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Comment by jedberg | Hacker News Reader

Nine Inch Nails solved the scalping problem, and I'm not sure why their solution isn't more widely adopted.

You had to give your name to buy the ticket, and you could only buy two. Then upon arrival at the venue, you got in line, went through security, and then went to will call. At that point you couldn't leave the venue. You never even took the ticket. Will call handed it to the ticket taker who let you in.

So if you were a scalper, the best you could do is scalp your second ticket and then attend the concert with the person you just screwed with an overpriced ticket.

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In addition to linking tickets to the buyer by name, I believe the ticket selling platform should facilitate easily reselling tickets in the case where the buyer cannot use them. If I am unable to attend a concert, I should be able to indicate this to the platform. The platform should then attempt to sell the ticket at the most appropriate price. If the ticket could be sold at full price ahead of the event, I should end up paying nothing except possible transaction costs. If the ticket sells at a lower price, I should only end up paying the difference.

Easy and safe reselling of tickets should be possible, at ideally no cost to the person reselling the ticket. I think this would be a nice feature of a consumer friendly platform, and a necessary mechanism in order to make the "link ticket to name" approach be fair.

In the Netherlands www.ticketswap.com works really well for reselling e-tickets and only allows for a 20% markup.

Went to a concert recently and insurance was built in just in case you got a flat tire or just couldn't attend. This in my opinion is a better solution that solves the scalping problem.

The problem is ticketmaster, and this is the ticketmaster verified fan program. They are to concerts what time warner is to the internet. They're only trying to solve the problems on their end, without endangering their monopoly. This solution just gives gains to the artists, probably to keep them from straying.

> ...person you just screwed with an overpriced ticket.

This is also known as an "adult freely and willingly participating in a voluntary transaction."

Pro-scalping crowd here at HN? Well I'll be damned.

Not that surprising, HN and the tech industry in general leans very liberal on economic issues.

Overpriced middle men doesn't seem that liberal to me. I also see a generally positive attitude towards Tesla trying to direct sell to customers and fighting car dealerships. A legitimate comparison in my mind.

But by volume of DV, I guess HN has some interesting minds here as well.

"liberal on economic issues" means people/companies are free to do whatever they want with their money and property. So artists and event-planners are free to sell tickets to scalpers, scalpers are free to sell tickets to concert-goers, concert-goers are free to buy tickets from whoever they want, and Tesla can direct sell to customers, all at whatever price they want/can.

It's not pro-scalping as much as it's pro-market, at least from what I've read in this thread.

Sugar coat it however you like, it's greedy.

Scalping's a good example of how markets break down for what we want as a society. Most of us have a visceral reaction to scalpers because we want to live in a world where music and shows are a cultural experience more of us can share.

Scalpers don't do that--they don't open up that experience--they insert themselves in between the real transaction, making some bank for themselves while adding no value to either party's experience.

I'm sure you could say "but scalpers help determine the real price of the ticket, to someone willing to pay" ... we, as a society, don't want or need that help. If we, as a society, keep coming up with ways to thwart that (like the NiN thing mentioned above), that's a sign.

Markets serve us at our leisure, not the other way around.

It's tautological that scalpers are providing value to the people they sell tickets to (otherwise there would not be scalpers).

People react to it because it violates ideas about fairness.

The value here is entry to an event. The scalper does not create this value. Their service degrades this value in the form of a higher cost. The end user pays this because there are usually no other options. It's greedy reselling.

The value the scalper provides can still be analogous to transporting some goods across a distance. They act as a middleman that changes the availability of the thing they sell.

I'm not arguing in favor of scalping, I'm just saying that the good arguments against are about fairness, they aren't economic.

For instance, there is always the option of not attending a concert. This is not the same things as "no other options".

> The value the scalper provides can still be analogous to transporting some goods across a distance

Sure, can be, but isn't. More often than not, it's moving the point of sale from one website to another with an absurd markup. If it's a scalper on the sidewalk selling tickets to a sold out show, then yes, they've physically moved the asset but created no more value to either the venue or the end user, only to themselves, so we're still talking about greed.

> For instance, there is always the option of not attending a concert. This is not the same things as "no other options".

The end user not going to the concert because of the ticket price means that the scalper has imposed that choice on the user.

You've missed my meaning. I said analogous, not literally the same. The scalper changes availability of tickets from favoring time/chance to favoring willingness to pay more.

It's also a bit much to talk about the scalper imposing anything on end users. If everyone got together and stopped buying scalped tickets, there wouldn't be any ticket scalping anymore. Except that won't work because there are plenty of people that care less about money and ticket scalping than they care about attending concerts.

Just because the end user doesn't mind paying higher, doesn't mean a higher price has not been imposed on them.

It's not imposed.

Look, a scalper wouldn't command the prices they did if the demand wasn't there.

In reality, whether we like it or not, the scalper is actually facilitating price discovery. It's very clear that these tickets are worth more to people than their face value, as otherwise the scalpers would be unsuccessful.

All the scalper is doing is raising the price to what the market will bear.

Which is why this isn't about economics. It really is strictly about fairness, which is entirely orthogonal.

Look, it's fine with me that you don't understand the concept of imposition.

I'm not talking about fairness or economics, I'm talking about greed, and how a person inserts themselves into a process solely because they want money. A middleman who adds no additional value to anyone but themselves.

The fallacy in your thought process is that you can't imagine how the world changes if the scalpers disappear.

Today's reality: A guy discovers a band he likes is playing in town in 10 days, hops on to stubhub, and buys a ticket at 300% markup.

Your fantasy world where scalpers magically disappear: A guy discovers a band he likes is playing in town in 10 days, hops on to Ticketmaster and buys a ticket at msrp.

Actual reality if scalpers magically disappeared and prices stayed the same: A guy finds out a band he likes is playing in town in ten days and tries to buy a ticket, but he finds out that the entire concert sold out 5 months ago and he is just shit out of luck.

You may believe that a scalper holding a ticket hostage for a higher price adds no value, but the mere fact that you buy from them at all is a testament to the value they created: they held on to a ticket that you were too fucking slow to buy, and kept it out of reach to all the people who were poorer than you, and did so long enough for you to realize that the concert existed and you wanted to buy a ticket to it. And you begrudgingly admitted that that value was worth the markup you paid the minute you consented to buying it.

Scalpers are greedy, plain and simple. At this point, your attempts to justify it make me think that you're trying to make yourself feel better about your own behavior. Whatever makes you sleep better at night.

What helps me sleep at night is a CPAP machine. Worrying about greed never kept me up at night, because it's everywhere and in everyone and there is nothing you or I can do about it so there's no point thinking about it any more than I think about breathing or shitting. You should try caring less and accepting reality, the sleep is amazing.

And at the price the artist set, more people want to get into the event than can be accommodated. Couldn't we also say that those that buy scalped tickets are greedy? Because they are willing to use their wealth to outbid those that are less wealthy in order to partake in a scarce cultural experience?

> Couldn't we also say that those that buy scalped tickets are greedy?

No, they were most likely going regardless of the ticket price, they are just less deterred by it.

Their purchase of the ticket and subsequent attendance literally means that someone else couldn't attend. They, by virtue of wealth, took that experience from someone else.

Not sure if you missed the entire rest of the thread, but we're talking about the scalpers. The event attendee in your scenario would have gone with or without the scalpers existence.

The same number of attendees would have attended. Whether they would be the same attendees is entirely disputed. They absolutely would be different. The person who could afford a ticket at face value and no more cannot attend because greedier people were willing to pay more to displace them.

Watching you try and justify greedy behavior is almost as impressive as it is pathetic.

I don't justify greedy behavior, I merely recognize that it exists everywhere, that everybody is guilty of it, and I can't find any sympathy for those that those who complain about the greed of others but never seem to recognize their own.

It's pure rent seeking, it creates no value except for much wealthier people who don't want to remember when tickets go on sale.

Can you imagine what the world would be like if we had to remember a sale date for a specific airline flight? We'd probably all end up buying from scalpers, the airlines would get screwed out of lots of money, and we'd all be pissed that we'd be buying from greedy no-value middlemen. But from a qualitative and quantitative customer perspective, it probably wouldn't be much different from the way it is now with dynamic pricing...the only difference is the airline makes less money and the scalper would capture the difference.

Artists are the problem in this market. They should charge more (which eliminates the incentive to scalp), or play more shows (increasing the supply and lowering market prices) if they don't want to charge more.

Flights and concerts are entirely different industries, so this is a silly comparison.

These issues don't have perfect Econ 101 answers. Artists can't just play more shows as touring is pretty demanding, and charging more means only wealthier people can attend which (rightfully) looks bad and is a legit moral issue.

Artists can and do play more. Phish in particular is pretty famous for doing multiple shows in the same venue on contiguous nights, as well as doing smaller shows in smaller towns in between larger cities as a way of spreading out demand. And their prices have always been pretty reasonable as a result. More artists should care about their fans enough to do this, but I guess it's easier to just blame greedy scalpers for the ticket prices.

Sure, they participated willingly, but they aren't happy about paying an unnecessary middleman who adds cost but provides no value.

Hence the "screwing" part.

Well, that's not strictly true.

By raising the price of tickets to what the market will bear, they force some people out of the marketplace, increasing availability of tickets for those who can afford them.

And from the perspective of the artist and Ticketmaster, they eliminate some of the risk of tickets going unsold.

Of course, it's understandably seen as very unfair (goodness knows I've missed out on shows I wanted to go to because scalpers raised the price beyond the level I was willing to pay), but I wouldn't say it has no value.

I can't help but think that if an IPO went like this, and the share price ballooned after colo'd bots scooped up the cheap shares, people would be up in arms about the company leaving money on the table. Just the people in this case are the artists, who traditionally get screwed anyways. And ticketmaster doesn't have the same incentive for accurate pricing. Also there's social stigma of money being the gatekeeper to fun/cultural things.

Why do you believe money is being left on the table?

TBH, I've never really understood this argument. Unless the argument is that the artist is being forced to set a lower face value, if all the tickets are sold at face value and scalped, the artist is getting exactly what they would have budgeted for.

So, are you saying the artist is being forced to sell the tickets at a price that's below what the market will bear?

This is a lot more time consuming than the average concert venue entrance. Doesn't it result in huge lines?

No, it was on par with regular security checks.

It was no worse than any other concert I ever went to.

It can. U2 did something similar in Vancouver - you needed to show the credit card the ticket was bought with in order to get in. It created huge lineups (a couple hours long) and a lot of fans missed the opening band (Mumford & Sons) [1]. Eventually they just started letting everyone in without checking credit cards, so they could get in before U2 came on.

Maybe it works for the 20,000-seat arenas NIN plays in, but it sure didn't work for a 54,000-seat stadium.

[1] http://vancouversun.com/entertainment/music/big-crowd-for-u2...

That's just the venue being cheap. For safety reasons the 54,000 seat stadium would be definition have twice as many entry/exit areas as the 22,000.

They were just too cheap to use the full capacity.

I had the same problem at the U2 concert in Santa Clara. 1/2 the doors were closed.

How many people attended the concert? That sounds like it might have been a long line at will call.

I think Rammstein is/was doing the same for their concerts.

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