The scalper allows the devoted fan who is gladly willing to pay $X+N to actually get a ticket rather than having to wake up at 6am and repeatedly refresh the site and probably still not get one.

I find market failures like this fascinating because it really shows the limits of how "free" markets operate.

How would central planning handle this better? There are more people who want to buy a ticket at $X than there are seats available; lots of people are going to be unhappy regardless of how they get distributed.