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Comment by llsf | Hacker News Reader

Agree... and not defending Ticketmaster, but regarding scalpers in general, I am not sure why one would blame only the ticketing system.

If the artists are willing to say sell tickets for $50.00 and the demand is such that some resell to $400.00 the same seat. Is it the fault of the ticketing system ? Who is the victim ? - The artist who could have make more money (but then they could have price it better) - The fans who are basically competing to see that show ?

Scalpers are optimizing the market.

Maybe the solution to mitigate scalpers would be for ticket holders to only be able to resell their tickets through the same platform. Then the artist could decide if the fans can resell to the platform at face value, or for a profit. Then the artist could decide if the ticket can be sold by the platform with a markup or not.

Basically given the power and control to the artist.

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> Scalpers are optimizing the market.

This is sort of applying the same logic that justifies high frequency trading except in this particular case, the market overlaps with the arts.

Society at large values "fairness" in a hard to define but culturally important way and "let the free market determine the price" for access runs counter to that I think in many peoples minds.

I think it's generally very easy to come up with various solutions that solve the problem, that all likely reduce the profit made by intermediaries like ticketmaster, it's purely political will and people kicking up enough fuss to implement it.

Not to mention the market is tiny, a few thousand seats at most.

The cure did this, we got tickets a few days before the shore, bought from reseller directly through ticket master but they could only be relisted at face value, got 8th for $75 I think, it was a great show

Here in Norway they passed a law which states you can only resell tickets at face value. I'm sure there are some scalpers still but I can't recall reading about it in the news the way I did before the law.

Maybe that is what we need in US too.

Matt Haney is trying to do something with AB 1720 (Resale Price Cap), and Ticketmaster is supporting it. https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml...

I am not sure why a bill would set some magic and arbitrary percentage other than 0%. This has likely be negotiated with the industry.

Thinking more on those 10% cap, it would allow scalpers to sell the original ticket to themselves, over and over, to eventually reach the price of the market.

Unless Ticketmaster takes a significant proportional bite at every resell, nothing prevents scalpers to triple the price of the original ticket, but reselling in a loop.

I think that is the right way to give the enough price control to the artists. So, if The Cure wants to keep the ticket price low, they can.

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