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Comment by kareemsabri | Hacker News Reader

> But given the ridiculous levels of scalping that goes on every day (including all the companies that attempt to normalize it, like StubHub), doesn't it all imply that the fair market price of a lot of tickets is way higher than what they sell for? Obviously demand is way outstripping supply or people wouldn't pay $500-$1000 for $100 tickets on a daily basis.

Scalpers are the ones choking off supply by monopolizing huge numbers of tickets. A market with too few sellers gives those sellers price control. If Ticketmaster put a stop to the practice, prices would likely drop.

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>Scalpers are the ones choking off supply by monopolizing huge numbers of tickets

The only way this would actually have any effect on "supply" is if scalpers were just eating tickets and leaving empty seats in the venue. The number of seats at the venue is more the "supply" than the number of tickets outstanding on the sales markets.

If a scalper was able to buy 100% of the tickets for an event, and then sell all of them at 3x "face value", then that means that the market was able to bear a price of 3x. The scalper did not change "supply" here...

Or buy a large amount and then sell them slowly, imitiating low supply?

> A market with too few sellers gives those sellers price control.

There isn't a set amount of supply. Artists could (and do) easily add dates, increasing supply. Many events are bought by brokers and then end up selling below cost because a date was added, and there's just not enough demand to be able to charge premiums on the face value (which is almost never the purchase cost, because of additional fees during checkout).

People usually overestimate how much the brokers affect the ability to get tickets, and how many events that happens on. There are many things that contribute to low supply and high demand, but brokers are convenient villains to point to. Artists have full control over this, and they can often easily solve the problem by playing larger venues or multiple dates, but they don't because that might cut into profits if the venue doesn't sell out.

Exactly. That’s extortion, not a free market.

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