
Hypocritical Artists and Secondary Ticket Sales - jasonlbaptiste
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/17/hypocritical-artists-and-secondary-ticket-sales/
======
fallentimes
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:

[http://ticketstumbler.com/new-stuff/2009/03/08/reillys-
right...](http://ticketstumbler.com/new-stuff/2009/03/08/reillys-right-
tickets-are-cheap/)

~~~
unalone
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.)

~~~
fallentimes
No major ones that I know of.

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.

------
daleharvey
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

------
robotron
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.

~~~
mooism2
Why? I'm curious. Don't they provide a valuable service?

~~~
robotron
(I knew I would be modded down, alas)

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.

~~~
tdavis
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).

------
lionhearted
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.

