Louis CK selling tickets to latest tour exclusively on his site
buy.louisck.net
buy.louisck.net
What seems to happen is that acts worry about their shows having too many random rich people and not enough "real fans". They think without the super-excitement from the "real fans" it would ruin the experience of the show. I'm not sure if that is true, anyone willing to pay a lot of money to attend is probably a real fan, rich or not. But if the bands want to they could allocate a smaller portion of tickets at a lower price using some other method, maybe a lottery, but it's going to be hard to keep the scalpers out.
With all the problems with the copyright-based business models fans should actually want their favorite acts to raise prices and make as much money as they can from touring, instead of the money going to middlemen.
Fans are a complex system, and the people who might turn out for dozens and dozens of shows over years, create buzz, convert friends to your cause, etc. may not have the funds to pay for tickets priced at the margin.
Thus, it might be a mistake to charge market clearing prices that cause long term damage in your fan base.
I don't know for sure that this is correct, but in general, the market evolves behaviors that make sense, so the fact that very few performers try to squeeze every last dollar out suggests to me that it might be a reasonably intelligent strategy to avoid the quick profit that way.
Maybe that could be solved with a loyalty system?
E.g. tickets could get a discount weighted according to how many tickets you've previously bought for that act.
Of course the discount should only apply for one ticket (or a small number) to prevent the scalpers from taking advantage.
Otherwise a scalper can just use "employees" to purchase a few tickets (the limit) at each venue, and resell them.
Better the production get it than the scalpers, I guess, but I can't justify that much on the play when I haven't even finished the book yet.
Not necessarily. I see nothing wrong with attempting to control the entire end to end experience, including ticket price. If he's selling at $45 because that's what he wants, there's nothing wrong with that.
Or should cancer or diabetes pills be $1000 per pill because the manufacturer will find enough people to pay? There are other legitimate factors in pricing besides maximizing profit.
This is to say nothing of the deadweight loss of the inevitable efforts, much of which will be successful, to game the system.
Ostensibly, Louis C.K. wants to keep prices low in service to his fans. But to be totally responsive to the desires of his fans and improve his financial outcome, he should recognize that his shows are going to sell out, his tickets are therefore a scarce good, and some kind of auction mechanism is needed to figure out the right price for a ticket.
To some people, $45 is a huge amount for a single night of entertainment. To other people it is an insignificant amount.
Pricing the tickets higher/lower than $45 has much more to do with this distinction than it does with the level of fan dedication.
Sometimes it's not about extracting the maximum possible dollar amount. Artists like sharing their work with other people. Many of them would gladly do it for free if they could, but charge because they have to make a living just like everyone else.
>some kind of auction mechanism is needed to figure out the right price for a ticket.
If Louis is happy with what he's making off the tickets, then they're set at the right price. What you're proposing would essentially lock out many of his fans that couldn't afford the "right" price that would be set with an auction system.
The traditional problem with intentionally setting an artificially low price is that resellers would buy up tickets, sell them back at market prices, essentially locking out those fans and also reaping the additional profit that the artist was intentionally forgoing.
What Louis is trying to do is design a system that locks out the resellers, and in turn essentially turns the ticket selling process into a lottery for those fans that care enough about seeing him to go buy a ticket early.
As long as there are more people that want to see him than can fit in the venue, there's no way to make it totally fair for everyone. But the approach he's taking allows him to make an amount he's happy with while keeping the financial cost of getting in at a point that he feels is fair to the fans.
It may be inefficient from a pure market standpoint, but, frankly, I think it's going to accomplish exactly what he wants it to.
Also, he recognizes that he can't lower the price and not deal with the scalper problem, so he is attacking it by doing his best to traffic anyone who tries to sell his tickets for above face value. If this works, then it solves the problem of the scalpers not being able to make a profit, and Louis CK being able to keep ticket prices low for his fans.
The idea that "true" fans are being locked out by "superficial" fans is just plain dumb. What makes a "true" fan vs a "superficial" fan? If I've only seen one of his concerts on HBO, that means that I'm not eligible to go see him live? Do we really need a pissing contests between fans to see who really "deserves" to go see him live? That's dumb.
So now I can buy tickets that before I could not afford. Have I become a more dedicated Louis CK fan? Or have I just become a richer fan?
Even if the surplus is split unfairly on many transactions, the market is still said to be efficient if it meets the above definition.
Louis CK's ticketing idea is a pretty unique case because in some ways tickets are easily fungible and lend themselves to this traditional economic analysis.
On the other hand, if Louis ck decides he's only doing 50 shows at mid sized venues, and prices are 45 dollars, as long as all tickets sell the market is actually perfectly efficient. Louis has no more product to sell. If he could have sold the same amount of tickets at $65 all that means is that fans are taking more of the surplus, as opposed to scampers. Even though there might be way more fans than tickets, the market is at an efficient equilibrium because Louis CK's supply curve has become totally inellastic at $45.
You're not "solving" the problem of shortages, you're just deciding to make it a "cost" problem for fans. And that has its own set of fan-related problems (namely burn) that, if you can't solve, are bigger than "we can't justify renting a venue for another showing, sorry everyone."
'Whether Mr. Achatz’s fans will be similarly loyal remains to be seen. Next will have a highly unusual online-only booking system that sells nonrefundable tickets, rather than accepting reservations. Once a seat for Paris 1906 is bought on line, if the baby sitter cancels or the girlfriend doesn’t feel like going out, it can’t be canceled. It can, however, be sold, scalped or bartered. “We are very interested to see what that secondary market might bring,” said Mr. Kokonas, who devised the system.'
Restaurants that oversell inventory could use a similar tactic but with an auction platform for some of their seats to allow people a chance with last-chance bookings if they're willing to pay. I know I would definitely have considered it when I was heading to Chicago and couldn't get a booking weeks in advance.
Incidentally, if you're hoping for last minute seatings, there's always the strategy of just calling them at the last minute or even just showing up to see if they've had cancellations. I've gotten lucky at least once.
And the reason I hate calling is that I imagine I'm one of a string of no-chance hopefuls just being a nuisance. And the staff are on the other end thinking "Doesn't this guy know who we are?! You're two months late, bozo."
Would love a web-based system to get around all this!
(Only been to Chicago once and quite liked it despite the weather at that time of year. We enjoyed Avec and The Violet Hour. Had a chance to go to Moto but bailed in the end.)
Speaking from personal experience, once you get past barriers in yourself like that, life opens up to you. Using the internet as a crutch to avoid social interaction with a possibility of embarrassment is unhealthy.
Of course, if I worked the phones at a restaurant like that, you can bet I'd be driven nuts by all the calls and wish people would give it up or the boss would devise another system!
Selling out soon is not a major problem if you assume your biggest fans are those who are willing to act the fastest. I bought a ticket a few minutes after I got the email to ensure I wouldn't dither for a day and not be able to get them.
It's working.
i don't think it's so much about the experience of the show, it's more about the image of the artist. if only adults with full time jobs can afford to go to the shows, then they become known as artists that only responsible old people enjoy. and no responsible old person wants to see a show that only responsible old people enjoy, they want to go to the shows that the young cool people are going to.
every business does loss leaders.
The plethora of middle men at all stages of the current state of the industry (talent discovery, production, distribution) are really destroying the art.
Kudos to Louis for using his success as a platform for change. I hope others in the industry will discover their courage and follow suit.
There are two simple, proven ways to avoid ticket re-sale. The first is to use "print at home" tickets. People are unwilling to repurchase these as there is no guarantee that they won't be sold multiple times. The second is to use a registration system and personalised tickets, ideally with a photo provided by the customer.
I wish Louis CK every success, but operating a ticket agency is a complex business. Not just the ecommerce side (which is a nightmare in itself given the bursty nature of the traffic), but marketing, fulfilment, customer services, reissue and an understanding of local rules and regulations are all essential components.
I'm in the UK where the market is more fragmented (and competitive). I do understand the frustration with Ticketmaster in the US, but good ticket agencies can and do add value to the process - and leave the artist free to concentrate on their art.
I work for a (non-TM) ticket agency in the UK.
> We reserve the right to change the method of delivery to Will Call (pick-up at the box office) at any time after purchase. If we make this change the ticket(s) may be picked up within 2 hours of the show’s start time and a photo ID and the charge card used for the purchase will be required to claim the ticket.
This is the same as your "use a registration system and personalised tickets" solution, except without forcing everybody to go through all that hassle. It seems he's chosen to let a few scalpers have a chance, instead of ruining the experience for everybody.
Also, when you attempt to buy the tickets, (at least for the SF venue), your only delivery method is print at home. It looks like your implied fears that he doesn't know what he's doing are unfounded.
Collection at box office can be quite chaotic in volume and, in the UK at least, there are often license restrictions as to how many tickets can be issued that way.
Another common problem is that people buy on a parent or friend's card who doesn't attend, or that the card expires before the show and is discarded.
They're certainly still getting a cut, it's just not itemized during checkout for all to see, I guess. The only other thing on the receipt besides the ticket price was sales tax, which came out to an even total of $45.00.
Should be a good show =)
Do you have a ticket you can print out now, or are they telling you to turn up on the night of the show with ID?
(I'm seeing him during September in Toronto - tickets available exclusively through Ticketmaster! http://jfl42.com/ )
However, there is a slight snag to that: its unlikely he could have pulled this off with out first getting a huge following from the traditional media and all those middle men.
Don't get me wrong, what he is doing is brilliant. And Im so glad that it is Louis CK doing this who I was already a fan of. That down load of his gig for $5 was the perfect example of what we want, an artist in control selling his art of a damn reasonable price, and making good money too. Plenty of people did pirate it, but more than enough bought it. But what we need to see work is people working their way to a similar position, making the same sort of money, but with out having traditional media putting them there first.
What Louis CK is doing is brilliant, but it needs to grow and spread. Im rather hoping that somewhere in the back ground he is passing what he has learned on to fellow artists and this thing can grow.
He's in a position to improve the system because he's a part of it, and only because he's a part of it.
I thought this was great at first, but I wonder how this will work.
Won't canceling the ticket hurt the person who buys it from a scalper? I don't see a way for him to stop scalpers from selling them, and after it's out of their hands the scalper doesn't care if the ticket is cancelled. I foresee buyers not finding out until the event and being angry.
But I think the key difference is that Ticketmaster, et al. aren't promoting this. So no-one is likely to even realize these events are occurring unless they've gone to, or were directed to, louisck.net.
So that leaves, most likely but not by no means certainly, only people who buy scalped tickets who should've known better.
And I can't imagine they'll find any sympathetic ears, or amount to a notable contingent compared to Louis fans who grok the pseudo-honor system play he's making and will be far more angry at the jilted scalped-ticket-buyer for having purchased from scalpers in the first place.
I'm under the impression that you can still resell tickets, but not for over face value. So people are still going to see tickets for sale on sites other than louisck.net. And those who check his site and see SOLD OUT will probably head out pretty quickly instead of sitting around to read the terms of sale.
A consumer seeing tickets on a third party site, checking Louie's site and seeing "sold out" then search again on third party sites seems very plausible.
Surely some transactions will get through on third party sites before his people can get it taken down. And a no-sympathy approach towards those buyers would be a terrible move.
I was just trying to explain why I don't think it'll be a notably larger problem than with any other event nor do I see the victims getting even the usual (low) amount of sympathy.
There are simply too many people who agree with Louis' efforts to keep his work as affordable as possible for there to be notable blowback on him.
Otherwise it's going to be instantly sold out by scripted bots.
That's a lot of infrastructure for a single tour, but if he got it working well, he could turn it around to other performers to use.
With this, he's still sending out paper tickets though. It'll be interesting to see how this in-between method will work as he does seem very serious about cancelling sold-for-profit tickets. Do third party ticketing sites have a way of letting tours get ahold of those who bought second hand tickets.
Is that no longer the case? Or did Louis CK figure out some hack around those agreements?
It would have been better to make it free and pass a hat around
But what it really comes down to, is that it's hard to square any of those systems with many artists' desire to keep ticket prices as affordable as possible, so that their 'true' fans aren't priced out by profiteers, suits or yuppie douchebags.
hello folks! I'm going on tour this year from October through Feb. I'll be all over the goddamn place. This year, I'm trying something new, building on the fun, success and fan-benifit of selling my content online. We are selling tickets to this tour exclusively here on louisck.com. I only wanted to do this if there was a way, like with LIVE AT THE BEACON, that it could bring the price of tickets down and make them easier and less complicated to buy. We figured out a way.
Making my shows affordable has always been my goal but two things have always worked against that. High ticket charges and ticket re-sellers marking up the prices. Some ticketing services charge more than 40% over the ticket price and, ironically, the lower I've made my ticket prices, the more scalpers have bought them up, so the more fans have paid for a lot of my tickets.
By selling the tickets exclusively on my site, I've cut the ticket charges way down and absorbed them into the ticket price. To buy a ticket, you join NOTHING. Just use your credit card and buy the damn thing. opt in to the email list if you want, and you'll only get emails from me.
Also, you'll see that if you try to sell the ticket anywhere for anything above the original price, we have the right to cancel your ticket (and refund your money). this is something I intend to enforce. There are some other rules you may find annoying but they are meant to prevent someone who has no intention of seeing the show from buying the ticket and just flipping it for twice the price from a thousand miles away. Some of these rules may be a pain in your ass, but please be patient. My goal here is that people coming to see my shows are able to pay a fair price and that they be paying just for a ticket. Not also paying an exhorbanant fee for the privalege of buying a ticket.
Tickets across the board, everywhere, are 45 dollars. That's what you'll actually pay. In every case, that will be less than anyone has actually paid to see me (after ticket charges) in about two years and in most cases it's about half of what you paid last year.
The benifit for me is that I won't get angry emails from anyone who paid a ton of money to see me due to circumstances out of my control. That makes me VERY happy. The 45 dollars also includes sales tax, which I'm paying for you. So I'm making more or less depending on the state.
Another benifit to me is also one to you. I get your email address (if you opt in) when you opt in. You don't have to join ANYTHING to buy these tickets and if you opt in, youll only hear from me once in an old man's jizz-cycle. Obviously none of this means anything if the shows aren't good. So that's up to me. As I do every year, I'll be performing a brand new hour (or more) on all of these shows. Lastly, it was a real challenge to find venues around the country that could work with our exclusive ticketing service under these perameters. It means I'm playing in very new places. I really appreciate all of these theaters that are letting us give this a try.
Setting up this tour has been fascinating and difficult. this ticketing service is a brand new thing and I really fucking hope it works and that there aren't any problems. If anything comes up, please be patient.
Doing things this way means I"m making less than I would have made if I did a standard tour, using the usual very excellent but expensive ticketing service. In some cities I've had to play smaller venues and do more shows. But I like doing more shows and about a year ago I reached a place where I realized I am making enough money doing comedy so the next thing that interested me is bringing your price down. Either way, I still make a whole lot more than my grandfather who taught math and raised chickens in Michigan.
alright, that's it, folks. I'll be sending this message out to folks on the opt-in list and sending a separate email that lays it out much more simply with the proper links. I am doing this because when I emailed you about LIVE AT CARNEGIE HALL, (which is still on sale for 5 dollars!) about half of the people who got the email really enjoyed the long, verbose, unedited message. The other half HATED it and would have preffered a price, a link, and me shutting the fuck up. This way, you can read this if you like, or your can just see the massive shit-ball of text and throw it in the garbage, and focus on the simple email.
I hope to see you all on the road.
regards, Louis C.K.
But I find it hilarious that, after that long email, he mentions they'll be sending a TL;DR version later. I have to wonder if that was humor, or just a legitimate "ah well" moment. I can't tell, and that makes it better.
One recorded incident had Spooner write a note asking for a fellow lecturer at New College to see him immediately about a matter. The note had a postscript informing the lecturer that the matter had been resolved and he no longer needed to see him.
The trick with long emails is, you have to say something interesting, write in an honest and open way, and people have to care about your subject matter.
With Louis C.K., I don't just like his comedy, I want him to succeed. And when I pay him for his video specials, or buy tickets for his live show, I feel like I'm helping him win, and helping us all win. If you can send an email to make your customers feel like he does me, you'll do very well for yourself.
There is something so honest and earnest about this message. It's basically what I wish I could say whenever I was doing something new and difficult.
The "refunding your ticket if you try to sell it" thing, well, that's going to be a pain. Glastonbury Festival in the UK has tried to combat this, and ended up basically producing photo IDs for every ticket. A whole ton of effort, especially for a small attempt like this.
I have actually thought about scalping and here is my solution. It works very well for a comedy show, actually. He should announce a single show (not a tour) in a big city, like LA or NY. He should not have any special rules against scalpers other than saying "reselling this ticket is prohibited". Now the fun part starts. If the tickets get bought out too fast (indicating scalping) he should say "my show sold out very quickly, so in order to afford my fans a way to see me without paying high fees to scalpers, I will do another show in the same city, the next day (or a couple of days after the original show). The price for the new show will be the same, so do not pay any scalpers, just buy the tickets for the second show at face value." If the second show sells out very quickly, then he can just announce a third one. And so on.
Thus, he makes extra money and causes a lot of potential losses for scalpers. Scalpers may have to sell at cost (which means they have to take losses for their sales commissions), or if they buy too many tickets and do not move fast enough, they may even have to sell at a loss.
And the prospect that he can pull this trick any time will likely prevent the smarter and better funded scalpers from ever trying to scalp his shows again.
This would work in a big city, because in a big city it is usually not a problem to get a new venue on a relatively short notice. It would also work better for a comedy show, because a comedy show does not require too much production, so it is possible to change schedules without too much pain.
It's a nice check and balance, and covers the "sell for cost to a friend/acquaintance" route, but is a determent to the professional scalper, since he is required to surrender his identity, essentially, to a 3rd party.
As much as I don't want to believe this I feel that scalping is ultimately a means of market correction. If he sells tickets for one show in a city at $45 I imagine that he's a popular enough comic that the price would be higher than that due to the limited supply of Louis. Unless he has a really good way of preventing reselling there will be plenty of opportunists out there looking to sell their $45 ticket for $70 if they can.
I think the solution to this would be to better price tickets so that at least he's profiting off his hard work instead of scalpers. Could he auction each individual seat? the best seats might fetch ridiculous amounts of money but the worst seats in the house might go for say less than $45 and give fans a chance at seeing him.
Unrelated- He's using eTix.com and I think he killed them. Trying to buy tickets for SF show and getting "Please wait while accessing the system...." from eTix.com.
I'm not sure how you expect to pay by credit card without using a payment processing gateway. Even if you paid by cash, the post office would be a middleman as you'd have to pay postage.
I assume by "cutting out the middleman" they mean the ticketing cartel otherwise known as Ticketmaster.
Even though the purchase page is on etix.com, it shares all chrome with his site, and the tickets don't seem to appear in any public listings or directories elsewhere. Presumably, there's still a charge, it's just small, and included in the pricing model (along with taxes).
Obviously, it would be awesome if this works out and etix.com (or someone else) makes this low-fee approach more accessible to other performers.
EDIT: I definitely agree that etix gaining traction would be a great step in the right direction.
Louis CK seems particularly well suited for something like this because he seems to be content with the amount of money he has. He could do a lot to improve the entertainment industry by sharing his knowledge without necessarily building a business around it.
Is there a market for a self-service platform the brings together performers and venues?
Now then, of course, companies like LN are forming that are promoter/venue/manager combos and it gets a bit iffy.
https://gist.github.com/2992090
(Not my github)
Why is this guy still attracting people?
:-)