But there are reasons they keep prices low as well. There's a "full house effect" that comes when every seat is full (can you imagine being at a play where half of the seats are empty), as well as just offloading the risk and getting cash in advance. It was hard to find someone with 500k to put into tickets speculatively.
Right, I just have a hard time believing that filling up the house is just so risky and difficult that they'll take an ~80% loss on revenue (5x scalper markup) just to be sure of it.
That model would require a level of risk aversion from the sellers that implies they should just be buying government bonds with their capital rather than running concerts.
But there are reasons they keep prices low as well. There's a "full house effect" that comes when every seat is full (can you imagine being at a play where half of the seats are empty), as well as just offloading the risk and getting cash in advance. It was hard to find someone with 500k to put into tickets speculatively.