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Comment by helterskelter | Hacker News Reader

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>Michael Jackson did this with concert tickets, sort of. You had to pay hundreds of dollars for the chance to buy a ticket to his mega tour, to be refunded if you didn't manage to get one. People send their money in and have to wait like three months to find out if they managed to get one. Meanwhile, he's making money by the dump truck on the interest from all this.

This doesn't pass the sniff test. If we assume that "hundreds of dollars" is $500, and the risk free rate is 5%, and they hold it for 3 months, then you get $6.25 per victim. Hardly a huge sum. If you factor in credit card processing fees, they might even be losing money on it.

I referenced the article and the math seems fine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_Tour_(The_Jacksons)#Ti...

Tour attendance: 2.5 million Only 1 in 10 purchases were honored, so purchase for 25 million tickets were attempted. $750 million in Money market at 7% for 6 to 8 weeks.

So, 6 to 8 million in interest depending on the weeks (6 to 8) in money market.

He's estimated to have made $10-12m in the 80's.

I had some of the details wrong btw, you had to mail in $120 for the chance at 4 tickets, and he only held it for 6-8 weeks. Part of what was so shitty though was that very many of his fans couldn't really afford what was about a months rent but scrapped it together anyways. Maybe it was a poor financial decision on their part, but he took advantage of those people for his own profit, when he didn't even really need the money.

Edit: link from sibling comment:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_Tour_(The_Jacksons)#Ti...

>Maybe it was a poor financial decision on their part, but he took advantage of those people for his own profit, when he didn't even really need the money.

Your own article contradicts your narrative that Jackson was somehow doing it for evil/greed reasons:

1. The scheme seems to have been cooked up by the promoters, with Jackson himself being against it

2. The "he filtered by zip code" allegation was entirely unsubstantiated, and seemed to be a side effect of making the tickets expensive.

3. Jackson donated his earnings to charity, so the "... for his own profit" claim was also questionable.

1. "Oh no don't make me more money. Okay if you insist..."

2. Kansas City was 30% black but his audience at that show was almost entirely white. I have a hard time believing none of them could afford a ticket.

3. Yeah which he announced after the public letter from his 11 year-old fan which had a ton of press coveeage saying how it wasn't fair

Back then interest rates were double digit

For reference, this seems to be what you are referring to:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_Tour_(The_Jacksons)#Ti...

Thank you, I was flipping through the book that I read about it in and was having trouble finding it.

> Then when the ticket winners were selected, he filtered by zip code so he had an almost entirely white audience

How did that work in the 80s? Did he spend days and weeks poring through (paper) census data and correlating it with ZIP codes? Did he use VisiCalc on an Apple ][ or Lotus 1-2-3 on an IBM PC?

Whatever his other misdeeds, I never got a racist vibe off MJ.

Why did he want an all-white audience? You lost me there.

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