Mistakes from building a model to scalp concert tickets
datastream.substack.com
datastream.substack.com
this is very well put
Uh, no, I've abandoned multiple carts after seeing the final ticket price with hidden fees is 175% the advertised price. Those shows didn't end up selling out, either, they just left revenue sitting on the table. Entire live entertainment industry would be double digit % larger if the ticketing experience wasn't uniquely dogshit
Also a problem down under: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-10-16/dynamic-pricing-hidde...
Joking aside, for every you (or two you's), there's another person willing to shell out. Ticketmaster doesn't really care whether a venue is at 30% or 100% capacity so long as the artists and venue are happy, and fans keep buying tickets at a sustainable clip. Hell, they likely prefer a lower attendance so staffing costs are lower.
This is a bit like skiing now: I've accepted it's just an activity for the addicted or the rich.
people will never stop wanting these things, so scalpers will never stop making money. it's just a deeply gross thing to do
Edit: @margalabargala Great idea.
Imagine, after a show is sold out, the ticket seller creates a waiting list. As long as the waiting list is longer than 0, anyone who purchased a ticket and no longer wants it can get a full refund.
Now you have tickets which are not transferrable but without removing the ability for people to access the event.
Do we tie it to your ticketing account? Ok fine, the scalpers just sell whole accounts.
Do we tie it to your phone? If so, scalpers get a really cheap Android to send the e-tix to. That’ll cut out the flippers on the less hot tours, but probably just make Taylor Swiftc resales more expensive. And what about people who get a new phone between ticket purchase time and the show (a lag of often several months).
Also you now just helped the scalpers every time they misfire. No more eating 30% on stubhub and selling below market!
It’s not a bad idea but it’s not as trivial as it sounds.
I personally think a better idea is to just break up live nation. This is a problem that could easily be solved if the venue owner, promoter, and ticket agent aren’t all one company.
Some venues mandate facial recognition to get in [1]. I am not supportive of such corporate surveillance, but to rebut your comment, identity solutions exist to dissuade scalping, and some are in active use today. Even if you break up Live Nation, scalping will occur for events if profit is to be made.
[1] https://www.marketplace.org/2024/10/23/facial-recognition-th...
The corporate surveillance angle is also important, but IME 0% of these companies bother to explain that the thing they advertised when they took your money isn't the thing you actually have access to.
That’s the sort of thing that only happens after a settlement with the government. Which, in the case of LN, is 100% what needs to happen.
It’s not unfeasible by any means, it just would cost money, and promoters like the scalpers. Most of the failures mentioned in this article involve a scalper buying tickets that would otherwise have gone unsold, and even for a show that would sell out eventually, LN gets the cash earlier and then maybe even gets a cut of online resale.
This was the case in David Gilmour's concert in Rome a month ago. TicketOne.it has their own resalle site fansale.it. Good business for Ticketone as they also take a fee for resale, good for sellers because they have a safe way to sell if something comes up and they can't go. Good for buyers because they know these tickets are valid, and price is the original one.
It’s surprisingly hard to let many venues know you won’t attend and the tickets can be reallocated, even if you don’t expect / want and refund!
Price is one way to allocate scarce resources. History suggests it is the least worst.
But why, morally, should someone who had the free time to sit in a queue, or was lucky enough to win a lottery, be more entitled versus someone willing to pay 10x what someone else is? Scalpers facilitate this. I don't have time to try to get face value tickets. But I work hard in a good job and I have disposable income. So I can, effectively, pay a scalper to do this for me. Am I less deserving of a ticket?
The reality is that the vast majority of secondary market supply comes from artist/venue/promoter related parties. Taylor Swift cannot price tickets at $5,000 because it would be a PR nightmare. So she sells a small amount publicly, which are snapped up by scalpers who know the true price is much higher. And TS quietly sells a ton more at these true prices while saving face.
This is literally a question of morality.
I am, imho, not less deserving, and therefore it's not a moral issue.
No, but you're not more deserving either.
Buddy, what do you think Ticketmaster is doing?
>alt="A wide image divided into two contrasting halves by a large barrier. On the left, a group of young fan girls, wearing pop star t-shirts and accessories, stand outside the stadium with dejected expressions, some leaning against the barrier while others look desperately toward the stadium. On the right, inside the stadium, an enthusiastic crowd dances and cheers under colorful lights. At the center of the stage, a blonde female singer-songwriter in a sparkling outfit performs energetically, holding a microphone as the audience celebrates the moment. In between the fan girls and the concert crowd, ticket scalpers aggressively wave tickets and cash, some holding signs with inflated prices, greedily capitalizing on the situation. The contrast between the fans' frustration and the joyful concert scene emphasizes the emotional divide."
I kinda gave up on it all, and go to see shows at a small venue near me. I can buy tickets in person and skip the BS most of the time. I won’t see big acts but these days that’s not what I’m into anyways.
No, those $100 tickets are mostly worth $100. There are a lot of reasons why someone will overpay to get a ticket; but don't delude yourself: If Taylor Swift decided to charge $1000 for each ticket, many less people would go. She might sell 1/10th of the tickets, and it would be a wash, she might sell 1/3rd of the tickets, and make more money, or she might sell 1/20th of the tickets, and make less money.
What drives the price of the tickets up is scarcity: Once the venue is sold out (or close to sold out,) it's useful to only sell the tickets to people who really, really want to pay.
Edit: I should add that, unless I really want to see an artist, I tend to buy my tickets shortly before the show, and only if they are a reasonable price.
For example, last summer Green Day & Smashing Pumpkins was $200 / ticket. I kinda wanted to go, but I didn't want to pay that much.
In contrast, Weezer was $70 a ticket and playing around the corner from my office. I went to Weezer. (And wished I bought a floor ticket sooner because the Flaming Lips were the opening band.)
Had Weezer charged $200, I never would have gone.
- artist might prefer the full-avenue energy
- it produces positive hype (it's often newsworthy when show is sold out)
- you can sometimes add new dates in the same avenue, maximising profits since lot of stage, travel, staff, marketing costs don't increase if you have another concert the next day.
- You grow fan base instead of shrinking it. It's better to have twice the number of satisfied fans when you revisited the city in few years. But it can also increase future album sales, streaming revenue, etc.
> No, those $100 tickets are mostly worth $100.
No, all of those tickets were worth more than $100, which you see from the fact that, if you had one, you could sell it for more than $100.
But if you are not able to eventually sell all the tickets for more than $100, clearly not all of them are worth more than $100. Some, at the right time and place, might be, but not all.
Especially not when many of those 100x prices are from scalpers or rescalpers in the first place. Once a ticket is seen as an investment vehicle it gets divorced from the intrinsic value of "seat at concert I'd like to go to".
As you point out, different people have different price elasticities. Is it so hard to believe that some people really are willing to pay $5000 to attend?
You rightly point out that resale market prices are likely higher than the market clearing price compared to if there were a single-price auction for all the tickets, but saying that they're worth $100 is just flat out wrong.