You can set minimal price in multi-item auction. You don't have to sell out for auction to end. And you don't have to sell for zero if there are not enough buyers.

As for the second argument, I don't suggest ending it minutes or even hours before the event. Rather days or weeks. The point is that all people who want to go can declare how much they are willing to pay beforehand and if their best offer gets beaten by scalpers, the scalpers won't profit by selling tickets for more money to them just before the show.

My suggestion is not to remove scalpers altogether but limit their opportunities for earning and helping artist extract some of the additional wealth that currently goes to scalpers. Those scalpers that remain would provide legit service of providing tickets to people who couldn't attend an auction.

Even days or weeks is insufficient. If I buy tickets to an event four months from now it is usually incredibly easy to arrange an affordable flight, for example. Or if two mutually exclusive events I am interested in have tickets go on sale at the same time right now I can pick one and purchase a ticket. If they are sold out I can pick the other event instead. With this system if I enter the auction for only one and do not win then I am screwed for the second one as well. If I enter both auctions I run the risk of purchasing both tickets.

I can imagine some other, more subtle planning issues that arise as well. Not that the system couldn't work but I think it would make for a terrible standard model.

As a sort of side-note you talk about helping the artist extract some of the money they are leaving on the table. I don't it's fair to assume that they are leaving the money there because they can't figure out "hey, if people are successfully scalping then I could make more money by charging more!" They have to look beyond a single transaction and keep in mind lower income fans that they still want to please, for example. Such fans would inevitably lose the auction for any show that sells out but some of them actually get to attend the show with the current structure.

> If I enter both auctions I run the risk of purchasing both tickets.

This might be mitigated by allowing people to sell their tickets after auction. They'll be doing that anyway so you could even provide them with platform to do this hassle free.

> Not that the system couldn't work but I think it would make for a terrible standard model.

I think current system is much worse. The only good thing about it is that people can get cheap tickets to really great events fast if they are dedicated enough to stand in line for hours right after they begin to be sold. But that's the loss for artists because is such cases they sell tickets for too low price. Other than that only the fact that you theoretically can get tickets early and you have a lot room for planning. Current system is terrible for people who can afford to buy tickets from scalpers because the scalpers basically freeload on them by snatching tickets and keep them long enough for demand to build up and for price to raise.

You don't have to sell all tickets via the auction. You can gift some to fan associations. Distribute some through lottery. Or even keep some to sell at whatever price serves your purposes just before the show.

What auction would do and what is its greatest value in my opinion is giving the artists (and everybody else) estimate of how high the demand is and adjust price automatically.