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Comment by travisoneill1 | Hacker News Reader

Promoters are well aware that they sell tickets for less than they could get but I think it's unlikely to change. There are essentially 2 ways to distribute things. A free market model where the highest bidder gets to buy. Or a price control model where only some people get to buy based on some arbitrary selection model, usually first come first serve. And everybody else is SOL. When people think (emotionally) of what is "fair" they typically think of the price control model, which is why we have rent control, price gouging laws, and people get pissed off at Uber surge pricing. So if promoters try a more market based strategy like the one you mention it will probably cause a backlash from fans for charging $500 for a ticket. Unlike the promoters, scalpers have no perceived connection to the artists, so they (or Ticketmaster) can take the public outrage in exchange for profits without risking future ticket sales.

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I'm a big fan of the system that the sneaker companies have slowly adopted. Interested people sign up ahead of time with a registered account. You get a notification right before the release that you have to confirm. Then a raffle takes places where the winner gets charged immediately. It's about a ten mInute investment, which with how sneaker quality has gone down in recent years (especially Nike) is about all the time it is worth it to me anymore.

Only issue I can see is that with sneakers there is almost no reason to get more than one pair unless you're reselling. Buying multiple tickets for a concert makes more sense. There could possibly be some increasing fee charged over a certain number, that could suck profit away from scalpers. The fee only occurs if the tickets are all presold.

This is effectively the system used by the popular festivals in the UK, particularly Glastonbury. You need to pre-register for tickets, which involves uploading photos. When it goes on sale, only pre-registered users can buy, and the photos are checked on entry. Other festivals do the simpler thing of checking the names on the booking against ID. Many allow a secondary market in tickets, but only at or below face value for those who are unable to go. This shows what can be done if they really do want to stop scalpers.

Non automatable hoops to jump through can definitely be a good way to determine who “deserves” the tickets. There’s technological ways to do that, but it’s a magic sauce that would make a company a lot of money.

What would be the market incentive for _anyone_ in the industry to "suck profit away from scalpers"?

Profit.

Wait, what’s wrong with first come first serve? This works for most Symphonies I’ve been to just fine.

The problem is when all tickets sell out in a couple minutes (at the unrealistic list price), limited only by the IT infrastructure handling the orders. In this case only "professional scalpers" can win the race to be "first". OK, now we're caught up to present day, is there any way we can make this system less silly and have less of the money end up in the hands of middlemen ...

>less of the money end up in the hands of middlemen

This is the deceit of the whole system though. This system isn't just about "middlemen" extracting value. The _artists themselves_ directly profit from the multi-tier selling system. A performer like Bieber or Adelle is actually directly selling large blocks of premium seats directly to ticket brokers ("scalpers") _at a premium over face value already_.

I think there's less of that happening, and more of either agents on behalf of the artists are selling directly on the exchanges, or there's a profit sharing agreement with select brokers. Whether there's a difference between those two things is up to you to decide. But yes, often large chunks of inventory seem to never become available on the primary market, for whatever the reason.

>either agents on behalf of the artists are selling directly on the exchanges, or there's a profit sharing agreement with select brokers

This is just mental gymnastics to absolve performers of economic responsibility for the market in which _they_ are the source of all value in play. The artists are directly complicit because they want to get famous and make the big bucks. The ones who don't play that game are the bands you might see touring local venues and working out a $10-$20 cover charge with the bar they play at.

>often large chunks of inventory seem to never become available on the primary market, for whatever the reason

I worked at a secondary ticket marketplace company and I am trying to explain to you what is _actually happening_ in the real world every day in this industry, from my direct experience. I'm not hypothesizing here...

Edit: can't reply to you again, but I think we're on the same page :)

> This is just mental gymnastics to absolve performers of economic responsibility

I'm fully putting blame on the artists for this behavior. I'm just wording it slightly differently because I think it's less of a "broker approaches artist with a good deal" situation than a "artist decides they want to have their cake and eat it too and quietly sell on the secondary market for more money." That's not definitive though, I'm sure there have been plenty of brokers that have approached everyone in the entertainment industry in the past.

> I worked at a secondary ticket marketplace company and I am trying to explain to you what is _actually happening_ in the real world every day in this industry, from my direct experience. I'm not hypothesizing here...

I work in it currently, and have for years. Everyone in the industry believes that, but few will outright say they have access to that definitively (for obvious reasons). If you have direct knowledge that it was happening at your company or direct knowledge of another company doing so, I'm happy to have confirmation. I just didn't want to be overly assertive about something I didn't know as fact, and wanted to express what I saw as the general industry consensus ("it happens, there's no proof"). :)

This makes sense, seems like photo ID would be a way to limit the per customer purchases.

Sure. That'd probably work. That's why the article is so explosive... it shows that TM will never implement anything to make its service fair to the actual fans.

My comment applies to situations where the ticket price is massively different than the market clearing price. If a ticket is priced close to the market clearing price then it isn't really a price control situation. I'm guessing that this is probably closer to the situation for the symphony.

Yes, because first chair violin doesn't make even a fraction of what Justin Bieber makes per show...

That doesn’t explain why tho

(Random numbers to illustrate a point:)

If the symphony was an auction system, tickets might sell for $110 each. It fills up with a $100 each first-come system, most people who want tickets can get them, tickets are sold at only a $10 discount of auction value, and it "feels fair." The first-come-first-serve system works well for the symphony.

If the pop-star concert was an auction system, tickets might sell for $999 each. With first-come-first-serve and a set $100 price, each ticket is sold at a $899 discount of auction value. Moreover, most people who want tickets cannot get them directly as they sell out instantly because of the relatively steep discount (90% discount vs 9% discount).

The first-come-first-serve system only works well when prices are set near a market-clearing value, like with the symphony. As stated elsewhere in the thread, people would get super upset at $999 tickets. They would think "those greedy pop-stars price tickets way too high, it's so unfair." So pop-stars are unwilling to set prices at the high market-clearing value, and use the first-come-first-serve with way underpriced tickets (getting some money back by having agreements with scalpers or Ticketmaster).

Demand way exceeds supply, tickets sell out instantly (mostly to scalpers). Most fans never get to see the concert at the "fair-seeming" $100 price and are upset at "those nasty scalpers" and pay near $1000 to see the concert anyways. But the scalpers (or Ticketmaster) are the ones whose reputations are harmed, saving the artists' reputations.

The purpose of a pricing strategy is to maximize the capture of value from a given market. Auction pricing works when:

1) It is a single event-based POS

2) Every member of audience has the same level of knowledge of what is being sold

For a symphony, the audience is smaller and more homogeneous than a pop-star concert. Symphony attendees are typically repeat buyers, who share similar knowledge of what they're seeing, and will know well in advance if they are going to attend.

Pop-star audience goers will make the decision to buy and will need to confirm purchase at different time points before the event. They also have varying degrees of knowledge as to how much the ticket price really should be, meaning they are not going to be good at bidding and won't fully participate.

First come first serve doesn't work for most concerts and live sporting events because the true market value, meaning the rate at which "the market" will bear a price-point and still relatively easily sell out all the supply (seats), or at least enough to cover costs for the venue/act/promoter, is well above what is printed on the physical ticket as "market value." I would guess that Symphony tickets on the secondary market simply don't fetch enough _margin_ to justify the type of extensive secondary inventory sales infrastructure that pop concerts and pro sports games do. You're starting to see this change though, with NYC broadway at least, with shows like Hamilton and The Importance of Being Earnest fetching just as large secondary market margins as any pop concert.

If you want data to illustrate this point, there's an article on The Ringer site a few years back that was written by a guy who was the CEO of ticketmaster for several years. He said "If you add up the face value for every seat in the venue, that total number is _less_ than what most popular artists are paid out for that show in just the artist appearance fee." This should show you how fake the entire idea of "face value" is...

> So if promoters try a more market based strategy like the one you mention it will probably cause a backlash from fans for charging $500 for a ticket. Unlike the promoters, scalpers have no perceived connection to the artists, so they (or Ticketmaster) can take the public outrage in exchange for profits without risking future ticket sales.

Yeah, which is why the promoter should just present itself as a scalper, "selling out" 100% of its tickets to a subsidiary, which then does a reverse auction like in the GP's comment. Fans won't care, because nothing has really changed from their perspective; the promoter will make more money (that the artist can demand be passed on to them); actual scalpers, economic parasites that they are, will make less money; the market will clear more efficiently; economists will be satisfied. Everyone wins.

Everyone except for—as can be seen in the OP article—non-economically-versed journalists, and those that they manage to incense with their rhetoric.

> actual scalpers, economic parasites that they are

Scalpers/brokers aren't economic parasites, they provide a function to artists and promoters by offloading risk, and they also provide liquidity to fans.

If if it comes down to selling out 50% of a venue immediately and the other 50% over the next 2-3 months, or selling out 100% of a venue in one day, I imagine most promoters and artists would like that money now so they can utilize it. Brokers trade use of money over time for risk. Sometimes they make money, sometimes they lose money because it's overbought, they misjudged the market, or more supply was provided (a date added at that location). For example, see here[1], where resale tickets are under the cost of primary market tickets, $36.50 instead of $39.50, and that's before Ticketmaster/Stubhub takes 5-10% of the sale price from the seller. On Stubhub[2], the same tickets are going for $27.

1: https://concerts1.livenation.com/event/000054C6CF1B8160

2: https://www.stubhub.com/the-damned-tickets-the-damned-new-yo...

> If if it comes down to selling out 50% of a venue immediately and the other 50% over the next 2-3 months, or selling out 100% of a venue in one day, I imagine most promoters and artists would like that money now so they can utilize it.

If you have revenue figures to indicate that it's pretty much guaranteed you'll sell out your stock of something eventually, and you want short-term liquidity, you can just issue commercial-paper securities, and people will buy them.

Sure, if you don't have people clamoring to buy you tickets immediately anyway that will provide you that money at no interest, that would make sense. In what way is that system advantageous to the current one, given the other incentives that exist to not raise price (public relations, mostly)? Also, given that I suspect brokers are worse at getting this right, since they don't get to see all the data, and you can make quite a lot from brokers on events that undersell...

Or, more likely in the case of many smaller privately-held venues, get a loan from a bank secured by the future ticket sales.

> provide liquidity to fans

Why is liquidity important to fans?

Because it provides an accurate value indication. Whether brokers or fans are reselling, it's going to happen. I don't imagine.moat fans are going to be keen on making sure their inventory is priced multiple times a day, much less multiple times an hour.

This also helps fans that decide they don't want to (or can't for some reason) go. They get a good indication of what their tickets are worth.

That said, i was also using liquidity as a stand in for increased availability. The fact that the market is liquid allows people a fair level of confidence that in the worst case they can recoup the cost of their tickets (give or take some percent) if they don't go.

Really, how is this any different than investing in an IPO? Those are mispriced all the time too.

You can buy a ticket knowing that if something comes up you will get your money back. You can decide to go to an event last minute and tickets will be available.

But they would be available anyway if the scalpers hadn't bought them all up. And if legitimate fans had bought all the tickets (sold out early), you wouldn't be getting a ticket either way, right?

I'm a legitimate fan and willing to pay a fair price for a ticket, but due to my job I usually can't buy the moment the ticket is released. So if it weren't for the "scalpers" I'd never get to see a show.

> by offloading risk

Offload it straight onto the consumer. If I pay 2x the TM price from a scalper and the event is cancelled and TM offers "full refunds " I'm out the difference.

> I'm out the difference.

No, you usually aren't. Both Stubhub[1] and Ticketmaster (through their TM+[2] resale platform) offer full refunds. If the reseller has already been paid, the amount is either deducted from the next payment to the reseller for sales, or taken out of the linked bank account or credit card. If the reseller hasn't been paid yet (they generally get paid on delivery, not on sale), they just don't get paid.

Even if for some reason the exchanges can't recoup the refund cost, they'll just eat it. Exchanges live and die by their reputations, which is also why they punish resellers heavily for delivery problems or invalid tickets.

1: https://www.stubhub.com/promise/

2: https://www.ticketmaster.com/verified

He wrote "from a scalper", not a retail resale marketplace.

Who do you think is selling on the resale marketplaces? The nice name is broker, but multiple people here, and the article these comments are on, use the term scalper. The vast majority of inventory resold by people that purchased with the intent to resell is sold on Stubhub, TM+, or Vivid Seats. The majority of inventory on those platforms is from brokers. Who bothers buying direct from an individual anymore?

The article in question is actually about scalpers (brokers) using Ticketmaster's resale platform (TM+) and Point of Sale for managing inventory (Tradedesk).

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