Another tactic I've seen when there isn't assigned seating - just different tiers of seating - is to hold back some small portion of tickets to release shortly before the event, devaluing the scalpers' listings.
Online streaming tickets can also help, especially if the fans have enough of an anti-scalper stance. They'd choose one of the endless live streaming tickets over buying from scalpers just to go in-person.
I can only assume that the people flippantly proposing that the solution should be to restrict consumer freedoms don't attend these types of events themselves. Why should we immediately jump to limiting freedoms when we can increase the risk of scalping enough to be beyond the tolerance of most scalpers.
Even escrow systems don't necessarily bypass this because ultimately the buyer is likely spending on more than just the concert ticket. They're probably taking time off work, maybe traveling in from another city or country. So even if they might get their ticket money back if the seller backs out, by the time that happens, it's too late to get refunds on everything else.
And combined with the possibility of getting lower prices closer to the event (extra drops from the event, honest resellers who just can't make it, scalpers trying to cut their losses), even buyers wouldn't commit early to scalper prices.
We'll get bought out by TicketMaster within 5 years.
Contract law like anything else?
Scalpers should be less likely to take a chance their transfer will be denied, whereas to a legit customer and friend ticket is otherwise worthless and just a best effort anyway.
Or beyond the first X% of transfers you do more rigorous validation. Like asking for the original buyer to call in to confirm in realtime. Something not easily automated.
I've seen it happen multiple times people couldn't find someone to take the ticket off of them, even for free.
Sure, for an ultra mainstream act the likes of Rammstein? A FC Bayern soccer game? You'll always find some people outside the venue willing to pay in cash for tickets.
But anything with a small fanbase? Whoops.
But there's definitely a balance to be found between the popularity of an event and how soon you allow trades.
There’s a lot of legit reasons to want transfers, outside of scalping.
Why are concert tickets special?
Dinner reservations: I’ve literally never had an issue “transferring” a reservation. There’s no verification, often, and the reservation tools typically let you change contact details. If I present myself as John Smith, I’ve never once had anyone question that.
Concert tickets are almost certainly in the 'dinner reservation' category. They have no need to identify me for national security reasons, so transferring them should not be a problem.
But the answer to your question is: partially
The reason you can’t change it overall is simply airline policy for business reasons. But the reason you can’t change even a misspelling within the last couple of days before a flight is in fact security related.
Admittedly I haven't been to many concerts, but 'national security reasons' seems like a reasonable rationale to me because a packed concert sounds like a great place to set off a suicide bomb vest for maximum impact. Have a cut-out who doesn't raise any red flags buy the ticket and hand it off to the person wearing the vest. No ID check? Mass panic ensues when the vest goes off, and people are hurt in the stampede for the exits even if the blast radius of the vest itself isn't all that large.
Pure security theater, and your argument is further invalidated by the fact that it's a made-up reason. No one has claimed this is mandated by TSA or other security authorities.
The thing is, you as an individual can't transfer tickets because of what the other person said.
1) Allow transfers during a very short window (e.g. 24h before the event)
2) Allow full refunds up to x days before the event
3) Release a small batch of tickets 24h before the event, as a way of reducing the chance for scalpers to make money, and giving real fans a last chance without paying exorbitant prices
All three together offer a reasonable tradeoff. The tickets will go (mostly) to real fans, yet still giving you flexibility in case your plans change (work, sick, etc). And if you know well in advance, you can get a full refund, without having to worry with reselling, paying commission, etc.
Also prohibit secondary markets entirely. Similar to airlines, there's no reselling of tickets.
Of course, this is just wishful thinking. Too many intermediaries benefit from screwing showgoers, so this will never be implemented.
Hotel bookings - again, the number of times I’ve booked a bunch of rooms for work under my name and then we just assign them at check-in, and the number of times I’ve travelled for work where the hotel room is reserved in someone else’s name.
So yeah, pretty sure this is commonplace that the person who shows up with the chit and can verify certain info gets the access.
And of course, there nothing at all to stop concert tickets being sold to verified buyers and then transferred to other verified buyers.
But during this court hearing it transpired - from emails sent by Michael Rapino - that Live Nation/Ticketmaster’s “Verified Fan” scheme is just a scam to make artist feel like ticketing isn’t the murky Wild West that Ticketmaster knows it is. “Verified Fan” meant almost nothing.
Most concert tickets are not standing and you used to get paper tickets you could just hand to someone else, why should you not be allowed to do this just because it moved to digital?
9/11 changed a lot. Just like how before World War I, passports and border controls weren't really a thing.
You sell your own ticket back to the event. Your three friends of course have their names on their tickets, so they can go if they want to.
> Or you buy tickets as a gift for someone.
Do you buy gifts to people whose name you don't even know?
Or you give your friend's names when buying their tickets so they can go even when you can't or you have them buy their own tickets, or you're sick so you get a refund for your four tickets and your friends each buy their own afterwards.
Get a refund if you can't go
> Or you buy tickets as a gift for someone.
This is easy part.
> There’s a lot of legit reasons to want transfers, outside of scalping
There of course are but they pale in comparison to what is currently happening with scalping. And as many have pointed out, there are a lot of other "tickets" we buy that are 100% non-transferable, these are because wrong people are making too much money
Anyway back to the top post - a Dutch auction foods almost all these issues without weird rules.
And maybe we only do dutch auctions for the big acts that have the worst issues with scalping and whatnot.
The parent's suggestion still creates artificial scarcity, which is the real issue: people buying tickets they have no intention of using.
The problem is that the artists, venues, and ticketing companies benefit from this artificial scarcity. So we'll never see it change.
Square Enix did that for the Final Fantasy conventions in the US as well (where details of the next FFXIV expansion will be announced later this month), but they added an additional requirement. You have to have an active subscription to the game to even have a chance.
It was a stupid flow that sent me from email to computer to phone and had one-time links that didn't transfer between devices.
I have no interest in going through this much effort to go to an event.
"all seats, including the best seats go to actual fans" is not something solved by your solution
For popular shows, there are more people who want to see the show than there are tickets available, so you need to pick a strategy for deciding who's going to go.. Ticket sellers have to balance lost profits from lower prices, prices being too high and the show not selling out, and fans being furious at the artist for making the tickets unaffordable for most of the true fanbase.
Dynamic pricing (airline style) and auction-based systems basically ensure that only the rich can attend. Scalping is a way to do price discrimination / progressive pricing. If you're a true fan, you know when the ticket sale will happen ahead of time, and you snatch the tickets quickly. If you're not, but are rich enough not to care, you have to buy from a scalper. Like all discounting and price discrimination strategies, it sometimes backfires; if you're a true fan attending your mother's funeral when the sale opens, you'll have to pay the rich person's price.
You can also see scalpers as being awarded by capitalism for taking risks. They make sure the show sells out and the artist is happy, even if fan interest is lower than expected. In such a case, they take on the losses, if all goes well, they take some of the profits from the sales.
And I like your ideas but I don't see why the venues and artists don't want to capture more of what people are willing to pay enabled by what the parent comment suggested.
I wonder if in your system it actually attracts fans or just people that have the time to wait for tickets.
Because artists don't always want to extract the maximum money possible from their fanbase?
Artists are not always rapacious capitalists. Sure, they want to make money from the show, but a lot of them also genuinely want to reach people who may not be able to drop hundreds of bucks on a ticket. Always selling to the highest bidder is a recipe for larger acts to only be accessible to the wealthy. And as surprising as it may seem, some of them have views on that sort of thing.
I think that's both true and not. The larger truth is that trying to maximize the extraction during a single ticket sale is incredibly short-sighted of an artist. Having fans attend shows is a very effective way to grow your fan base and your brand, and that brings so much more lifetime value for an artist than you'd ever get from a single ticket sale (except for maybe on your retirement tour --and even then).
On the other, well, I just bought tickets to Iron Maiden’s “all the best bits” tour (who have to be getting close to retiring, one member already has) supported by Megadeth who are explicitly on their retirement tour.
And those were not cheap. No sir or ma’am.
There are also artists like the Cure though, and Robert Smith seems to have a genuine interest in keeping prices accessible.
Actually, writing this comment got me thinking that maybe the larger the venue, the more expensive the ticket needs to be out of necessity. More hands in the cookie jar, and all that.
Because everyone on the seller side - including artists - make money on this.
If parties other than fans / buyers cared, it would be a solved problem.
Quick example: https://www.instagram.com/p/DWWlQS-Dhj7/
https://variety.com/2024/music/news/chappell-roan-cancels-sc...
I've seen quite a few cases of this. Not everyone's money-only.
I agree that you should definitely go see local artists at local venues, but you can do that and still really want to take your dad to see Steve Hackett play a live show. It's not up to you to decide what enriches my life.
> Your life won't be any less rich if you go see a local band instead of Taylor Swift.
Do you disagree? If so, why?
One of my favorite bands I've listened to since their first album is First Aid Kit. On their 10th anniversary they had several sold-out concerts at Globen [1] in Stockholm. Should've I just stopped immediately once they crossed the threshold of 100 fans worldwide? But they are a local band, they are Swedish.
In August I'm going to a concert of a Finnish band called Steve'n'Seagulls. They will play in Karlstad, a small Swedish town. They sell their tickets through Ticketmaster. Boycott I say! They are on the same level as Taylor Swift! (137k monthly listeners on Spotify, compared to Swift's 102 million).
Okay. What about bands that have been around since before Live Nation? Should I skip Radiohead, Guns'n'Roses and Sting because there's literally no way for them to tour except to book LiveNation-affiliated venues?
I wonder if their name is a deep cut Nightwish reference, who are also Finnish: https://youtu.be/gg5_mlQOsUQ?t=17s
And I have nothing against Taylor Swift. I actually like some of her music and I'm sure she puts on great live shows.
There are laws against transfer bans. Also, people don't like being required to provide identity information just to buy a ticket to a live event, and venues HATE enforcing identity checks.
...and you'd be surprised how often you can get a refund on tickets just by asking your venue for a refund.
> First choice in seats goes to the most passionate and attentive fans.
Now you've opened the debate about how to determine which fans are the most passionate and attentive... ;-) Ticketmaster has a service for this that attempts to address this called Verified Fan.