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iambateman
johnnyanmac
>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
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.
WhyNotHugo
Sounds like theres a lot of missing legislation. The situation creates a huge conflict of interests.
Then again, scalping itself out to be illegal; it’s just a form of exploiting someone else’s work to extract money from average folk without creating any value or meaningful work.
Fatnino
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.
undefined
mixmastamyk
They’re already doing that and it’s disgusting.
jallen_dot_dev
> 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.
lolinder
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.
bernawil
This take is widespread and it's just wrong. Most artists are hired by organizers and just paid a flat fee for performing, the company then selling and promoting the event. Can you imagine what it'd take to organize an international tour otherwise? Some huge names may also run their own operation (Pearl Jam where notorious for this) but still just some of the time, they'll still do some shows in festivals or different countries where they are just hired to perform and not selli ng tickets themselves.
gnicholas
But don’t artists get less because scalping happens? That is, if they priced tickets higher to start, there would be more revenue going to the artists and less going to middlemen.
differentView
But not in the scenario described, where the artists get no additional money from resales.
DrammBA
That's right, there's no incentive from TM to "fix" this.
zone411
No, Ticketmaster is the scapegoat for artists.
bernawil
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.
undefined
rs999gti
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.
bko
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
mpixel
> 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
This.
Here's a much more optimal semi-auction style solution. Tickets go on sale for 20 days, each day, all the seats and spots are worth the same price, you can buy anything, the price is always the same.
Day 1, the price is $2000. Day 20, the price is $10. So you'd only pay $60 at most for a ticket? Sure, just check in on day 16.
Since we start the price at the higher-than-scalp price, there's no scalping opportunity if you are paying the 'real market price'.
magicalhippo
> 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.
firebat45
>In Norway they introduced a law[1] that forbids reselling for a higher price than that printed on the ticket.
For sale, desirable ticket at face value and $500 peanut. Only willing to sell as a bundle.
patrickscoleman
Also actual fans sometimes can’t make a show and need to resell their tickets
oehpr
you have to make tradeoffs. If you want to ban reselling, you ban reselling.
Scalpers locking out fans is a universal concern. How often do you hear the success story of "I can't make the concert so I sold the ticket online". Come on. An industry has propped up. This is small potatoes.
dazc
But people buy stuff everyday that they never actually use. Why should tickets be sacred?
maven29
What is stopping the existence of a refund mechanism there?
rs999gti
Insurance or refund only to buyer fixes this.
emodendroket
That would just return them to the status quo ante where scalpers sell through third parties.
Analemma_
If you tied tickets to names and required ID at the venue (allowing refunds in case you couldn't make it), this wouldn't work and scalping would basically end overnight. The fact that neither Ticketmaster nor the performers nor the venues has ever taken this simple step is the proof that it's not in their interest to do so.
Note that events where the promoters are actually interested in having people show up instead of in scraping for every dollar (e.g. PAX) do this, and it works fine.
mym1990
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.
kazinator
Because you don't handle the money. If A shows up to the concert with tickets originally purchased by B, you have no idea how much A paid.
Banning resale is not about selling per se but banning the changing of ownership. The person who paid is verified to be the one attending.
chpatrick
In Hungary the best resale platform is TicketSwap and they only allow selling up to 10% or so more than face value, I think that's a good system.
wdr1
> 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
Ticketmaster (Live Nation) own the venue.
sharts
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.
vintermann
> 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.
hypercube33
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.
amelius
> 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 ...
josephcsible
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?
scott_w
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!"
keltex
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...
gnicholas
More detail: he doesn’t sell them, he has his crew go pull excited fans from the regular admission area and bring them to the front, where they’ll be even more excited. He doesn’t leave the front row empty.
petepete
> 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'.
envsubst
> 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.
resolutebat
Billy Joel: “I’d look down and see rich people sitting there, I call ’em ‘gold chainers.’ Sitting there puffing on a cigar, ‘entertain me, piano man.’ “They don’t stand up, make noise, [they just] sit there with their bouffant haired girlfriend lookin’ like a big shot. I kinda got sick of that, who the (heck) are these people, where are the real fans?”
dopa42365
Did you not hear the super bowl team chants played on the speakers? Atmosphere of a snooze fest. That show is way too far in the exclusivity direction to allow any fun at all.
scott_w
Right here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37629176
I can’t speak to the USA sports, I’m specifically talking about English football which is generally quite affordable for most working class people. I’ve bought tickets to games myself.
gist
Unclear how a rich person can even be defined at all. It's a pretty wide swath of differing income levels as well as assets.
jvm___
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.
peteradio
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.
kortilla
Rich people involved in business or politics have reputation risk and can’t be seen “letting loose”. See the Dean Scream.
watwut
Poorer people who would just stare do not buy tickets. Simple as that. When the price gets very high, you are filtering attendees by who has a lot of money - not by enthusiasm.
If the ticket is cheap for me, I can go even if I don't like the band too much. And with very expensive tickets, many enthusiasts won't pay while rich non-enthusiasts are bigger part of audience.
Meanwhile, if tickets are cheaper but you have to jump hoops to get them, you get enthusiasts.
AussieWog93
Probably a case of people knowing how to reach their mouth shut climbing hierarchies faster ;)
Horffupolde
If you have to ask
ActorNightly
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.
throwawys93
[flagged]
username332211
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.
mattmaroon
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.
hnburnsy
Nope Ticketmaster shares fees with its clients, this is from the Ticketmaster help...
-----
The standard tickets sold on Ticketmaster are owned by our clients (venues, sports teams or other event promoters) who determine the number of tickets to be sold and set the face value price.
...
Ticket fees (which can include a service fee, order processing fee and sometimes a delivery fee) are determined in collaboration with our clients. In exchange for the rights to sell their tickets, our clients typically share in a portion of the fees we collect.
...
Service Fee and Order Processing Fee
In almost all cases, Ticketmaster adds a service fee (also known as a convenience charge) to the face value price, or in the case of a resale ticket to the listing price, of each ticket. The service fee varies by event based on our agreement with each individual client.
In addition to the per ticket service fee, an order processing fee is typically charged. Unlike the service charge, which is added to each ticket, the processing fee is charged once for each order. The processing fee offsets the costs of ticket handling, shipping and support and as a result, the processing fee is generally not charged on in-person box office purchases. In some cases, Ticketmaster's order processing costs may be lower than the order processing fee. In those cases, Ticketmaster may earn a profit on the order processing fee.
In both cases, these fees are collected by Ticketmaster and typically shared with our clients.
TeMPOraL
> 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.
So mostly what GP said. This is not an accident, and everyone is in on it.
readams
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.
mattmaroon
No. LiveNation is mostly in the business of signing deals with large venues to be the exclusive promoter of shows, and Ticketmaster thus is their exclusive ticket seller. Ticketmaster also sign deals with other promoters to be their exclusive ticket outlet, so even in instances where LiveNation isn't the promoter, you may have to deal with TM.
TylerE
Just like the job of every sports league president isn’t to keep the fans (or the players) happy. It’s to distract anger from the team owners.
bradleyankrom
Artists do not get most of the money from Ticketmaster fees.
username332211
Yes, most go to the venue, which the artist/producer would have had to pay for (from the ticket price) otherwise. Because money is fungible it doesn't really matter if they pay the artist, or if they pay for the artist's expenses.
What matters is how much fees they charge and how much do they keep. Can't find it right now, but I remember an article claiming they rarely keep 50% of their fees.
nomilk
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).
cdchn
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.
kjellsbells
Also I suspect that it would be trivially easy to script your client to open up spotify and play a never ending stream of Taylor Swift, dumping the audio to /dev/null, and to have multiple tabs playing other popular artists using other accounts, so that at least one account always looked like a superfan.
gist
> This is such a Hacker News suggestion.
Also the fact that it's assumed that everyone attending wants to sit in the audience and go crazy and MAKE SOME NOISE. It can and is annoying to many people.
One other thing is artist may want an active crowd for their own benefit ie they are making a video live recording for further sale or to post to youtube whatever. (Point is good for artist but not for many all of those attending).
amelius
If some idea is 99% ok, then it's really HN-like to burn it down because of the 1% that's possibly not ok.
As if everything in our society is 100% ok.
nonethewiser
> 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.
RugnirViking
> Higher ticket prices would lead to more diehard fans
no? personal utility doesn't work that way in the real world... We have such drastic inequality that $200 is literally impossible for a huge fraction of the population wheras to some people its an afterthought to spend for a laugh. You can literally notice it in a venue when ticket prices are higher, the atmosphere is different, the clothing is different, the energy of the dancing, the singing
profile of somebody with money to spend: 40+, knowledge worker, drained of energy, has a lot of things going on in life
profile of the kind of fan that makes your show trendy: <30, sporadic employment, excess energy, impulsive, carefree
nerdjon
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.
kortilla
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)
pests
> can only charge what people buy it for though
This can't make sense. Then where is the profit for the scalper coming from?
Its also a bit untrue. Its true that yes, people _will_ pay it, but did they need to get that high? Scalpers are like auction bots - not always going to win, but will raise the prices for those who would have bought at an otherwise lower value.
fach
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.
charcircuit
>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.
emodendroket
When you consider how fashion- and trend-driven music is the optics of tickets getting slashed in price because they haven’t sold for a month are terrible.
LadyCailin
Dutch auction + no reselling, or only reselling at the exact price bought or lower. Otherwise scalpers just buy them all as soon as they’re released, and now they do whatever kind of auction they want, with the (previously) max price as the floor.
sasaf5
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.
capableweb
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.
fps-hero
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.
slg
>it seems nearly optimal for extracting profit and kills the ticket scalping business model.
Also seems nearly optimal for alienating all but your richest fans. The extra profit you might extract from the concert might not actually put you ahead in the long term when fans stop caring about you because of your profit maximizing business practices.
Nursie
Not every action.
Some festivals avoid it by requiring ID to be linked to the ticket and banning resale (though they may allow refund).
It’s funny, but “extracting maximum profit” isn’t the only motivation some people have in life. Especially when it comes to cultural events.
Buttons840
Triple the ticket price but give half away by lottery. Although, I guess scalpers ruin lotteries as well :(
armada651
The article itself mentions how scalpers just register hundreds or thousands of accounts to dramatically increase their odds at winning fan lotteries.
reidjs
I don’t think the artist has much say in the matter at that scale
fps-hero
Touring artist’s absolutely have a say in their ticket prices, after all it directly correlates to how much they will be paid. Once tickets are handed over to promoters and distributors then it becomes out of their control.
Festival appearance rates are agreed on in advance of ticket sales, so tickets prices are the responsibility of festival organisers.
BazookaMusic
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
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.
dghlsakjg
A lot of venues already check a id’s at the entrance for alcohol sales, and that doesn’t seem to hold up the line, especially with modern machine readable id’s. No reason why that couldn’t be applied to name checks too.
jackson1442
At Hamilton shows, ticketmaster used the payment card as the ticket, you simply swipe the card used to buy the tickets at the entrance and it pulls it from that data. Seems like a fair compromise, assuming it’s actually secure.
generj
The flying public pays Homeland Security / the TSA a $5.60 fee to check ID and perform screening.
The cost to the concert going public of ID verification would probably be a lot lower than the costs scalping imposes. And the concert venues could certainly capture more than $5 per concert goer by raising prices closer to what the typical person actually pays.
mattmaroon
Not with digital ticketing. No ID is necessary. It is a rotating code so you can't just ship someone a screenshot. You have to have the Ticketmaster app, logged into your account. Unless scalpers want to start giving away their entire Ticketmaster accounts, it would stop it easily.
mattnewton
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.
rtpg
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
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.
habosa
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.
jonhohle
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.
wodenokoto
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.
ethanbond
I think this was standing in line on ticket release day, not day of show.
flanbiscuit
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...
TheHappyOddish
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.
anthonypasq
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?
habosa
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.
myroon5
Taylor Swift concerts are much more common than super bowls. Maybe a playoff game is a better analogy? ;)
tornato7
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.
hedora
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.
moritonal
The Royal Albert Hall Proms let's you resell via them. If it resells you get your money back, no cost.
djtango
I've had my ups and downs with the Beeb over the years but this is one of those moments of them just being best in class imo.
With software there's no real need to take an admin fee...
giantrobot
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.
tornato7
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.
chii
> 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!
tornato7
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.
kelnos
I doubt it; I'd expect first to use it gets it, and second gets an error.
DrammBA
Not one measure is perfect, but together they do provide many layers of nuisance to deter scalpers.
RajT88
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.
johnnyanmac
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.
deepspace
> 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.
bennettbackward
That or those who can afford to pay people to stand in line for them: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/2/13/18223836/p...
mock-possum
I think that’s a pretty privileged way of framing it
Razengan
Or tie each ticket to a name and check ID?
nexus7556
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.
Razengan
If major airports with millions of visitors every month can do it, stadiums could handle a couple hundred thousand too.
hyldmo
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
justinlkarr
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.
hedora
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.
notyourwork
I’ve never heard this, what country?
hyldmo
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
Symbiote
I wonder if that has lowered Ticket master's fees compared to Denmark, where resale prices can include the fees.
Symbiote
Also Denmark.
You can resell for the total price including fees, but no more.
https://www.consumereurope.dk/purchase-of-goods-and-services...
maeil
South Korea too.
aschobel
> 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”.
jsnell
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.)
kmeisthax
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
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.
carlosjobim
The ID is for showing when you enter the venue to enjoy the show. When purchasing you just need to give your name.
hedora
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.
thfuran
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.
AnthonyMouse
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.
costco
Well, I mean there's no way I can prove this but I think it has more to do with the fact that compared to email verification ($0.002/hotmail address), CAPTCHA ($0.003/reCAPTCHA), it substantially raises account creation costs because real US/EU phone numbers will be at least a couple cents per verification.
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acheong08
I use smspool for non-voip numbers. Very effective.
1vuio0pswjnm7
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
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.
nonethewiser
> 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.
1vuio0pswjnm7
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.
thephyber
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.
1vuio0pswjnm7
Correction: ~88 shows in 1972 not "522" (WTF)
chevman
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
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.
kelnos
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.
Symbiote
It's also less practical for people with less flexible jobs, who might need to book time off work or plan their shifts to go to a show.
SoftTalker
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.
xnx
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
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.
ukoki
Just have the lottery entry application ask a name. Then check IDs on the door
pimlottc
> 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
slau
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.
thechao
I've been exposed to precisely this mechanism at "mom & pop" venues; it works great, and no one's upset (there's a loss of last-minute transfer between friends, but that's the cost). Ticketmaster self-scalps: it's in their best interest not to have this mechanism.
AnthonyMouse
The problem is legitimate ticketholders don't like this. You're going to a concert with your SO that you had to buy tickets for six months in advance, then you break up and get together with someone else. Now instead of transferring the ticket you paid for to your new SO, you're stuck either going with your ex (that'll go over well) or going by yourself. People don't like this.
nayuki
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.
nayuki
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.
hackeraccount
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.
bagels
In the time of box offices, ticket scalpers still thrived.
kelnos
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.
codelikeawolf
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.
bombcar
They started out as plain scalper marketplaces but now have deals with most venues to give the venue a cut.
autoexec
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?
Kamq
> to look the other way when stubhub commits illegal acts?
Scalping is only illegal in certain jurisdictions (usually state level, iirc). Presumably stubhub intentionally does not operate in those jurisdictions.
They could sell to people in those jurisdictions, but you could make people sign a thing saying that they actually bought the tickets from another area. Someone could probably come after them, but there's enough plausible deniability to keep it tied up in court for a while, and nobody is going to do that for low level scalping offenses.
bombcar
They probably specifically have deals with the venues to make it not technically scalping, somehow.
conductr
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.
TylerE
Scalping is legal in most jurisdictions, sometimes with restrictions (“no selling within 1000ft of the venue for more than 20% over face”.
SoftTalker
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.
autoexec
The First Sale doctrine is fine, hoarding (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoarding_(economics)) and price gouging not so much. Rights come with responsibilities. Maybe I can buy up a pallet of toilet paper in the middle of a pandemic, but people would be right to think I was a total piece of shit if I did.
Society's tolerance for parasites who do that kind of thing has a breaking point and when the people being negatively impacted get fed up enough to take action I'll have no sympathy for anyone who seeks to make others miserable just so that they can profit off of their suffering.
losteric
The concert is the product. A ticket is one approach for artists to control access to the limited experienc, typically while maintaining substantial equity and equality of access.
Of course profit maximization is not the only (or even primary) goal, that's what makes this such a hard problem. If it were, ticket sales would be trivially solved - just auction each seat to the highest bider, close biding near the concert date and prevent any transfers. Of course that's a terrible idea.
driscoll42
There's a significant difference between buying something and reselling, and then having bots buying hundreds/thousands and reselling.
nojvek
> 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.
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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.