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Comment by mpixel | Hacker News Reader

> People just don’t want to deal with the reality that the Taylor swift tickets that start at $40 or whatever were never real to begin with

This.

Here's a much more optimal semi-auction style solution. Tickets go on sale for 20 days, each day, all the seats and spots are worth the same price, you can buy anything, the price is always the same.

Day 1, the price is $2000. Day 20, the price is $10. So you'd only pay $60 at most for a ticket? Sure, just check in on day 16.

Since we start the price at the higher-than-scalp price, there's no scalping opportunity if you are paying the 'real market price'.

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For someone like Taylor Swift, the tickets would sell out at $2000 on day 1. Then what? Her fans burn down her private jet on the tarmac for being greedy.

The entire reason performers want their tickets sold below market value is so that non-rich "real fans" can actually afford them. All of the other shenanigans going on are there to get around this issue (and the performers definitely get a cut) while protecting the performer's shield of plausible deniability.

If image is such a concern, sell (1/x) of tickets at the max possible price, give away the other (1 - 1/x) the day before the show for free. Ban transfers on the free tickets.

Not just image. If normal fans figure they can't go no way, they will loose interest overall.

Who gets those (1 - 1/x) tickets? Will there be a massive queue? In that case, people are paying with time instead of with money. Time is not free, and opportunity costs are real.

This "love" is a lie. A "real fan" is one who wants to be skillfully lied to.

Or you could say a “real fan” is someone who never goes to concerts and only pirates music. Then they have no incentives either way and only listen to music they enjoy!

I agree with you and that's called a Dutch auction or descending price auction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_auction

But inevitably, someone (such as the vocal people in this thread) is going to complain that it means only the richest fans can afford to attend the concert. No duh, being rich means you are able to afford things that some others can't.

One of the reasons that artists want their tickets to be accessible for less-wealthy fans is that those fans are often more invested. Expensive tickets lead to a lot of rich people who are there to be seen and to experience an exclusive event rather than people who are specifically interested in that artist.

You find similar effects at sporting events (which is part of why nearly every soccer club has a "supporters' section" with ticket prices deliberately kept very low).

That's true. But there will still be some kind of rationing going on. If there are a thousand seats but a million fans, then 99.9% of them will be disappointed. Sure, you can lower the price, but then the winners will be either first-come-first-serve, or lottery, or nepotism.

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