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Comment by jmye | Hacker News Reader

> Now only rich people get to enjoy a sport meant for the masses, yay.

I'm so tired of people trying to pretend that limited tickets to an event billions of people want to attend ought to be available to poor people just because. If they sold for a penny, the resale market would eat them up and they'd still cost what they cost. If you'd bought them for $10, you'd instantly turn around and sell them for a few thousand to someone else.

I'm sorry no one prepared you for the fact that rare things have value, but perhaps some introductory economics classes, instead of TikTok-trite-internet-rage would be helpful.

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Perhaps if you could find economics professsors that agree with each other, I would.

Not everything must be race to the bottom. Not everything should be a fucking market.

If only rich snobs and people with poor financial control can afford your tickets, that will be the type of fan you’ll retain.

Ironically it’s the thing that will destroy many sports. People worldwide watch the premier league for the atmosphere. That comes from working class people singing and following their team. There’s a reason Newcastle fans out-sing the home crowd at Old Trafford every year, even when we’re losing.

Same thing applies to live music.

If I pay high prices for your tickets and for travel to see you play in one of your limited selection of touring cities, sure, I might go. But if you tour again a few years later, I would rather see an artist I haven’t seen live yet.

Meanwhile if the tickets are affordable, I’ll try and go again. You’ll have my renewed interest every time.

If you pay ten times the price for a ticket and go one fifth as much, they win.

Tennis is terrible to watch these days. It was always a bit of a corporate jolly, but the stands are literally half empty for all but the finals of slams. Nobody really cares for the game...

> If you'd bought them for $10, you'd instantly turn around and sell them for a few thousand to someone else.

I expect there are plenty of people who would in fact, not do that.

At many income levels and budgets, gaining $1k from selling a ticket helps a lot less than losing $1k from buying a ticket hurts.

Plus many people aren't rational economic actors and would keep the $10 ticket and enjoy the show even if it doesn't make economic sense.

Do you realize you also need to pay for hotels and flights and food and etc? In such situations of course you'd sell them. People talk as if the ticket is even the problem and that it's cheap to go otherwise.

Many ticket platforms have a resale feature and you get back what you paid if someone gets your ticket.

> Do you realize you also need to pay for hotels and flights and food and etc? In such situations of course you'd sell them.

Sure, but there's also the situation of all the people who are locals who don't need hotels and flights and food and etc.

You assume a big assumption: that everything has to be run by efficient markets.

The existence of scalpers is the proof

That it is run like an efficient market, not that it has to be.

Yes if the ticket selling happened in another world with another species other than humans it is possible that nobody would try to scalp. Here on earth people will find ways to bring non-market prices in-line with a market. It has nothing to do with who is selling the original tickets and all to do with how individual people behave with money.

I think the point is that there are many ways to perfectly stop scalpers and keep non-market prices. You don’t HAVE to give in to market pressures.

For example, you could make tickets non-transferable, but refundable.

I’m going to straight up call this a classist view to hold. Things like sports events, music events became popular BECAUSE of the working classes watching and taking part. Football, the biggest single sport on Earth would be nothing were it not for the millions of working class people playing it, filling stadiums, following their teams through thick and thin around the world and stretching their budgets to do so.

And you think it’s ok for rich people to swoop in, appropriate the attire and vibe of the sport and working class people just need to suck it up because they’re poor? The people who made the sport what it is now can’t enjoy it? The people who STILL make the sport what it is?

Disgusting.

This, but for everything: industrial modernity, pizza, jazz, and in general nearly all music and culture of note (it's true that some high culture is actually good, though it oftentimes is a thin rebadge of something working people had already been doing for a long time): working people have done almost literally everything that matters throughout the entirety of history. Rich people should be grateful we don't turn them into (delicious) sausage and leave it at that.

> Rich people should be grateful we don't turn them into (delicious) sausage and leave it at that.

You and I both know, the poor will not do a damn thing.

History always repeats in cycles. The poor never do a damn thing, until it gets pretty bad and then they vote for fascists, and if they are starving then the guillotines come out for whoever is currently powerful (fascists or not). That's how it has always worked. As long as the powerful class continues providing bread and circuses, no guillotines. In cycles where fascism happens, it does accelerate the cycle because fascists are too stupid to realize they need to provide bread and circuses.

Mate poor people never went to any world cup. I find it funny to watch rich guys discuss why it is too expensive to buy a ticket TO THE WORLD CUP. Like that was never a thing people afforded unless you happen to have the luck of your life and live next to one of the stadiums. Most people go to zero ticketed cultural or sports events per year where I'm from, and that's at the country level before you even slice by poor people.

It's like watching millionaires discussing that nowadays poor people can't afford to go on a rocket to space.

I know this particular context was within the WC but the phrasing of the parent comment seemed to go beyond just that and to football tickets in general, which is what set me off.

Also, I know for a fact that plenty of working class people from England go to the World Cup. Fair enough, they’re wealthy by the standards of Brazilian favelas but that’s a broader issue. It still stings to see the price gouging that FIFA is enjoying this time round.

I really don't think you're interpreting that right. The idea of football tickets in general becoming too expensive for the working class doesn't even make sense, there's so many of those tickets.

Depending on the club, you can’t compare pricing for Blyth Spartans tickets to Arsenal (famously expensive) and say “well you can just go follow a different club.” That’s just not how football support works in England.

Also, I pointed to another comment that working class fans are the fans that make the game. Man U are famously followed by “the prawn sandwich brigade” and the top tier clubs are regularly mocked by others for being out-sung at their own stadiums.

> I know this particular context was within the WC but the phrasing of the parent comment seemed to go beyond just that and to football tickets in general, which is what set me off.

No idea why you would read a comment in a thread specifically about the WC and think, "but boy, think how angry I could be if I decided this comment was about something else entirely?!"

Wouldn't it be better if they could go at least once or twice though? If they wanted to?

Sure, it would be better that everyone could have a beautiful life without any worries and being able to do all they want to. Choosing the world cup as the thing to be mad about is ridiculous though.

Is it possible to be mad about two or more things?

Huehuehue

This and plenty of other problems that plague the society now and over the past centuries could be solved by eliminating the distinction and gap between "rich" and "poor".

Why should poor people be allowed to enjoy things?

You want to see a significant fraction of society sad and angry?

I can’t tell if you’re being serious or sarcastic…

Yes.

nonsense, the lowest strata of working society has never had it so good, unfortunately things are still going to be out of reach, perhaps what the comment above said was a little harsh but there is truth to it, if what you love about the sport is merely its accessibility then find or start a new one (that the rich will appropriate in a couple of hundred years).

How do you measure good?

take your pick, health, material, whatever you want.

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