

Who will solve ticketing? - whapworth

Rukkus is looking at the problem correctly IMHO, http:&#x2F;&#x2F;rukkus.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;rukkus-manifesto&#x2F; , but not creating the right solution...aggregating isn&#x27;t the way to go.<p>solution needs to consider: penalties for bad actors (scalpers, etc), rewards for super users (diehard fans), and controls on how tickets go on sale that favor the FANS that make artists famous.<p>Some thoughts:<p>Problem: If you’ve ever tried to buy a ticket to a popular upcoming show&#x2F;event, you know just what a P.I.T.A. it is.  Tickets sell out in seconds and then loyal fans are left struggling to find tickets on secondary markets or have to go in with a serious game plan to try to be one of the few that lands an actual ticket when they go on sale, ever refreshed a page a thousand times?
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wiseleo
The current situation is more like this:

Venue sells tickets, where the face value can be considered as the wholesale
value as far as the fan is concerned. Secondary markets buy up the wholesale
inventory, accept the risk of spoilage, and sell to the highest bidder.

So what is the solution? Making tickets non-transferable except by entering
transaction details on the venue site could be one approach. Transferring the
ticket voids the original ticket and generates a new ticket. Limit number of
transfers per user. Provide a validation site where a potential transferee can
validate the ticket by uploading its QR code or entering its ID number.

This would be difficult to enforce as anonymous debit cards purchasable with
cash exist. Limiting numbers of purchases is ineffective as scalpers have ways
to bypass the current ticket number restrictions already allegedly in effect.

This is who you are up against in addition to Livenation:
[http://aegworldwide.com/about/companyoverview/companyovervie...](http://aegworldwide.com/about/companyoverview/companyoverview)

Disrupting venue owners would be difficult as exclusive contracts with
Ticketmaster (aka Livenation) are long-term and in place. Building a solution
that they want to acquire and implement is probably how you would succeed.

~~~
kbenson
TicketMaster/LiveNation have gone a long way towards increasing the legitimacy
of secondary marker buying and selling. Their TM+ product allows buying
secondary tickets directly from the event page on TicketMaster/LiveNation,
selecting seats from the seat map, and as you suggested, reissues the tickets
with new barcodes while invalidating the old ones.

It's a mistake for anyone to assume that there are scalpers (brokers), and
there are fans, and they are always separate. Many, many fans buy more tickets
than they plan on using and sell on the secondary market. There are also those
who buy tickets and find later they can't attend, so need to offload the
tickets to recoup from investment. Assuming only brokers resell tickets
completely ignores the reality of the situation.

Brokers play an important role in secondary markets by spreading risk (as you
mentioned), while also adding a level of professionalism to the entire
secondary market. There's numerous metrics tracked by the exchanges they sell
on that greatly penalize problems and bad behavior. It's in everyone's best
interest if they plan to continue to use the system in the future to by a god
actor.

The venues and distributors know what to do to really hurt the vendors, which
is to accurately price the inventory from the start. This is a hard problem
though, so it's not fully implemented. Some distributors undoubtedly retain
inventory to sell on the secondary markets for higher profit. That said, even
if the tickets were priced perfectly on the primary market (TM/LN/AXS, etc),
there would _still_ be a secondary market, because the prices are not static
over time. Values would fluctuate over time, which still allows for
speculation purchasing.

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whapworth
Solution: Build a better mousetrap than ticketmaster/livenation tyrants that
rewards true fans and diehards...and also put stubhub and other secondary
markets out of business. Credit card companies are figuring it out and buying
up huge quantities of tickets to sell to their card holders as a
"reward"...they make money and act like they’re doing card holders a
favor..SMRT. Need to consider: penalties for bad actors, rewards for super
users, and some control on how tickets go on sale that at a base level favors
the fans. Also need to consider 4 key stake holders: artists, venues, labels,
and fans. issue is that the interests of the artists, venues and labels are
all aligned, ie. sell fast and price high, but not aligned with the fans, who
are the VERY ones that make the artists famous and should be the most cared
for.

User: Concert/show ticket buyer

Benefit: solve a HUGE current pain point for concert/event goers. this is a
big market, and RIPE for disruption, ask anyone about how
unpleasant/cumbersome the experience is. Make it easier, faster, and maybe
even cheaper for loyal fans to go to the shows of the artists they make
famous.

any thoughts?

~~~
oxalo
Is there really money in this? As someone who has suffered the pain of insta-
sellout-tickets, I understand. But from a business perspective, you need a way
into the market, and 'supporting the loyal fans' I don't think will cut it.

~~~
teovall
Use the artists as a back door around the label and the venue.

Happy fans and a good purchasing experience make for more sold tickets and
more loyal fans. Concerts are artists' bread and butter. That's where they
make most of their money.

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helen842000
I thought this had already been solved somewhat.

There are many events in the UK that use tickets with your photo on them. One
example is Glastonbury where you have to pre-register your photo before the
tickets go on sale and you get a registration number.

Then the person buying the tickets on the day enters the registration numbers
of the people they are purchasing for, similar to passport number when buying
plane tickets.

No page refreshes required on ticket day because tickets are only sold through
the 1 vendor site so they have the full pool of tickets. Scalpers don't bother
to get in the online queue because they are non-transferrable.

If you decide not to go to to the event you can return your ticket for a
refund, those returned tickets then get offered up at a later date for anyone
that previously registered but missed out. There are no person to person
trades. All tickets sales are vendor to person.

------
teovall
Seems like you could just model it on the way airlines do ticketing.

* Your ticket has your name on it.

* ID is checked at the door and must match your ticket.

* When buying a ticket, you can choose a refundable ticket for a higher price than a non-refundable ticket.

* Tickets can be sold through resellers who get a cut.

* Resellers are all selling from the same pool of open seats so they have to have competitive prices.

* Ticket prices rise as the concert date gets closer.

* "Frequent fliers" can get rewards and other preferential treatment.

~~~
wiseleo
This creates a problem with tickets where the attendee is not the person
paying for the ticket and could be one of several potential companions of the
person who is paying for the tickets.

I can no longer just give a pair of tickets to someone as a surprise and tell
them to go have fun. I could, in theory, give them a gift token that
corresponds to reserved seats and then it would be up to them to register
their names. Then the scalper can sell such tokens and we are back to where we
started.

~~~
teovall
You can buy a plane ticket for someone else. You just can't fly using someone
else's ticket.

Why would that not work for concert tickets?

The only issue I can think of is giving two (or more) tickets to someone as a
gift so they, and the friend(s) of their choice, can go to a concert together.

This could be handled by selling "friend" tickets that are only valid if the
person named on the primary ticket is accompanying them. There would probably
need to be a limit on the number of "friend" tickets that could be purchased
along with each primary ticket.

For a scalper to sell these tickets, they would need to accompany their buyers
through the doors. Scalpers wouldn't be able to resell their primary ticket,
which would increase the costs for scalpers but not anyone else. Each scalper
would only be able to sell a small number of tickets due to the friend limit.

~~~
whapworth
or maybe you need to attend a certain percentage of the concerts for which you
buy tickets....just to prevent the person who buys tickets for eight different
shows in a night and goes to none.

