People are never going to understand supply & demand. They always feel entitled to face value prices while ignoring basic market realities. The Chicago Cubs experimented a few years back with a variation of an auction format for primary ticketing and it completely bombed. Now, instead, they have vested interests in most of the broker shops populating the area around Wrigley Field including roof top tickets. Similar end result, different method.
My favorite stories relate to when an artist gives out tickets for a free show then becomes enraged when a secondary market forms for them. Their problems would be a lot bigger if a market never formed to begin with...
Also, if the team/fan is really concerned with certain people being excluded due to prices, they should hold a lottery based on cell phone verification. Or make tickets will-call pick up only (photo ID and purchasing credit card required). But even methods like this can be gamed and often lead to more headaches.
The interesting part about all of this is the opposite is happening for most teams and artists:
Are there any musicians who run market bids on tickets, so they're the ones controlling the primary market? Is that legal? (If not, it's a shame: I think that might be a good solution both for letting newer bands sell lots of cheaper tickets and for helping bigger bands make a good profit from touring.)
A few years back Pearl Jam tried to do its own ticketing (instead of using Ticketmaster)and it was a disaster. The site couldn't handle the thousands of requests per second.
artists and others have completely sorted out supply and demand, my tickets for celtic vs inverness caley thistle were significantly less than my ones for celtic vs manchester united, oasis play to 100,000 instead of a pub of 50 people.
the scalpers just work at a more granular level, there is obviously a natural market for it, but it hurts the fans without money, doesnt help the artists at all, the only people to benefit are the scalpers, (and marginally the people who are happy buying marked up tickets)
I dont quite understand how artists profit from a secondary market, the scalpers dont pay them, they get face value tickets and sell them for what they can get and pocket the profit.
I have not been "conditioned" to dislike scalpers, I have had to sit at a website for a concert and refresh every 30 seconds to not be able to get a ticket then watch them go on ebay by the ton on ebay for a stupid markup.
I know supply and demand comes into it, and comparisons will be drawn with the stock market, but the question is is that a model that we want to be copying?
what is fair in this case, is distributing tickets on the basis of disposable income fair? its often mutually exclusive with the entire reason the demand is high in the first place, which is the usually young with minimum income fans that told everyone about X.
The secondary market is one that purely exists to make a profit by creating no value and exploiting a system that lets the people with the means "win" over those without.
the exact can be said about domain hoarders, spammers all the way down to slave labour. just because there is a market for it doesnt mean it is the best way
Having worked for a scalper as a young person trying to get through school, I have to agree that they are parasites. I can't believe the support they're getting on techcrunch. Oh well.
I don't think hiring a bunch of kids to go stand in line to get around ticket limits so you can buy up all the tickets, thus preventing other kids from getting them is that valuable of a service, no.
Of course you're going to get downmodded, you didn't even make an argument originally!
Nobody is buying tickets so kids can't get them. They're buying them to re-sell them at a higher price because there is a market for tickets at that price. They're not buying them to hoard them for a rainy day or something.
The reality is, for most events you can get tickets for face value, through the primary provider, if you do so in a remotely timely fashion. The other reality is that for most events that have a large secondary market you can get tickets well below face value.
Real "scalpers", the people who stand around at games, are providing a service. They are selling tickets for cost + a convenience fee to be paid by whoever found it too inconvenient to get tickets earlier (or felt like "playing the market" or whatever).
Think of the face value of the tickets as the "IPO" price. Friends and family get tickets at IPO prices. Immediately on release, the market sets the "real" price of those tickets.
Scalpers are just buying at the IPO price. If that's unfair, the party it's unfair to is the artist; they're the ones who got ripped off by an artificially low face value. On the other hand, just like shares can easily close below their IPO value, demand for a block of tickets can be low, which screws the scalper.
Whether scalpers buy and hold huge blocks of tickets is kind of besides the point. The tickets are, in theory, worth what they're worth. The scalper who refuses to sell at a fair market price should lose money.
If you don't mind a little uncertainty, you can get into events for very cheap by just showing up 30 minutes beforehand and walking up to scalpers and using this line:
"I'll give you half face value for two tickets."
Most of them will snort indignantly. One will eventually take you up on it. When I lived in Boston last year, I got great lodge seats about center court for the Celtics after a blizzard.
Sometimes a nice person will just give you tickets too - in NY, girlfriend and I regularly get great seats to the Mets. We bought a couple terrible seats once for like $10 each, then a nice older couple who had their friends flake on them gave us seats right behind homeplate for free. We were sitting a couple seats behind the managers' wife, who was yelling all kinds of things. We gave our cheap tickets to a couple young kids who were quite happy about that too.
I've never missed an event I just showed up for, and have always gotten in for less than face value as scalpers get desperate to move tickets. But I've never needed to see a particular event - the plan was always to go watch at a sports bar, or go catch a movie if we can't get in.
Edit: I'm in LA right now. If Japan advances to the semifinals in the WBC, I'll probably show up to Dodger Stadium and try this there too. Maybe will wind up paying face value for tickets there - but maybe not. Some scalper always buys too many tickets.
My favorite stories relate to when an artist gives out tickets for a free show then becomes enraged when a secondary market forms for them. Their problems would be a lot bigger if a market never formed to begin with...
Also, if the team/fan is really concerned with certain people being excluded due to prices, they should hold a lottery based on cell phone verification. Or make tickets will-call pick up only (photo ID and purchasing credit card required). But even methods like this can be gamed and often lead to more headaches.
The interesting part about all of this is the opposite is happening for most teams and artists:
http://ticketstumbler.com/new-stuff/2009/03/08/reillys-right...