nothing new here. I remember when the Cubs stopped selling tickets via a line wrapped around Wrigley to a wristband "to cut down on scalpers". I lucked out and ended up 57th in line. You could only buy 4 tickets per game so in theory only 240 tickets would have been sold by the time I got to buy. I was only looking for bleacher seats (cheap and fun at the time) and there were about 5000 seats available. By the time I got to buy every weekend bleacher seat was sold out with the exception of April, May and September. Who bought the other 4700 seats? The answer of course was the scalpers. Back then (90's) bleacher seats were $12 and the ball park was down the block so it was a nice option on the weekend to go see the game, have a few beers (4 for $18), it wasn't much more expensive than going to the movies. Now it's $35 for the same seat and beers are $18 each, Wrigley is still down the block but at those prices I'll just catch the matinee for $12 and a $12 popcorn.

xnx• 3 years ago

Based on nothing, I think tickets for high-demand events should be allocated: 1/3 first-come first-serve for in-person sales (you pay with your time), 1/3 random assignment (you have to get lucky), 1/3 auction to highest bidder (pay with your money).

rahimnathwani• 3 years ago

The article addresses the problem with random assignment: each scalper can enter the lottery hundreds of times, but each regular person can enter only once.

ukoki2• 3 years ago

Just have the lottery entry application ask a name. Then check IDs on the door

pimlottc• 3 years ago

1/3 first-come first-serve for in-person sales (you pay with your time)

You can pay people to wait in line for you

1/3 random assignment (you have to get lucky)

Scalpers have the means to can create hundreds of accounts

nayuki12• 3 years ago

Good points. Then, I guess the solution is that only auctioned tickets can be anonymous, whereas queued and lottery tickets must be sold to the real name of the person who requested it.

slau3• 3 years ago

Make the tickets named, and require ID upon entry. Completely kill the resale market.

If people can’t make it, they can return the ticket for the same amount of money they bought it, up to one week before the event. Or they can get cancellation insurance just like some would on holiday plane tickets. Returned tickets go back on sale into the main pool.

As far as I can tell, the scalping problem would be gone instantly.

But there’s a reason nobody is doing it: they’re making money hand over fist.

bagels• 3 years ago

In the time of box offices, ticket scalpers still thrived.

kelnos8• 3 years ago

Their operations were much smaller, though, and arguably they affected overall ticket prices much less. There are only so many hours in the day for you to wait in line (or pay someone else to wait for you) to get tickets. And standing outside the venue for hours trying to sell your tickets is a high-touch, labor-intensive process.

Some of these scalper sites sell tickets that they don't even have yet, which helps give them the capital to actually buy the tickets later.

nayuki12• 3 years ago

This sounds like the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_Marathon . It has different entry classes such as lottery, previous participant, or pay a high price.

hackeraccount3• 3 years ago

It's been a long time since I did that but they also had a deal where if you ran a certain number of local NY races you got the chance to buy a bib number. Come to think of it I think you can also get a chance to buy if you have a fast enough time in a qualifying race.

josephcsible2• 3 years ago

Why do the organizations putting on events like these leave so much money on the table? Why don't they just charge the market-clearing price themselves, leaving no room for scalpers to make any profit?

capableweb• 3 years ago

Artists generally want to have a diverse crowd in terms of disposable income, they don't want to have a crowd of just the people who can/will pay the most.

reidjs• 3 years ago

I don’t think the artist has much say in the matter at that scale

Buttons840• 3 years ago

Triple the ticket price but give half away by lottery. Although, I guess scalpers ruin lotteries as well :(

fps-hero2• 3 years ago

Every action directed at making tickets more affordable will have the opposite effect of making scalping more profitable. Im amazed that a reverse auction style approach hasn’t caught on, when you are capacity limited it seems nearly optimal for extracting profit and kills the ticket scalping business model.

hooverd2• 3 years ago

I don't know if artists negotiate ranges on ticket prices. But I assume most would want to make an acceptable amount of money and allow most of their fans to afford tickets, not just the rich ones.

nickelpro• 3 years ago

Most of their fans aren't going to the show at all. Demand far outstrips supply.

In effect the number of less wealthy fans who can get into a show is a lottery. Ideally you would do just that, lottery off some tickets at affordable rates and sell the rest at market rate.

But the market has adjusted to that too and re-sellers dominate such lotteries. If you offer the opportunity for arbitrage, the market will take advantage of that opportunity.

So just sell at market rate, cut out the re-sellers entirely.

mattnewton2• 3 years ago

Ticket revenue is just one source for the artist who is betting they make more from the lifetime value of a fan buying their brand (merch and historically listening to their music, but I don’t know if streaming changed those numbers). It’s like a giant advertisement for their brand - early on in a band’s life, it can even be a loss leader after all the crew is paid.

A key part of that concert experience is other people’s excitement too. For one extreme, a Grateful Dead show was basically a mini festival with one act. The crowd before, after and during is an integral part of the experience. Empty seats don’t tell others about the event or participate with the other ticket holders, degrading the value for artists and many concert-goers.

So, a Dead show that sells just a few hundred many-many-thousand-dollar tickets might sit on a maximum supply / demand curve for the venue or scalpers just looking at ticket revenue, but could destroy much of the value of the event for the band and it’s everyday fans who want the event experience and want it for as many people as possible.

username3322112• 3 years ago

For the same reason why artists use Ticketmaster. Do you think they are stupid and just hand over ticket distribution to a company that routinely charges 30$ fees to a 40$ ticket?

No, artists and producers aren't stupid, they get the most of the money from the Ticketmaster "fees". But when a fan sees a 70$ ticket, they'd may decide Bruce Springsteen (net worth 650$ million) isn't a man of the people. When they see a 40$ ticket and a 30$ ticket, fans just swear at Ticketmaster.

I'm confident in a few years we'll read about how scalping enterprises do profit sharing with artists and producers.

bradleyankrom• 3 years ago

Artists do not get most of the money from Ticketmaster fees.

readams• 3 years ago

Ticketmaster is mostly in the business of being the company that everyone hates so the artists can pretend to be helpless and of the people.

mattmaroon13• 3 years ago

This is not how concerts work, and artists and producers don't get any money from Ticketmaster fees. In most cases, a promoter pays an artist a flat fee to perform. The promoter then markets the show and gets the ticket sales, and Ticketmaster gets Ticketmaster fees.

Unfortunately Ticketmaster is owned by LiveNation, and they are far and away the biggest promoter. They sign exclusive rights with large venues. My local 25,000 seat amphitheater has a deal with LiveNation. I can only get tickets to shows there through Ticketmaster.

Artists hate Ticketmaster too (some have sued them) but if you want to do an arena tour, good luck avoiding them. Artists use them because they don't have a choice. The number of large venues that don't use TM is growing, my local basketball arena uses SeatGeek.

The one concession TM makes is to their fan clubs. Artists get to sell tickets directly to a limited number of fans. If you love an artist, joining their fan club will probably save you the annual fee back in one show.

scott_w2• 3 years ago

Because, ironically, a show that only rich people can afford to attend will be pretty terrible. Rich people tend not to loudly enjoy the show, so the atmosphere isn't there. This is bad for the rest of the audience and for the performer. It's hard to put 100% in when all you can see is a bunch of people staring solemnly at you.

It happens in football (soccer for my American friends) for clubs like Man Utd (and probably Man City now) where ticket prices are out of reach of working class fans. The visiting fans make a point of trying to out-sing the local support then insulting them for only being there because the club is winning trophies. All football fans know the song "where were you when you were shit!"

peteradio• 3 years ago

Why is it that rich people are solemnly staring in general? You'd think they'd be whooping it up on account of being made.

jvm___• 3 years ago

Toronto Maple Leafs games too, if you're watching wearing a suit because you're actually using it as a client bribe, then you're not as into the game as you could be.

ActorNightly• 3 years ago

You can do dynamic pricing. Have a reasonably strong identifier ticket app that is tied to a device, ip address, voice print id, and phone number. Have people put in bids for the ticket (with a minimum floor price), weigh each bid by some determination of "fan strength", like willingness to travel larger distance to see a show, then select winners based on a bell curve distribution of bids.

keltex• 3 years ago

Related article: The reason why Billy Joel refuses to sell front row seats at his concerts

https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/reason-why-billy-joel-refuses-s...

petepete• 3 years ago

Rich people tend not to loudly enjoy the show, so the atmosphere isn't there

These people were so eloquently described by Manchester United captain Roy Keane, as 'the prawn sandwich brigade'.

envsubst2• 3 years ago

Rich people tend not to loudly enjoy the show, so the atmosphere isn't there

Citation needed.

Rich people are the main audience at all organized events of all kinds. Do you think you can take you and your kids to an NFL game if you're poor? The main attendees of Taylor swift? Women in late 20s - mid 30s working corporate jobs.

BazookaMusic• 3 years ago

They might be doing that already by acting as scalpers. I don't see why the solution isn't simply what airlines are doing where you register a ticket to a name and it's non-transferable.

ajb• 3 years ago

Well, one reason is that it would let venues in for a lot more work to properly check everyone's ID. At an airport, Homeland Security pays for that part

Both venues and airlines normally segment the market by how good a seat you get.

sneak• 3 years ago

Because the majority of the fans wouldn't be able to afford to go.

This damages the act's fan base, which in turn negatively affects future revenues via streaming, merchandise, co-branding, and future ticket sales.

ChadNauseam2• 3 years ago

The logic doesn't quite work because the same number of people would get to go in either scenario

supportengineer• 3 years ago

Rolex has the exact same problem.

bbreier• 3 years ago

Rolex actively engineers this situation, though

delusional• 3 years ago

I think live performance music is still one of the few things in this hyper capitalist world directed by the performers. I base this absolutely no information expect the interviews I've seen, but it's my impression that performers are heavily involved with everything in a live performance, including the price setting.

That is to say. I think the artist just like the idea of the tickets being affordable to allow their younger and less well off fans access.

I think any argument here has to acknowledge the artists rights in this. Charging more might alleviate the issue, but if private ownership of the performance is to have any meaning, it must include the right to set a price below the market rate. If the artist wants to be "economically inefficient" we as a society must protect that right.

TylerE5• 3 years ago

Oh lawd.

Most venues ARE hypercapitalists.

That club down on the corner where the cool touring bands play? They take a 15-20% cut on the hands merch in exchange for the oh so vauablr service of providing maybe a beat up old folding table.

analog31• 3 years ago

From a cynical marketing standpoint, the perceived composition of the audience is part of the product. The same is true, oddly enough, for universities. Whom you're sitting next to matters, or whom others think you're sitting next to.

fallingknife• 3 years ago

Great point. Harvard could charge $500K per year and easily fill out their classes, but they never will because their value proposition epends on being perceived as the smartest, not the richest.

nerdjon• 3 years ago

Then the view of greed falls on the organization and the artists instead of on scalpers.

It also is up in the air of the market value is really what people are paying or if it’s being inflated by scalpers. Some people will pay it but I don’t think it’s an accurate view of what the price should be in that situation.

But we saw exactly this with the recent Lorcana release. Local game stores acted like scalpers charging scalper prices, it is hurting the perception of the game of what normal prices are.

charcircuit6• 3 years ago

It also is up in the air of the market value is really what people are paying or if it’s being inflated by scalpers

Then use some form of a Dutch auction to sell them.

kortilla6• 3 years ago

The scalpers can only charge what people buy it for though. So whatever the scalpers are paying are what the people are willing to pay on average. (This assumes there are any successful scalpers and it’s not just a continuously losing game)

fach• 3 years ago

Agreed. With the recent Taylor Swift fiasco, if she charged $2k a ticket, she would be viewed as some nightmare of capitalism. Instead, she gets to hide under the guise of ticketmaster since she sold tickets at a lower dollar cost only to be resold at a market clearing price. I have anecdata to say some people won the initial lottery and paid a few hundred for floor seats when the large majority needed to pay the market clearing price on the secondary market. I'd posit this is the real purpose of ticketmaster's monopoly: In exchange for their exclusivity agreements with large venues and artists, thus filling stadiums and providing kick backs, they allow themselves to become the target of venom from the larger market instead of the artists themselves.

sasaf5• 3 years ago

How much "view of greed" has fallen on airline companies for fluctuating the price of their seats based on demand?

Sure thing it makes buying air tickets a lot more stressful, but we do get low cost trips if we plan ahead, or a much-needed last time seat if we can afford it.

wredue• 3 years ago

Because people will pay huge amount more regardless.

Kind of like how when the 4090 released and was being instantly scalped at every website it popped up on then resold for double to triple retail, and yet thousands of redditors were magically “just stumbling on to one totally randomly, oh and my 2050 also sold for $1200!!”

djitz• 3 years ago

They get the service fees for the original sale, and any subsequent ridiculously priced resale made on the platform

xkjyeah2• 3 years ago

there's no market clearing price in the market for concert tickets. the scalpers would exercise perfect price discrimination if they could.

josephcsible2• 3 years ago

there's no market clearing price in the market for concert tickets.

How do you figure? Are you using a nonstandard definition of "market clearing price"?

the scalpers would exercise perfect price discrimination if they could.

So what?

rtpg• 3 years ago

Because while the point is to make money, the point is not to maximize the earnings for tours. Instead, it's to make enough to make it worthwhile, while giving fans "what they want". Artists care about doing fun/good/cool stuff!

This is similar to stuff like auctions to have dinners with certain successful people. Those people have many dinners where they don't ask for a bunch of money from the participant, because then they would only have boring dinners!

phone8675309• 3 years ago

The cynical side of me says that they do this to minimize what they have to pay the band for touring - some dodge where perhaps they only pay the band based on what the face value of the tickets are.

Spooky23• 3 years ago

Not every event is Taylor Swift and prices are dynamic.

Great example: I bought a bunch of tickets to take my little league to a Mets game, which turned out to be the game where David Wright retired. I sold the leftover tickets, which I purchased for between $12 and $30, for a minimum of $350. We built a batting cage with the proceeds.

On the other side, whenever I’m in the city for a few days, I’ll try to score a cheap premium ticket from a season ticket holder who can’t make the game - and frequently do.

IMO the biggest issue with tickets is that it’s 2023 and we live in a pseudo libertarian business climate. It’s a market that should be regulated, as the ticket platform has an incentive to optimize their own self-dealing. The platform gets a vig for each transfer, so maximizing transactions is the optimal path. I worked for a company whose successful entry into event ticketing prompted a buyout by Ticketmaster.

nomilk• 3 years ago

I was thinking about this recently, and came up with two possible reasons:

1. The enjoyment of attendees can be partly dependent on the enthusiasm of other attendees. Consider the extremes: an audience entirely comprised of people who hardly know the artist, but can afford it Vs an audience comprised of only die-hard fans, irrespective of their ability to afford a ticket. The first has a flat atmosphere, the second, a special one.

2. A simple desire by the artist to make their show available to a cross-section of society (this could be viewed as altruistic, since most other products/services don't usually offer the same thing at a lower price just to help those who can't afford it).

A possible solution to problem 1: If the goal is to ensure that only die-hard fans get the tickets, why not use their spotify/apple music/other histories to work out who's really a fan of that artist? It should be trivial to get a very high degree of accuracy, and would be costly for scalpers to imitate (they'd need a subscription and to listen to random music years in advance).

cdchn2• 3 years ago

Guess if you don't use a streaming music service you're SOL seeing an artist you look. This is such a Hacker News suggestion.

nonethewiser3• 3 years ago

The enjoyment of attendees can be partly dependent on the enthusiasm of other attendees. Consider the extremes: an audience entirely comprised of people who hardly know the artist, but can afford it Vs an audience comprised of only die-hard fans, irrespective of their ability to afford a ticket. The first has a flat atmosphere, the second, a special one.

Higher ticket prices would lead to more diehard fans

A simple desire by the artist to make their show available to a cross-section of society

But if scalping is a problem then making tickets cheap doesn’t accomplish this.

In total, this seems to point towards raising initial prices with negative consequence.

imtringued2• 3 years ago

Because the premium customers only listen to popular artists and the artist needs fremium fodder to make the artist popular.

aschobel• 3 years ago

Ticketmaster now requires text message phone number verification, but they can bypass this by buying “Mobile Virtual Network Operator” phone numbers in bulk from eBay

I’m surprised SMS verification is this ineffective at testing for “human-ness”.

thfuran• 3 years ago

SMS are plaintext that can be obtained via web API. It seems on the face of it to be just about the least effective possible means of verifying human-ness.

AnthonyMouse12• 3 years ago

The reason SMS verification is popular isn't because it's effective against sybil attacks. It's not. You can get access to phone numbers in bulk for little money.

It's because most honest users only have one phone number, which makes it a useful unique ID for tracking the honest users. Anyone using it should immediately be under suspicion of selling you out.

kmeisthax• 3 years ago

The problem is that we're not testing for human-ness, we're testing for uniqueness. What we want is a button that, when pressed by a particular person, gives them one ticket, and then stops giving them tickets. This requires positive identification of each person buying tickets, which means spending lots of money to prevent people from obtaining multiple identifications.

I suspect verifying government IDs would be a viable uniqueness criterion, except the only thing those IDs can buy you is voting rights in a particular country, which are usually worthless, so these systems aren't attacked. Now imagine if we decided that Taylor Swift ticket purchases had to be verified with ID. You could see, say, a particular country in the global south deciding they're going to just invent people on paper to go buy Taylor Swift tickets specifically so they can scalp them on the open market.

The underlying problem is that so long as a particular economic opportunity exists, whoever is trusted to stop that opportunity from being exploited has an incentive to stab you in the back. Mobile network operators were never intended to be a 2FA code delivery system or Sybil resistance system, so they will totally just let people SIM-swap you or sell numbers in bulk to spammers, because not doing so was never in their job description and their business is not built to defend against such things.

danaris• 3 years ago

At least in the US, a government-issued ID

a) is not required to vote in many places (and pushing for that requirement is, in fact, one of the major methods of classist/racist voter suppression), and

b) is required to do various other things, like purchase alcohol, drive, or buy plane tickets.

Due to (b), there is already a thriving black market in fake IDs for various reasons, and of various qualities.

Government-issued ID systems are absolutely attacked, fairly aggressively.

carlosjobim3• 3 years ago

The ID is for showing when you enter the venue to enjoy the show. When purchasing you just need to give your name.

jsnell• 3 years ago

It depends on how much money there's to be made, just like every other counter-abuse measure.

Proof of work is useful for protecting things worth like a thousandth of a cent per transaction. Captchas for something worth 1/10th of a cent. Phone number verification for something worth $0.1-$1. Real-world presence and real-world id checks for things worth $100.

The amount of money you can make scalping tickets is way higher than that, so it's not a useful defense. Doubly so when the cost of the phone verification isn't even per-transaction, but once per account.

For the ticketmaster case, I think what you'd want is some kind of proof of stable liveness at every transaction. It's easy enough to game proof of liveness, or proof of unique identity, at account creation time. Just the classic method of paying people at a parking lot $5 to pass a "wave to the webcam" captcha. But they can't get those same people back for another captcha every time they want to use that account for another ticket. (Though it's possible that deepfakes have rendered webcam captchas effectively worthless in the last year or two, I don't know where the state of the art on deepfake detection for this kind of usecase is.)

_lvbh• 3 years ago

I use smspool for non-voip numbers. Very effective.

hedora4• 3 years ago

I'm pretty sure they do this so they can sell your personal information.

I avoid them whenever possible, but I recently bought a ticket for an event weeks after they went on sale (there was essentially no activity on the map of available tickets that day).

They "unknown error"'ed me at the end of the purchase flow (inside their reservation timeout window). 60 seconds later, the tickets I had tried to purchase were being resold by a scalper.

So, whatever their API is, it allows scalpers to get a feed of tickets that are in the middle of being purchased, then to buy them in the reservation window and offer them for resale with super human speed.

That company is clearly run by crooks. They've repeatedly been brought under investigation for exactly this behavior (for over a decade), so presumably, they are also good at paying out bribes.

hooverd2• 3 years ago

Scalping is such an ugly term for "the market efficiently allocating resources." This is just completely normal price discovery. /s

nayuki12• 3 years ago

I would take off the "/s", because I agree with your statement at face value.

If there are a limited number of tickets but many thousands of fans who are willing and able to pay, then naturally the price goes up. And whether you like it or not, people are either paying with money, or paying with time (e.g. waiting in line), or paying with frustration (e.g. going through opaque scalping networks).

The root cause of the problem isn't scalpers; it's the original concert seller either setting too low a price or too low a quantity.

MSFT_Edging• 3 years ago

The root cause of the problem isn't scalpers; it's the original concert seller either setting too low a price or too low a quantity.

Imagine viewing a pricing scheme that allows more socioeconomic groups access to the arts as the core problem.

We're experiencing a great decline and fall as social services are failing, wages stagnating, and common cultural experiences are being squeezed for profit, only enabling the richest among us to experience any kind of common social event.

And of course, the response is "keep increasing prices until its unbearable", just like we're doing with rent and housing prices, and calling this efficient.

Inflating prices until few can afford it isn't efficient, its just short sighted greed.

Finding a way to suppress prices and remove scalpers is a net benefit for the artists, venues, and patrons.

armada6512• 3 years ago

The problem with raising the prices is that people are willing to pay so much for a ticket exactly because they're difficult to get.

If the tickets were actually easily obtainable but more expensive then paradoxically people wouldn't be willing to pay as much for the ticket because of a perceived loss of value.

And as mentioned in the other reply, many people disagree with the "greed is good" philosophy, hence the /s.

whartung• 3 years ago

In the past I would routinely pay ticket brokers so as to have a better selection of seats, and to not have to deal with the "on sale" crush. Yes, of course I paid more, and I paid for the convenience, but I don't think I ever paid more than 50% of the face value.

I was a dedicated concert goer back in the day, having spent a lot of time in ticket lines. By time I started, "sleeping overnight" was pretty much over with as an hour or so before the sale, the staff would come out, hand out wrist bands, and then say "#123 is the front of the line" with the 123 being some (I guess random) number from the range of wrist bands they gave out, and everyone else would line up, with #122 wrapping around and being behind whatever the highest band that went out. The premise being there was no reason to show up much more than just before the onsale time, since your arrival time was no guarantee of line position.

Similarly, at one venue, they simply handed out numbers, low number wins. After we picked ours up, there was a guy on the edge willing to buy low numbers.

I was once first in line, but the tickets I got were underwhelming, which made me more cynical about the buying process.

Then, there was that one time, my poor wife, bought us some tickets. There was no way she could have known. There was no way anyone, really, could have known. It was a typical amphitheater layout, and she got the last row of the middle section. When you buy tickets during the mad rush of the opening sale, you just get what they give you, there's really no time to pick or choose.

Amphitheaters tend to be reasonably steep, with the seat in front of you lower, by, perhaps, a foot, so as to offer mostly unhindered sight lines to the stage. But the venue, at some point added a row of seats that were directly behind the row in front of it, with no offset, essentially offering NO view of the stage. It was just awful, and there's nothing she could have done about it.

In the end, I just learned to use a broker for most of the shows I saw. It was a much saner experience, I could pick seats, I could judge value, I could apply intangibles.

Thankfully, the bands I see today are cheap and unpopular, and the sports tickets I just buy from the stadium.

jessenaser2• 3 years ago

The problem is that the first hand the ticket touches is a reseller instead of a person that genuinely wants and enjoys the concert.

If the price is set from the Artist, venue, Ticketmaster at prices from $50-200 then they have made that decision.

The local mini libraries on the sides of streets have free books. You could take a book and sell it, but you are not the intended person. The intention of the transaction is for the genuine reader to read the book, put it back, or give new books. This intention is set by the originator of the transaction.

If the Artist wanted the most money, they would set the price accordingly.

thriftwy2• 3 years ago

Why not raise prices until you hit the supply demand cross? Yes you will visit one event out of three (just as today), but the dignity will remain with you.

mattnewton2• 3 years ago

I posted this elsewhere in the thread[0], but tldr I believe that concerts give value to fans and artists beyond the ticket price as a giant ad for the band’s brand and a community that forms around it, both pressures that put the optimal price for fans and artists below the market for it as a one time entertainment option. The optimal price point for the artist playing a repeated game is therefore lower than the optimal price point for an event venue or scalper.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=37624742&goto=item%3Fi...

thriftwy2• 3 years ago

This only works if buying that ticket does not become a nuisanse.

conductr2• 3 years ago

Given the tickets often are going on sale a year ahead of the events, they have plenty of time to just price them high and adjust prices down (or up) to satisfy or drive demand. The concept that the tickets all have a face value that’s fixed for all seats (or a couple grouping of) is kinda the weird part to me. The pricing should work like plane tickets. It’s not a market in its purest form and I think that’s ok. I see that coming with lots of issues too.

chevman• 3 years ago

Protip I've used the last couple years (worked before that as well, but not as much need) - just check StubHub or other second hand markets a week or so before the show.

Generally the scalpers over buy and will start to panic and unload tickets at very good prices the closer the show gets.

crazygringo• 3 years ago

This is not true at all as a general rule.

It all comes down to whether or not there's enough demand to fill the venue.

If there's plenty of demand, StubHub prices will remain much higher than face value. They absolutely do not ever become available at good prices.

On the other hand, if the venue is larger than demand, then yes -- you can easily score half-price tickets a few days leading up to the show.

But good luck trying to figure out which one will be the outcome. If you delay purchasing, prices are just as likely to keep going up as they are to go down.

kelnos8• 3 years ago

I guess this sort of advice is good for the kind of person who sees a show coming up, and thinks it would be cool to go, but is completely fine missing it if the price isn't on the lower end.

SoftTalker5• 3 years ago

Yes if it's a large/unlimited capacity venue this is a good approach. I was at an outdoor festival recently and people were basically giving away tickets on the day of the show.

clircle• 3 years ago

Why are tickets priced too low?

davidlee1435• 3 years ago

Because artists care about public image, which will be affected if their tickets price out economically disadvantaged fans.

firesteelrain2• 3 years ago

I don’t know if I buy the premise of the article. We were able to have an opportunity to buy tickets after being waitlisted (I think it was 48-72hrs after the initial presale). But the tickets were extremely expensive. Ticketmaster was scalping not the scalpers.

We did buy Taylor Swift tickets for next year however it was $1k for three tickets.

nayuki12• 3 years ago

Ticketmaster was scalping not the scalpers.

If I understand correctly, the definition of scalping is to buy and sell quickly in the hope of a profit. Ticketmaster is the originator of the tickets (it is not reselling from anyone else), so it cannot be a scalper.

You can't just make up meanings and assume that scalping means selling at an uncomfortably high price.

costco2• 3 years ago

Ticketmaster has something called Official Platinum seats where the prices are dynamic and roughly reflect market prices. See https://ticketmaster-us.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/978244...

Not all events have this though.

firesteelrain2• 3 years ago

Look don’t be a dick. I am just using an analogy

tornato73• 3 years ago

IMO, Comic Con has done a pretty fine job at eliminating scalpers. They do this in a few ways:

- Random selection over an hour at ticket sale time that is unique per device, with some 'are you human' checks along the way to make it more difficult to bot.

- Requiring physical delivery of the badge with a maximum number per address, or government issued ID to pick it up in person.

- Random ID checks during the con.

- The first round of sales goes exclusively to people who had a badge before. I.e. you need a code from the back of the badge. So even if you bought it from a scalper, you would now have the code for next year's presale.

None of these are perfect, but it's still the best ticketing process I've seen in recent years.

chii• 3 years ago

So even if you bought it from a scalper, you would now have the code for next year's presale.

i would imagine a scalper would record the code from the badge as well, before giving it to you. So this means they're going to be able to buy just as well, and may be invalidate the code before you get to use it!

tornato73• 3 years ago

Both the scalper and the buyer might be attempting to use the same code in the presale in that case. I'm not sure how they handle that but I imagine that invalidates it for both parties.

DrammBA2• 3 years ago

Not one measure is perfect, but together they do provide many layers of nuisance to deter scalpers.

hedora4• 3 years ago

If they wanted to eliminate scalping, they could just make the tickets returnable but non-refundable:

Put your name on the badge. If you want to sell it, they buy it back at face value minus a restocking fee, and then resell it at original price.

This would be much less of a pain in the ass for everyone involved.

giantrobot• 3 years ago

Once a venue/promoter/whatever has your money they do not want to give it back. They're not concerned with the secondary market so long as tickets sell. A venue is in the venue business, not the convention of concert business.

moritonal• 3 years ago

The Royal Albert Hall Proms let's you resell via them. If it resells you get your money back, no cost.

tornato73• 3 years ago

That is indeed how it works at comic con. But mind you, SDCC is a non-profit so they're not so strongly incentivized to promote reselling.

utterstep• 3 years ago

I just _love_ how the links to the "browsers which are helping scalpers" are marked with "?ref=404media.co"..

Just in case, you know..

jessenaser2• 3 years ago

I think they do that for every website they link to.

For example on this page: https://www.404media.co/ios-17-could-break-diabetic-glucose-...

They link to CNN using the same reference: https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/07/health/abbott-recall-freestyl...

cousin_it• 3 years ago

The reason why artists don't sell all tickets to rich people is because they think poor people deserve nice things too, so they lower the price. But surely all poor people deserve nice things, not only your fans? Why not sell tickets to rich people and then donate the proceeds to help poor people? It seems to me that this way everyone wins: artists take the same monetary hit they would've taken anyway if they lowered the price, but the difference goes to poor people instead of scalpers.

RugnirViking2• 3 years ago

Because they don't want to donate abstract money to abstract people in the third world, they want to see and talk to their most active and passionate fans

jaybrendansmith2• 3 years ago

I think unique identity is worth something. This is what the government (federal, state, local, doesn't matter) ought to have a role in protecting. If we had laws that said, for example, you must have proof of identity in the country or state or region where the arena is located, would that not solve this? We used to do it in the 90s by using phone area codes, and this worked pretty effectively: the early 90s was a golden age of low concert ticket prices.

nayuki12• 3 years ago

So tell international fans to f*ck off, right? I know many friends who fly to Japan to attend concerts because they genuinely like those artists. Way to stifle free trade and trample on people's preferences.

jaybrendansmith2• 3 years ago

Agree that's wouldn't be right ... but proof of identity should solve for both as long as there was reciprocity between governments.

phantomathkg• 3 years ago

In some countries, the ticket tied to government issued ID and that should reduce the scalper a bit I guess?

uptown• 3 years ago

This seems like a situation ideally suited for biometrics at time of purchase. It limits/complicates the hoarding of tickets and is likely something many actual fans would accept in order to secure tickets for an event.

hyldmo2• 3 years ago

I’m not going to speak on how this could be hard to implement in other countries, but in my country selling a ticket above the price it was bought for is illegal, and as a result (maybe there is other factors in in play but) it’s basically a non-issue here

notyourwork• 3 years ago

I’ve never heard this, what country?

hyldmo2• 3 years ago

Norway! I think it’s somewhat similar in the nearby countries, but I don’t know for sure. You’re not even allowed to add the ticketmaster fee to your reseller price, so it’s techincally cheaper to buy it second-hand

maeil• 3 years ago

South Korea too.

Symbiote3• 3 years ago

Also Denmark.

You can resell for the total price including fees, but no more.

https://www.consumereurope.dk/purchase-of-goods-and-services...

justinlkarr2• 3 years ago

100% correct.

In addition to being generally legal in the US, in key markets, resale cannot legally be constrained. A venue or artist cannot legally institute policies or practices to prohibit resale.

Even if resale were prohibited or technically impossible, it will not necessarily be any easier to get tickets to a high demand event as resale is only a factor when an event has enough demand to sell out far in advance of playing.

hedora4• 3 years ago

Resale is prohibited for (some?) ticketmaster events, unless you resell through Ticketmaster, allowing them to double-dip on the transaction fee.

So, it would be hard for them to make the argument you are making. They directly profit from resale (that they “can’t legally ban”) because their ban on resale is legal.

coding1232• 3 years ago

Make tickets online $500. When you arrive you're given a special ticket-locked voucher that lets you go back to the website and get $480 back (assuming tickets are still $20 like when I was 20 years old).

ip26• 3 years ago

Probably doesn’t work. Buyers would happily pay scalpers $550 knowing they will get $480 back.

coding1232• 3 years ago

The idea here is that the scalped ticket would not get the refund.

Scalper pays with their card

Someone purchases the ticket from the scalper

Venue distributes special code (short like 2 letters) that gets tied to your ticket.

If you go back to the website, and enter the code, it's not benefiting your credit card, but the scalpers. So if you purchase from an unauthorized person, you have no reason to enter the code.

Wrong code entered twice - lose your 480.

Numbers could be adjusted to make more sense for more people, as long as it makes the scalper ticket seem ridiculous.

kelnos8• 3 years ago

A lot of people who'd like to see the show don't have $500 they can float for that long.

A lot of the "solutions" presented end up making shows too expensive for a large portion of the artist's fans. That's not an outcome the artists want.

codelikeawolf3• 3 years ago

I quickly scanned the article, so I might have missed this, but can someone explain how sites like StubHub get away with what they do? As soon as I found out about them, I immediately thought "aren't these people just scalpers that offer tickets on the internet instead of standing out in front of venues?" If the argument is that they're not scalpers, they're resellers, then I'd like to try selling some concert tickets in a parking lot and see what happens if I made the same claim.

TylerE5• 3 years ago

Scalping is legal in most jurisdictions, sometimes with restrictions (“no selling within 1000ft of the venue for more than 20% over face”.

SoftTalker5• 3 years ago

As it should be, without restrictions. Basically First Sale doctrine. If I buy something, I own it and should be able to sell it at market price.

bombcar4• 3 years ago

They started out as plain scalper marketplaces but now have deals with most venues to give the venue a cut.

autoexec5• 3 years ago

So venues take bribes in the from of kickbacks to look the other way when stubhub commits illegal acts? or does stubhub not operate in states where scalping tickets is a crime?

conductr2• 3 years ago

Just a theory, and I only scanned the article too, but I think they’ve all learned that this aftermarket stuff is good for their business. At least now that things are digital and have fees attached, because they make money whenever tickets change hands. They get to claim it’s a service as they’re providing liquidity to the market.

kelnos8• 3 years ago

Ignoring how Ticketmaster is complicit in all this... it makes me really sad for humanity that people choose a "job" that is 100% about exploiting people. And that's it entirely legal and "normal" for the most part.

A decade ago or so I went on a first date with a woman who was a professional scalper. Unfortunately I didn't have the balls to ask her about the ethics of what she does. (I expect it would have been something like, "if I don't do it, someone else will".) But it really grossed me out; I just can't respect someone who does something like that.

jfengel• 3 years ago

If it's only the worst .01% of humanity, you're talking about 80,000,000 people on the planet.

The Internet has a remarkable way of introducing you to the absolute dregs. It's like computer security: everything not 100% locked down perfectly will belong to someone else minutes later. And even a gigantic corporation with intense experience handling money cannot lock things down 100%.

Most of humanity is ok. But the parts that suck, suck so hard that on the whole I think it averages out to really bad.

azinman25• 3 years ago

My impractical solution: no resale of tickets, and check of ID at the door. It’ll slow things down for check in, and people sick will miss out, but it will collectively bring prices down and increase seat availability.

umvi2• 3 years ago

The article talks about how scalpers circumvent no ticket resale - sell the entire account containing the tickets.

gxs• 3 years ago

Presumably OP is saying the name on the actual ticket never changes.

That is, even if you sell the account, the ticket is tied to the person.

DanHulton• 3 years ago

The last Nine Inch Nails concert I went to was like this. Fans on the email list got advance sales for the event, and you could buy up to two tickets, and had to have your ID match the tickets. It was great, I was able to watch right from the front of the pit, I didn't have to fight through any weird browser nonsense, and I paid exactly the price of the ticket, no more, no less.

anonymouse008• 3 years ago

This is the only true solution. There’s a few things to work out legally - but they are all solvable. Perhaps there should be a seat transfer portal that opens 24-48 hours before (or at some specified time) for those true extenuating circumstances so family members or friends could get access to tickets. Otherwise, first principles says end transferability to end the secondary market.

SV_BubbleTime• 3 years ago

You add a game; and it will get gamed.

master_crab• 3 years ago

Just allow refunds/partial refunds to the original seller and they can put it back on the market.

Airlines arguably have the same type of selling situation and no one is scalping coach seats to Cleveland.

bufferoverflow2• 3 years ago

Or just make it an auction. Every ticket goes to the highest bidder.

azinman25• 3 years ago

That’s effectively what it is now, and it means poorer ppl lose. That’s not good for society.

h1fra• 3 years ago

I don't see any reason why platform and artists are alright with tickets reselling, it's madness to me that no artists "consortium" has demanded a change already.

In France, a famous youtuber has partnered with the major platform to forbid any ticket resell for their show, and it worked pretty well. But still it was only one time.

hedora4• 3 years ago

In the US, the ticket selling platform (tickemaster) and the venue (live nation) are usually the same company.

The sale is set up so that ticket resale is forbidden, except that scalpers can resell them via ticketmaster. Ticketmaster gets to charge a second transaction fee when the scalper resells it.

Artists don’t have enough market leverage to bypass this. (Pearl Jam famously tried and failed at the top of their career.)

So, it’s a combination of auction fraud (building a platform for scalpers while pretending to enforce anti-scalper policies) and monopoly power (colluding with venues and probably agents to depress first-sale ticket prices).

I tried to figure out if ticketmaster also owns and operates the scalping companies (allowing two-sided auction fraud). I came up with a firm “maybe”.

valyagolev• 3 years ago

this, but allow refunds.

koolba• 3 years ago

If you do, you have to allow a random back off before the tickets are made available for resale. Otherwise there will be “transfers” through sale / purchase.

Quarrel• 3 years ago

This is what Hamilton did when it opened in London.

You could in some circumstances return tickets to the theatre for a full refund, but couldn't resell them.

The buying credit card had to be shown at entry to make sure they hadn't been resold.

Afaik, they're still doing this.

bastard_op2• 3 years ago

Treat them like an airplane ticket, you don't see others getting on when it isn't in their name, do you? I don't see people scalping flights to shady people for the past 20 or so years, so it's possible.

Ticketmaster simply won't take the measures, as they have absolutely no financial problem with the way it is now or throughout the history of them existing. Their only problem is trying to figure out how to get scalper prices themselves, which they've already tried and gotten backlash for.

azinman25• 3 years ago

This is where regulation could come in.

MPSimmons• 3 years ago

I hate this, but unless your solution can sufficiently answer the question, "How does this benefit Ticketmaster?", it will never happen so long as they have a monopoly on ticket sales.

sampli• 3 years ago

Yeah I don’t like scalpers at all, but I don’t think I should have to give out any personal information to buy a concert ticket.

azinman25• 3 years ago

You already do

carlosjobim3• 3 years ago

Your name?

carlosjobim3• 3 years ago

It's not impractical at all. It effectively combats any scalping and makes ticket sales honest and fair. I've managed ticket systems for large festivals and this is how we did it.

bastard_op2• 3 years ago

This has been the same scam for decades, there's always motivation, financially, for people to subvert the rules, and ticketmaster wins either way. After stubhub/ebay basically legitimized scalping, it was all over.

Know how I dealt with ticket scalping? I stopped going to shows like that in the 90's, then stopped buying cd's, and eventually stopped supporting the music industry (and media cartels in general).

neilv• 3 years ago

Could Ticketmaster have any incentive to permit scalpers?

(Besides the potential for personnel to be bribed individually. I'm wondering about whether there's hypothetically an angle for the company to permit scalpers. Maybe to be involved in scalping, as a kind of double dipping.)

justinlkarr2• 3 years ago

Ticket marketplaces take fees on every transaction, so incentivizing multiple transactions on a single ticket is in their interest.

Additionally, resale fees tend to be higher, on a percentage basis, and prices tend to be higher on resale tickets for high demand events.

But this does not mean ticket marketplaces are incentivized to sell to resellers initially instead of actual event-goers.

Primary prices and fees are lower because artists and venues demand it. Ticketmaster's continued ability to source tickets to high demand events is more important than marginal revenue from resale on even a large number of those tickets.

standardUser• 3 years ago

Don't allow tickets to be resellable/transferable, but require they must be refundable.

1letterunixname• 3 years ago

The sky is blue and Ticketmaster is a monopoly and crime syndicate.

There are 2 overall approaches: law enforcement by making resale illegal or doubling-down on capitalism by auction sales rather than enabling arbitrage.

Either way, ticket marketplace(s) must do more to assure limits of tickets and verifying the uniqueness of individuals through technological and physical delivery controls. Since this is a widespread consumer rights issue, it could be grounds for hauling TM before a Senate subcommittee inquiry.

WBrentWilliams2• 3 years ago

Impractical, perhaps, but sale-to-person on day of show is the only way I see that can prevent scalping. That is, you can by as many tickets as you want in person, but you must present a body for each ticket purchased.

Of course, this approach has its own problems, including possibility of riot, long queues, and surprise venue fees scaled to handle crowd control.

mattmaroon13• 3 years ago

Nah, much easier solution: digital tickets that you can't sell. Ticketmaster could do this easily, their tickets are a rotating code (like an RSA key) so you can only sell a digital ticket either a) with their permission or b) by giving the stranger to whom you sold it your ticketmaster log-in creds. The latter is pretty easy to stop, you could easily make it unfeasible for scalpers to create accounts, buy a ticket, then give the account away over and over.

sn_master2• 3 years ago

Not many people would take a day off or travel out of town if there's a high risk of not getting a ticket either.

WBrentWilliams2• 3 years ago

As I said, the idea I posited _is_ impractical. It works fine if your band is playing small clubs and the like, but it admittedly falls apart at scale.

I see plenty of technical solutions being proposed. They might even work. Except each one seems to be exclusionary in some way or another at scale. Or they stomp on the tender feelings of libertarians, but I repeat myself.

makeitdouble• 3 years ago

An alternative could be online untransferable but voidable tickets, with in person payment.

Basically try to make it so money changing hands is inpractical and bears considerable risks.

bigyikes• 3 years ago

This is an awful idea for the reasons you listed, but also for the fact that you'd only have a chance to get a ticket for shows that will sell out. You would be unable to plan in advance and would likely waste hours in a queue.

Why not just require a name for each ticket and check ID at entry?

throwaway69123• 3 years ago

I don’t understand why events don’t just do Vickey auctions it would be the fairest system and would make scalping impractical

iambateman2• 3 years ago

I think there’s a massive point which gets missed on this question…

A lot of these tickets get resold on the platforms themselves. If a reseller buys the ticket, and then sells it again to the end user, Ticketmaster gets paid twice.

This point results in at least hundreds of millions in revenue. Now, if one of the platforms “cracks down” and makes it harder to buy and sell people will prefer another platform.

So platforms have a huge disincentive to do anything about resellers.

Also…more obviously, demand pressure drives the price, so scalpers are helping create a market and getting paid for it.

rs999gti4• 3 years ago

Simple fix then, ban reselling.

The artist and TM still get the revenue, but the scalper gets inventory they can't move.

What about the fans?

Similar to airlines, let people buy standby tickets, at the event, check attendance, if there is space let the stand bys in. TM still gets paid twice, scalper has garbage, and fans get in.

What about fans who can't go? Buy the insurance at checkout, if you can't go the insurance comps for the cost of the ticket.

emodendroket9• 3 years ago

That would just return them to the status quo ante where scalpers sell through third parties.

patrickscoleman• 3 years ago

Also actual fans sometimes can’t make a show and need to resell their tickets

bko• 3 years ago

This is only a problem because concert venues want to charge below market price and have the scalpers take the heat while they get their cut both ways. You can’t magically get around the market price. If you price too low you’ll have scalpers. If you beat the scalpers you’ll just have not enough tickets and a few people get tickets at below market value. Maybe that’s more fair but if you’re a fan that doesn’t feel comfortable buying tickets to a concert a year in advance, it’s likely you’re not going to be able to go at any price.

People just don’t want to deal with the reality that the Taylor swift tickets that start at $40 or whatever were never real to begin with

mym19902• 3 years ago

Instead of banning resale, why not just allow resale at face value? The French open(tennis) does this and makes it possible to still get tickets at a reasonable price up until the day of the event.

magicalhippo• 3 years ago

Simple fix then, ban reselling.

In Norway they introduced a law[1] that forbids reselling for a higher price than that printed on the ticket.

I do recall there was a lot of talk about scalping in the years before this law, and I haven't heard much since. I also noticed a drastic decrease of scalpers trying to sell tickets outside the venue.

[1] https://lovdata.no/dokument/NL/lov/2007-06-29-86

jallen_dot_dev• 3 years ago

If a reseller buys the ticket, and then sells it again to the end user, Ticketmaster gets paid twice.

So basically scalpers are being paid to be the scapegoat so Ticketmaster can make more money, at the expense of artists and fans.

DrammBA2• 3 years ago

That's right, there's no incentive from TM to "fix" this.

lolinder6• 3 years ago

And in turn Ticketmaster is the scapegoat that shields the artists from blame. The primary service that Ticketmaster provides is to protect the artist's reputation while ensuring as much money as possible gets made per event.

bernawil3• 3 years ago

Anybody ever floated the idea that it's all tax evasion?

Company sells ticket officially at 50, black market clears at 150 off the books.

Were I'm from it's the most popular take. Doesn't have to be done by the company itself, could be just some insiders doing it for their sole profit.

johnnyanmac3• 3 years ago

if one of the platforms “cracks down” and makes it harder to buy and sell people will prefer another platform.

1) what other platform? I'm not too intimate with this, but part of the revolt over the Taylor Swift contrversy came from how Ticketmaster as exclusive use to most of the big venues. That seems to be the other half of the issue not talked about in this article.

2) I thought this issue would be as simple as banning resales, but after reading the kind of tech (and money they pay) to invest in the scalping... idk. It'd kill off the casual scalping of someone who buys maybe a half dozen tickets. people paying hundreds for fake numbers and specialized browsers won't be deterred. And the demand for the tickets comes from the celebrities, so it's a pretty safe market as long as the concert industry stays up (so, no more COVID. Even then, it's not like it's hard to pull out).

arcticbull• 3 years ago

Yup, TicketMaster/Live Nation is fully vertically integrated. They own venues, they manage artists, they sell merch - and yes they run the ticket platforms. The contracts basically require everything to stay in the family.

Fatnino• 3 years ago

Seems to me they could ban resales by making there be a name attached to each ticket. Just like the airlines. You need ID matching your ticket to get into the venue.

No more scalpers.

wdr1• 3 years ago

If a reseller buys the ticket, and then sells it again to the end user, Ticketmaster gets paid twice.

Yeah, but Ticketmaster doesn't own the tickets.

Nor do they decide the fees. Or even keep most of the revenue from the fees. All of that is decided by the promoter, possibly with the artist (if a big enough name) and to some extent the venue.

Marazan• 3 years ago

Ticketmaster (Live Nation) own the venue.

sharts• 3 years ago

That's a similar argument to maximizing GDP. If all we care about is that number rather than the quality of transactions happening, then we can't really make useful or accurate conclusions or predictions about the health of an economy.

amelius2• 3 years ago

Now, if one of the platforms “cracks down” and makes it harder to buy and sell people will prefer another platform.

Huh, they only have to ensure that the price of the resold ticket is reasonable ...

hypercube33• 3 years ago

Yep. Ticketmaster makes profit from selling out to scalpers and then double dips on their StubHub and whatever other sites they own too. They also own the venues and dip out of that pool as well.

vintermann2• 3 years ago

If a reseller buys the ticket, and then sells it again to the end user, Ticketmaster gets paid twice.

Definitively not if it happens like this article describes, with what the scalper selling being a ticketmaster account.

1vuio0pswjnm73• 3 years ago

The Grateful Dead comes up now and again on HN. They played 522 shows in 1972 alone, and averaged 100 per year from the mid 60s to mid 70s. In the 80s and 90s the average was somewhere around 80 per year. They sold a lot of tickets and consistently sold out. Anyone remember the system they used, as I recall we just called it "mail order". Of course there was scalping, but as I recall the system generally seemed to reward the diligent.

Tao3300• 3 years ago

Now it's all tied up in a mixture of promoter/venue/ticketing relationships that I don't understand. You can't avoid dealing with these bastards now. Pearl Jam tried to once and had to cancel the tour.

thephyber• 3 years ago

All of the giant venues are either owned or contractually bound to one of the giant ticket transactors/distributors. The maturity of the venue contracting has changed drastically in the past 40 years.

nonethewiser3• 3 years ago

They played 522 shows in 1972 alone

That is insane. How is that possible?

Thats 1.43 shows per day. Its hard to imagine 2 shows per day, let alone traveling. That sounds exhausting.

1vuio0pswjnm73• 3 years ago

Yes, it's insane, it's not possible and it's a sloppy error. Meant to cite 1970 not 1972. setlist.fm has 139 for 1970 but I bet there are a few more.

Apologies for the inadvertence.

1vuio0pswjnm73• 3 years ago

Correction: ~88 shows in 1972 not "522" (WTF)

ec109685• 3 years ago

Gambling sites have solved this to a much better extent than described in this article with verified ids, fingerprint extensions running on devices and whatnot.

ChrisArchitect2• 3 years ago

Aside: Why are all of 404media's posts popular "outrage" articles? It continually sours me on this new news outlet

emodendroket9• 3 years ago

This is a pretty straightforward account of how scalpers operate. Are they only supposed to write about lemonade stands and firefighters rescuing kitties from trees?

ChrisArchitect2• 3 years ago

No. But I don't need another news outlet doing the same Ticketmaster etc story as everyone else. Just don't need it. There's been plenty of mainstream/tech news stories on the ticket problem, Taylor Swift etc, c'mon.

mattmaroon13• 3 years ago

I have some recent experience in live events and I can tell from the comments here that most people don't understand how the economics work. Don't feel bad, I didn't either until I was involved. It's... confusing.

We all think that when Major Band goes on tour, they just rent a bunch of big arenas and sell tickets. If you think that, a lot of the comments about the bands getting paid by TicketMaster make sense, but that's not at all how it works.

Venue operators are a lot like commercial landlords. They manage a building, and someone else runs all of the businesses in it. Major Sports Team might play in an arena they own, or an arena owned by the city they are in, or one owned by a third party. Major Amphtitheater could be owned by an investor group, LiveNation, or (as in my area) a symphony or other not-for-profit or governmental entity. Whoever owns it, they usually contract out basically everything that goes on inside it, just as an owner of an office building or strip mall doesn't own most (or any) of the businesses that have offices or stores in it. That beer you bought probably was sold to you by Legends or Aramark or Delaware North who payed Arena Owner for the food and beverage (f&b) rights. The F&B might then be subcontracted out, done in house, or some combo. The F&B company might sign an exclusive deal with Bacardi to use their liquor brands. The shirt you bought probably was sold to you by the exclusive merchandise vendor (or, with music, likely the space was given to Major Band as part of their contract). Etc.

The events work much the same way. The venue doesn't run the conerts, they don't even book them, hell their owners likely couldn't even tell you who was performing yesterday. They probably have an exclusive deal with a large promoter like LiveNation, AEG, etc. Or they may not be exclusive, and various promoters may rent venues on an individual basis. For each concert, a promoter pays the venue and hires Major Band. My favorite band does about 75 shows a year, and gets paid $1 million per. If nobody shows up, they still get $1 million, though they probably won't get it again next year. They don't really know or care what the ticket sales are, except maybe to use it to ask for more than $1 million next year. Then the promoter sells the tickets and they profit from the difference.

But, the venue or an exclusive promoter may have a deal with a ticket seller like Ticketmaster. And because Ticketmaster is owned by LiveNation, the biggest promoter (by far, about 2.5x the size of their nearest competitor) and also an owner or exclusive operator of most of the nation's biggest venues, the ticket seller may BE the promoter AND even the venue. Even worse, LiveNation does band management too. They've been caught steering their bands away from arenas and amphitheaters with a third party promoter after the venues signed ticket deals with other ticketing agencies.

LiveNation's business model is very simple (and brilliant and evil): they buy out venues. 50% of the world's concert revenues come from like 300 venues, so it's an obvious chokepoint. They pay Venue Operator millions per year to run the facilities, then they hire Major Bands to come play there. They make money off the concert and the TicketMaster fees. Or, in cases where for whatever reason they can't buy out promotion, or own the venue entirely, they pay whoever does to be the exclusive ticket agent, so they still get that sweet ticket money.

So why does Ticketmaster like scalpers? Simple, more fees. In the good old days, Ticketmaster sold a piece of paper once, then whatever happened happened. Then came StubHub who made a trusted digital route for reselling tickets (that themselves became digital). At first Ticketmaster fought them but then eventually realized it was a whole lot more profitable to just do it too.

If you buy a ticket and go see the show, they only made one ticket fee off of you. If you buy a ticket and then turn around and sell it verified resale, they got paid twice.

The obvious question is: why don't promoters just charge more for tickets to shows that sell out? (Caveat: the following is more supposition by me than the above.)

1.) Bands don't like this. Bands want their fans to remain fans, so they will buy albums, stream music, buy merch, see future shows, etc. for years to come. If the Stones have shown us anything it's that a music career can span generations if you manage it right.

2.) Just as night clubs purposefully keep a long line in front of the door even though they're empty, a quick sellout induces demand, so it might seem like Taylor Swift's promoters could probably 6x her price and still sell out, but that's likely not true. Bands even often have price restrictions in their deals with promoters.

3.) Most of the time the promoter and the ticketing agent are the same company, so you might as well shove all of the blame onto TicketMaster. LiveNation knows you hate TicketMaster but you'll keep buying tickets from them as long as you have no other choice, so they just keep the rest of their brand behind the scenes. You probably don't even know who promoted the concert you went to, and they like it that way, but you know who charged you $30 in fees.

4.) They get other per-head revenues from their contracts with companies like whoever does F&B, sponsorships, etc. This is why low-selling shows often give away tickets for free, or why you'll see tickets on Groupon when a band plays an amphitheater that's a little too big for them. An almost sold out crowd at $110 a ticket might make less money than a sold out crowd at $100 a ticket.

In any case the one thing you can be sure of is that they have analyzed the data and priced everything at whatever makes them the most money. They're evil but they're far from stupid.

But as to why Major Band uses TicketMaster: TicketMaster has exclusive deals with over 2/3 of the big venues in the US, is usually the promoter that hired them and may even own the whole damn venue.

smugcentrist• 3 years ago

It would seem that to some extent this ultimately does lead to Major Band getting paid by Ticketmaster though, albeit through indirect means. Let's say a show is going to generate $1M in profit for LiveNation/Ticketmaster because of the fees and the reselling but would only make $250K without, the promoter (who because of monopoly is also the ticket seller) is going to be much more willing and able to offer Major Band a larger payment to get them to perform in the former instance given that they stand to profit much more from the performance.

mattmaroon13• 3 years ago

Yeah, I suppose that’s true, but also Major Band is up against the same near-monopoly because there aren’t many promoters bidding for their shows. When you get to the level where you can sell out 20,000 seats, over 2/3 of the promotion is exclusively LiveNation.

I guess that’s technically a near -monopsony. Bands would probably argue they’d make more if promotion was itself a functioning market.

RajT88• 3 years ago

A fix for some venues: only sell tickets at the door.

Scalpers will have to work for it the old fashioned way then.

This, of course, obviates the need for Ticketmaster (which needs to die in a fire).

Realistically, Ticketmaster has a monopoly because they merged with the biggest artist management company, so if you want big artists you have to contract with them.

The situation will not improve until antitrust enforcement comes into vogue again.

Razengan2• 3 years ago

Or tie each ticket to a name and check ID?

nexus7556• 3 years ago

I went to a show from a big DJ at a small venue like this once. Had to buy in person with an ID and they checked IDs at the door. I think it works well at small venues but can’t see this scaling up to arenas and stadiums. The large venues already struggle getting people through the door fast enough.

johnnyanmac3• 3 years ago

Would we go back to the days where some people camp out for days to get in first? I wonder how much worse it'd be in times where everyone is connected and you can google all the details and timings needed.

deepspace2• 3 years ago

Would we go back to the days where some people camp out for days to get in first?

Yes, and that is not necessarily a bad thing. Dedicated fans get in first.

dreamcompiler• 3 years ago

Scalping (or at least reselling) airline tickets used to be a thing before 9/11 when the TSA came into being and they and the airlines began requiring positive ID to get on an airplane. Ticket reselling cost the airlines money: It made nonrefundable tickets fungible again, which the airlines hated. So the airlines loved the TSA's new positive ID policy.

Ticketmaster could do the same thing if they wanted to, but I have a feeling they don't.

paxys3• 3 years ago

We have been conditioned to show up at the airport hours before a flight and go through anal probes without complaining. You really think something like that would work at an arena with a hundred thousand drunk fans? Especially considering most people buy tickets as a group rather than individually.

jzl• 3 years ago

The article had some interesting info, but didn't answer the key question that I still don't understand: how to these professional scalpers get multiple credit card accounts? Don't you need unique credit cards for each fake ticketmaster account?

maxgashkov• 3 years ago

It's extremely easy to get multiple virtual debit cards numbers. The only way around this is to maintain some allowlist of BIN/IINs for the known banks/services that do not have this kind of product which may severely limit conversion rates I guess.

paxys3• 3 years ago

Plenty of services allow you to generate an infinite number of disposable credit card numbers tied to the same account.

xeonax• 3 years ago

Won't Stock Market kind of thing work here. Put the tickets up in IPO. Then when it goes public, let price discovery happen. Repository gets a % fee per transaction.

paxys3• 3 years ago

Ticket selling is a problem of economics, and trying to solve it via tech is pointless. If enough fans out there are willing to spend $2000 for Taylor Swift tickets then that is the value of the show. Ticketmaster selling them for $100 creates an arbitrage opportunity, and of course people are going to take advantage of it.

kdmccormick2• 3 years ago

The Glastonbury music festival, the largest of its kind in the world, requires each ticket purchase to be associated with a government ID. The ID must be presented at entry and must match the ticket sale. As far as I know, they do not have problems with scalpers. So tech might not help, but maybe beaurocracy can :)

(Well, they have an issue where everyone tries to buy a ticket at the same time and it crashes their servers. Tech could help a bit with that. But in the end, everyone trying to buy a ticket actually wants to go to the festival)

deepspace2• 3 years ago

Yes, the obvious solution to the scalper problem is to drop the tech and go back to physical ticket sales outlets. You stand in line, buy a ticket, present your ID, and you receive a ticket with your photo printed on it and a QR code containing your ID info (encrypted if necessary).

At the venue, someone checks your photo, and you scan your ID, which must match the one on the ticket.

But Ticketmaster would never do that, because they make too much money from scalping.

cute_boi• 3 years ago

The problem isn't scalper, but the value of tickets. If tickets price is lower than demand, then there will always be scalper. Solving it via tech is useless and creates more problem imo.

Either it should be lottery system or ticket price should be set high enough, which might not be fair to people who can't afford. But, this is the way.

gniv• 3 years ago

If <Popular Artist> wants to reward true fans, why aren't they making their own fan club, with id-verified accounts, and then sell tickets to them first?

cbsmith2• 3 years ago

They did do this. It was completely compromised by scalpers.

logbiscuitswave2• 3 years ago

Yup, this.

The Cure tried really hard to make ticket sales for their latest tour as fair as possible. “Verified fan” sales only, resales disallowed (except where required by law), not allowing dynamic “Platinum” (aka airline ticket) pricing, transfers not allowed, face value resale only, no added fees. They also had their tickets go for extremely reasonable prices (like, $200 for front row tickets down to $25 for the nose bleeds). Even merch was reasonably priced; $20 t-shirts, $35 sweat shirts, and everything was high-quality. It seemed like they tried everything they could to balance playing in large venues (which unfortunately means dealing with TM since they have the monopoly here) while allowing a fair experience for fans and it still went sideways.

Scalpers still found ways to game this. Tickets couldn’t be transferred, so the novel approach they used was to sell the entire account with the tickets attached to it.

habosa2• 3 years ago

Some of my favorite bands have done simple things which drastically (but not completely) reduce the levels of scalping.

On a previous tour, Wilco made tickets only valid for the original holder with matching photo ID at the door. So I couldn’t sell my ticket. I was able to bring any guest I wanted with my second ticket though.

For a while now Phish has done tickets via lottery and all tickets come in the physical mail not long before the show. So there’s a limited window for scalping and it can only happen at the speed of paper.

In my experience both bands get concerts full of true fans and also get to charge pretty high prices in a way that doesn’t feel unfair.

More bands could try these or other techniques but almost nobody actually cares. Ticketmaster is a front, they take PR flak to preserve the status quo.

flanbiscuit• 3 years ago

The Cure did this as well. They also kept the prices very affordable.

Although apparently it doesn't always fully work. But at least they are trying something:

https://www.insidehook.com/daily_brief/music/the-cure-ticket...

jonhohle• 3 years ago

Not that it was the best idea, but NIN made you wait in line at the venue during the last tour to buy tickets. I got there early and was still in line for at least 3 hours. When I finally made it to the counter I didn’t have any issue getting the tickets I wanted (floor, general admission).

On the one hand, I didn’t have to deal with TicketMaster. On the other hand, it took a significant amount of time out of a Saturday morning. I’m sure there’s some happy medium, like if you’re part of a mailing list or bought some merch before tickets were announced you can get a pre-release code to buy online.

wodenokoto2• 3 years ago

Last time i went to a big show i arrived more than 3 hours in advance - with tickets in hand. Doesn't sound like you lost any time.

anthonypasq• 3 years ago

This entire "scandal" is simply a variety of bizarre tactics and discussions to get around the fact that people expect to be able to see the most popular musicians on the entire planet for $40. No one expects to be able to go to the super bowl for $40 but for some reason people think they should be able to see Taylor Swift?

myroon5• 3 years ago

Taylor Swift concerts are much more common than super bowls. Maybe a playoff game is a better analogy? ;)

habosa2• 3 years ago

I don't think anyone wants more events like the Super Bowl besides the NFL. And there's really no comparison between that event and a single Taylor Swift concert ... the Super Bowl is big enough to have a Beyonce concert at halftime! There are also dozens of Taylor Swift concerts per tour and she does a tour every few years. For most fans their team makes the Super Bowl only once or twice in a lifetime.

Also not all sports finals are so expensive! For instance the FA Cup Final, one of the major trophies for one of the biggest sports leagues in the world, had tickets last year starting at 45GBP: https://www.mancity.com/tickets/mens/fa-cup-final-ticketing-...

And in the UK at the time there was a lot of coverage that the tickets had gotten too expensive.

TheHappyOddish• 3 years ago

Weird place you live in. In my country, scalping (selling above face value) is illegal, simple as that. Tickets still sell very quickly to popular events, and you often find people reselling them in the days/weeks before the event for below face value due to their own circumstances.

I'm unsure why the bands or the ticket vendors should be involved at all, it's a simple and sensible area for regulation.

nonethewiser3• 3 years ago

If tickets can be scalped with a markup, doesn’t that mean the original sale price is below market value? Maybe we should just be happy that we have a chance to buy below market value.

uoaei• 3 years ago

Ticketmaster is a closed platform, nowhere near a "free market" where such rules apply.

WD40forRust• 3 years ago

Scalping is legitimate market activity. High price is the price reached by supply and demand.

wodenokoto2• 3 years ago

For K- and J-pop concerts it is not unusual that tickets sell out or nearly sell out during fanclub presale.

Only memberships over a certain age before the concert get access to presale, and name on ticket has to match at the door.

It sucks if you are a fan of the music and don't want to be part of the whole idol worshipping part of the business, but my impression is that there is very little scalping going on.

lifeisstillgood2• 3 years ago

So I think Inmight have the ticket market worked out - it's been puzzling me.

So we can easily solve ticket allocation on a "fair" way - London 2012 olympics was a good example. Everyone who wants tickets for an event signs up and there is a (verified) random selection and the lucky winners paid (I think) a tenner.

This is because there was no profit maximising incentive for the Games - it was a PR exercise for UK government.

Now for a Taylor Swift concert there is profit maximising. I am going to say here it's Taylor's manager who is the cackling moustache twirling villain of the piece to avoid upsetting Awiftians but hear me out.

Profit seeking manager arranged a contract like Katy Perry below [0]. This basically is a leak showing Perry arranged to be able to sell her own tickets to "resellers" - ie people she knew would sell on StubHub for higher than face value.

But to protect his clients reputation he wants to keep this selling of tickets at high prices a secret.

So imagine there are 1 million tickets for a tour, over 50 days at 20,000 tickets per event (no idea of this is right seems ok-ish). Then hold back 10 days (added by extra demand!) and then only sell say 50% of tickets at the low price, there are say 400,000 tickets available to fans. But release them slowly - extra demand / seating allocation, verifies fans first etc etc. The point is to guage demand - if 1000 people try to buy tickets on day 1 for a stadium, and only 500 manage to get through the process you know there are 500 disappointed people out there so sell the other 50% for that day on that stadium to reseller (your mate) who will go on stub hub or ticket master selling to people who just missed out and will pay higher prices.

finally a market that makes sense. Why is the process slow, awkward, convoluted? Because it's a signalling mechanism for reselling you higher priced tickets without affecting the reputation of the client

[0] https://www.vulture.com/2011/05/katy_perry_reserves_the_righ...

TrackerFF• 3 years ago

Here in Norway we had a go at the problem by making it illegal to charge more for tickets to sports and cultural events, than what they cost new.

You can take the seller to small-claims court and sue the seller for the difference.

nojvek2• 3 years ago

That’s a beautiful law if it can be enforced well.

vintermann2• 3 years ago

Private Tabs costs $500 per month. Insomniac costs $400 per month. KPX, a new browser, costs $40 per month.

This is good evidence that Ticketmasters' defenses actually work, and scalpers have gone over to selling scalping as a get-rich-quick scheme. (It's also of course extremely dumb to pay for). An inevitable step in the lifecycle of any grift.

nojvek2• 3 years ago

As I’ve tried to point out in my reporting over the years, scalpers and Ticketmaster are engaged in a neverending game of cat-and-mouse, but the more difficult Ticketmaster ostensibly makes it to buy tickets, the easier it is for dedicated professionals to buy them while fans are left disappointed.

Almost seems like Ticketmaster allowing resale of tickets creates a secondary marketplace where Ticketmaster earns twice for fees, and the resellers make a big buck on market inefficiencies.

Perhaps artist should either decide whether they want to sell tickets at a fixed price or at an auction.

If fixed price, then it’s first come first serve, no reselling. If bid, then it’s whoever pays the highest. No reselling.

Airline tickets aren’t allowed to be resold. Name must match ID. Prices are dynamic. No reason why concert prices couldn’t be the same.

Or 50/50 fixed vs bid.

In general auctions seem the fairest in any marketplace where the price is an indicator of supply vs demand.

However not fair because artist gives an impression they’re only there for the rich turning some of their fans away.

—-

But I legit dislike Ticketmaster. Their ridiculous fees and dark patterns UI infuriate me. The best I can do is vote with my wallet.

logbiscuitswave2• 3 years ago

While getting tickets for The Cure was a shit show because of Ticketmaster, the fan to fan ticket exchange ended up being wonderful. I lucked into really great tickets at face value the day of the show, and I was able to resell my “still good but not great” tickets in minutes. It was almost zero friction and there were no tacked on fees or other surprises. I wish more artists did this.

Sometimes I want to resell a ticket and I’m not looking to profit but TM makes it so painful to do this under normal circumstances. The fact they can double dip on fees should be illegal. Whenever I’ve tried to sell tickets at face value (because something came up, I got better tickets later, or another tour stop opened up at a better venue), the actual listing ends up being some 20% higher because of the extra fees TM adds. TM doesn’t let you list a ticket at below face value.

musicale5• 3 years ago

I've been to some concerts where they checked your ID vs. the credit card.

In that case I imagine the scalper would have to get a card issued that scanned properly with your name and the original number.

I also remember Green Day did a show which was cash at the door only; in that case you only have line cheats who pay people to stand in line for them.

I've also been to concerts where the ticket in an app locked to the phone, which could makes it harder if scalpers have to send a phone to you (though rooted phones could help.)

In each of these cases you're out of luck for the show if you lose the card or phone, though it might be possible to get a refund.

Why scalpers can get tickets

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