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Comment by eightysixfour | Hacker News Reader

> You're not entirely wrong, but the root issue is artists not charging the market clearing price for tickets.

Because there is value for the artist in maintaining the perception of accessibility.

That's also easy to solve. Allocate discounted tickets by lottery and bind to a name (think airline tickets). If for whatever reason they can't make it, the ticket goes back into the lottery pool. Or maybe if they want the tickets to be transferable, you can put in some nominee ticket holders (eg. max 3 people you can transfer it to).

My (probably mis-)understanding of StubHub/Ticketmaster is that they're serving as sin eaters / reputation shields for the artists:

Phase 1:

   - Artist lists tickets as "$20"
   - SH/TM charges $20 + $15 convenience fee
   - SH/TM pays the artist $30 and keeps $5
   - Artist gets to look like they're kind/generous for pricing so affordably while making some of SH/TM's cut

Phase 2:

   - SH/TM hold back some percentage of tickets (possibly most or all of them) to sell on the "resale" market
   - Those "resale" tickets sell near the market-clearing price, either earning higher margins than if they had sold at list price, or ensuring that most of the seats in the venue are filled.
   - SH/TM kick back some percentage of revenue from resale tickets to the artist.

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