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Comment by johnnyanmac | Hacker News Reader

>if one of the platforms “cracks down” and makes it harder to buy and sell people will prefer another platform.

1) what other platform? I'm not too intimate with this, but part of the revolt over the Taylor Swift contrversy came from how Ticketmaster as exclusive use to most of the big venues. That seems to be the other half of the issue not talked about in this article.

2) I thought this issue would be as simple as banning resales, but after reading the kind of tech (and money they pay) to invest in the scalping... idk. It'd kill off the casual scalping of someone who buys maybe a half dozen tickets. people paying hundreds for fake numbers and specialized browsers won't be deterred. And the demand for the tickets comes from the celebrities, so it's a pretty safe market as long as the concert industry stays up (so, no more COVID. Even then, it's not like it's hard to pull out).

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Yup, TicketMaster/Live Nation is fully vertically integrated. They own venues, they manage artists, they sell merch - and yes they run the ticket platforms. The contracts basically require everything to stay in the family.

Sounds like theres a lot of missing legislation. The situation creates a huge conflict of interests.

Then again, scalping itself out to be illegal; it’s just a form of exploiting someone else’s work to extract money from average folk without creating any value or meaningful work.

I'm honestly not sure anymore if scalping should be delegalized. I'm increasingly convinced that it's only the problem because everyone is in on it, with artists using scalpers as "heat sinks", to get more money while pretending they're the victim, and everyone is well compensated for the role they play in the scheme. If that's the case, then the entire structure is the problem, and it starts with artists exploiting the audience looking for moral/spiritual role models.

I did some research in to this this year in the context of maybe trying to start a business to solve this - and this was the conclusion I came to. There’s lots of threads here on HN about it too. It’s a structural, market-wide issue where the primary service Ticketmaster provide is reputation laundering, and in return, large agents and promoters agree to continue to use Ticketmaster despite their reputation.

I don’t know what the solution is.

Like, don't go to overpriced concerts? How much more obvious than this should the solution be? None in that chain create value, so no need for you to feed their greed.

Isn’t it basically auction-based pricing with more steps? That’s not a fundamentally evil thing.

Scalping is exploitative and should be illegal when it’s for water and gasoline in a hurricane recovery zone.

I’m unconvinced that there is a harm when the scalping is for section 102 row 14 seat 11 at a OneDirection concert.

Lots of people want to vacation in Ibiza, so it’s expensive. Lots of people want to sit in section 102 row 14 seat 11, so it’s expensive too.

Just because someone with more money buys the seat doesn’t mean the person with less money was exploited. If that were the case, we must require all seats to be sold at the exact same price across the stadium and that price must be low enough for even the poorest person to attend.

Okay, so scalping is illegal in a hurricane. Is it also illegal for outsiders to choose not to provide goods to the sticken area because the sale price doesn't justify the cost? See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jKl-SgJQVc , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZuxdXmSoj4 , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFXYO1W_JXw .

Now explain how scalping basic necessities in a hurricane is any different than real estate speculation.

Either way, you're buying something people need, in an effort to restrict demand, raise prices, and resell at a profit without having to add any real value.

Seems to me they could ban resales by making there be a name attached to each ticket. Just like the airlines. You need ID matching your ticket to get into the venue.

No more scalpers.

They’re already doing that and it’s disgusting.

On the contrary, I think it's excellent. Turn up, show your ID along with your ticket, and you have not been screwed by a scalper.

Need a refund? Log on to the site, get a refund, and your ticket goes back into the pool for a round 2 public release.

Those are all possible without data mining. Have always gotten a decent ticket when I planned ahead and resellers have helped me out on more than one occasion when I didn’t.

Oh, and they were usually poorer folks that I’d much rather get a brokerage fee than ticket master.

Those poorer folks already paid ticketmaster the brokerage fee when they bought the ticket.

Resellers in the sense of those scalping are not "helping you out". There wouldn't be a shortage if they didn't scab everything available.

it's no different from airline tickets

It should be. The "threat model" is entirely different, on the way to insignificant.

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