
Why You Can’t Get a Ticket to the NBA Finals - pappyo
https://theringer.com/ticket-industry-problem-solution-e4b3b71fdff6#.z2zzl0jhc
======
zippergz
Yesterday:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11833484](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11833484)

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pappyo
Here's what I don't get. In previous versions of HN, my submission would be
directed to the original. Why doesn't that happen any more?

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vlucas
Well this explains a lot.

I recently bought NBA tickets to Game 3 of the Western Conference Finals
(Oklahoma City Thunder vs. Golden State Warriors), and I was absolutely pissed
off at the whole process.

I went on a small Twitter rampage to vent about it, with a picture that shows
NO TICKETS available LITERALLY THE SECOND they went "on sale" (10AM Thursday
May 19, 2016), and then beside it another screenshot of ALMOST 1,300 TICKETS
FOR RESALE at the exact same time.

[https://twitter.com/vlucas/status/733315798068953089](https://twitter.com/vlucas/status/733315798068953089)

I learned the system was rigged against me the hard way, and it totally
sucked. It was painfully obvious that all the tickets were sold out well
before the game, and that a whole lot of scalpers were making lots of money on
reselling tickets that were not fans, and never had any intention of going to
the game in the first place. The kicker is that the system actually seemed
_designed intentionally for this to happen_ , screwing the actual fans in the
process.

~~~
lutefisk
That's pretty intentional. A venue really doesn't care how many people go,
they care that the show gets "sold out".

A couple of my friends are scalpers. They said there's a limit of 8 tickets
for most shows per address, but if you walk in with thousands of dollars in
cash that limit goes away. Online it's a little different since you need to
put your address in for your credit card, but there's plenty of ways to get
multiple addresses with your name for credit cards.

They make more than me as a software engineer, but they can easily lose
thousands if a show doesn't pan out. They follow tours across the US and hope
they find "the one" that makes them rich.

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aianus
What's wrong with blindly auctioning off all of the tickets?

That way more tickets will be sold, the artist can't be accused of being
greedy, there won't be much profit in the resale market, and everyone who
attends the show will have paid an amount they thought was reasonable during
the bidding process.

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danbruc
Because if the supply of tickets is lower than the demand, which it obviously
is, tickets will essentially only go to the people able to spend the most
money on them.

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aianus
That's no different than now, except the money will go to the artists and
producers and not some useless middleman with a fast web scraper.

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danbruc
Now I am bit confused. Yes, on the consumer side there will be no big
difference as compared to the current situation but don't we agree that the
current situation is not good or at least not optimal?

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aianus
We're disagreeing on why the current situation is not good.

I'm mad that there's a class of a parasites getting rich off the backs of the
artists and workers that create the value in the concerts.

I have no issue with poor people being unable to see live shows.

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mmastrac
It feels like the ticketing process in general is broken. There's too much
demand for events, making the entire market dysfunctional.

Why don't we 1) make tickets non-transferrable (but refundable), 2) start
pricing half the tickets as what the person will pay via auction and the other
half as a fixed-price lottery? I'm not aware of many other ways to make things
fair when demand outstrips supply so much.

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chrisseaton
I can't relate to any of the arguments in this thread!

Why does it need to be fair? It's a private business putting on an event that
nobody needs to go to except as a luxury entertainment. It's not access to
food and water. We don't expect that other limited luxuries should be
available to everyone, so why concerts and sport events?

Surely tickets going to the people who'll pay the most is fair?

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bgilroy26
Selling some at a lottery provides a market for people who would be priced out
very early along the curve.

If you want to avoid a Hunger Games situation where only the rich and famous
enjoy your product (the NBA and many musicians care about this) that sort of
person needs to be provided for

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Shivetya
Here is the deal, they already give fans an in road on buying play off
tickets. Be a season ticket holder.

Now some will argue this is not sufficient but the rub is, if your not going
to support the team the full season then why should you have preference over
someone who does?

So all teams provide for regular fans. However many people who do complain
about the 'system' are fans of fancy, as in fans when the team wins and is in
the playoffs.

There are similar passes and priorities for entertainment venues.

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bcassedy
Season tickets cost thousands of dollars and in many cases have extremely long
waiting lists. When I still lived in the DC area, the waiting list for
Redskins season tickets was decades long.

It's important to keep the sport seemingly accessible for the long term
prospects of the sport.

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syphilis2
A few years ago Louis CK started selling tickets for his shows exclusively
from his website. His post announcing the process is worth a read. I bought
tickets for that show from him and the process was as simple as he describes
it.

[https://louisck.net/news/im-going-on-the-road](https://louisck.net/news/im-
going-on-the-road)

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baddox
He certainly doesn't still exclusively do that. Tickets for his current tour
are sold through Ticketmaster.

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syphilis2
I was not aware, but this is true. I looked through his latest tour and ticket
prices vary, tickets are sold from various ticket outlets, and (depending on
the outlet) additional fees may inflate prices. It seems like the only tenet
that remains is that about ticket resale.

[https://louisck.net/tour-dates](https://louisck.net/tour-dates) : 'Regarding
ticket resale: we take great efforts and have many methods of finding out what
inventory is being sold on "broker" sites like Stubhub and Vivid Seats and
immediately invalidating those tickets.'

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gratalis
Good analysis that makes me slightly less upset about the difficulty of
gaining entrance into the Western States 100. The WSER event organizers
implement this article's primary recommendations: transparency and non-
transferability despite the huge supply and demand disparity and market forces
driving their automatic entry vs. lottery process: [http://www.wser.org/entry-
process/](http://www.wser.org/entry-process/)

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geodel
I think this is like asking for 'Right to redressal for hurt feelings'. Simple
economic logic dictates that those who pay highest for music/sporting events
get privilege to watch that live.

These fans seems to be asking for Right to watch live. What if less popular
artists/sports teams ask for Right to Audience? I think government should
start looking into that also after all there must be lots of mediocre
artists/sports persons/chefs etc looking for patrons.

~~~
wlesieutre
That is _one_ solution for how to distribute a good that's available in
limited quantities. It's not the only solution, or necessarily the "best"
solution for any given circumstance.

Other examples include "Who's willing to wait in a 15 minute line for the
water fountain," "Enter a lottery for the limited number of season football
tickets," and "Only people with an even numbered license plate can buy gas
today."

I think there are longer-term factors for the NBA here. If your fans can't get
reasonably priced tickets to any of the games they're excited about because of
scalping, some percent of them are going to get fed up and do something else
with their lives. The NBA gets long term value out of fans being able to
connect with their brand at the prices that the NBA is setting, but scalpers
are scraping up the benefits from both sides and pocketing it.

NBA doesn't get the money that they could have earned by charging higher
prices, and fans don't have a shot at affordable access to events.

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admn2
Unrelated: Can't tell how I feel about Medium.com as a CMS compared to old
Grantland. Reads great, but feels like standalone (could just be me.)

~~~
kelukelugames
The customization looks ugly. Hopefully Medium will add more flexibility or
become plug and play like Disqus.

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guelo
A more accurate title would be something like "Why you can't get good tickets
for popular events via the official websites."

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Glyptodon
Nontransferable tickets seem terrible, mostly because they screw regular
people as much as "devious resellers." Would no longer be possible to gift
tickets or recover costs in the case of an unexpected cancellation.

I'm more curious why they have to be sold on a FCFS basis rather than an
auction or via random selection.

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burkaman
If you just make them refundable then only the resellers get screwed.

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chinathrow
> A couple of my friends are scalpers.

You have bad friends.

Edit: Aren't scalpers viewed as the scum? Why the downvotes?

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dang
Probably because it wasn't substantive. There's also something uncivil about
reducing a complex thing like lutefisk's comment to the most-easily-denounced
bit, then denouncing it. It shuts down conversation instead of taking it in an
interesting direction.

We detached this comment from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11837077](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11837077)
and marked it off-topic.

~~~
chinathrow
Thank you

