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Comment by Analemma_ | Hacker News Reader

The fact that "the name on the ticket must match your photo ID, but you can resell at any time before the event" would instantly solve scalping problems and yet nobody does it is your clue that nobody actually wants scalping problems to be solved. Scalpers are the sin eaters for Ticketmaster and the events themselves, taking the hate so the performers don't have to.

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Adding ID checks would make venue entry a slower and more tedious process.

In the vast majority of venues, ID checks are happening anyway to verify eligibility for drinking.

Yup, I'm in 30s and have been ID'd for every show I've gone to in the last few years.

Here’s a wild idea, tie tickets to a drivers license/photo id number, and scan the id.

Edit guess that doesn’t work for kids. Start the tickets at 10k and drop them by a percentage a day. Automatic price discovery. Rich people can just buy them whenever they want.

>Adding ID checks would make venue entry a slower and more tedious process.

Airports seem to handle them just fine?

Do they? Not necessarily making an argument for or against the original point, but to me airports epitomize "slow and tedious". My hunch is that they also don't handle nearly the volume of people/time that major stadiums do during event entry.

>but to me airports epitomize "slow and tedious".

That's the security check, of which id check is only one part. The bottleneck is everyone needing to take out their laptops and then repack their bags. Same with boarding. The bottleneck there is people putting their luggage into the overhead compartments.

In practice a lot of venues are already 21+ so they are already checking IDs.

Maybe a bit of a dystopian situation but ... I think this was 10 year ago now I went to an Utada Hikaru concert where I had to upload a picture of myself on a dedicated website and when the tickets were scanned I think they had access to that picture

How do performers benefit from scalping?

The price tickets sell for will be higher if scalping exists. Demand increases for 2 reasons:

1 - I’m more likely to buy a ticket or pay a higher price if there’s a chance of turning a profit if I can’t go.

2 - Speculators are more likely to buy unused inventory if they can turn a profit. This increases total tickets sold. (Scalpers get paid for taking risk)

I’m not defending this. I’ve given up on concerts for my favorite larger bands due to sticker shock.

All of your points apply to performers who may not sell out, so scalpers take risk, you may buy more, speculators may soak up what would go unused.

But consider Ms. Swift. All of her shows sell out, period. Face value tickets are maybe $400 max, and resell for $2000+. I don’t think she sees any benefit from scalpers. Ditto any performer that is in very high demand and certain to sell out and have unmet demand.

> I don’t think she sees any benefit from scalpers.

If a ticket sells for $2k then the platform gets some massive portion of that (like $400?) - are you sure some of that doesn't make its way back to the artist, at least on the primary sale platform? I would be rather surprised if it didn't.

They get a cut of the tickets live nation puts on the resellers site.

In addition to what others say, the potential for profiting later increases the initial price.

Think of it this way… let’s say two identical companies are going to IPO. Company one you can sell the shares for a profit later if you like. Company two you can only sell for the price you bought.

Which will have the higher IPO price?

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