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Part of me feels like this is a natural phenomenon since ticket prices are artificially deflated, so as to be accessible to the broadest range of fans. This cre

by lars512 17y ago

Part of me feels like this is a natural phenomenon since ticket prices are artificially deflated, so as to be accessible to the broadest range of fans. This creates a gap between what people are willing to pay and the price they are offered, and the gap creates services like this. Perhaps ticket sellers should keep the very best seats and auction them off, uncapping their price. The rest could be put in a lottery, and kept open for two weeks or so. Then, only fans who win tickets pay money for them, for a low and accessible price. That would be far fairer than the current first-come first-served, overload the server system. You could also introduce a delay between closing the lottery and announcing the results, giving you time to scan for bot submissions.

teaspoon 17y ago
I'm curious, is there a lottery-based alternative to TicketMaster? Or an option to use lottery rather than FCFS within TicketMaster? If not, I think that would be a great project for a handful of enterprising engineers. There would be some legal and payment-related related problems to solve, I'm sure, as well as whatever barriers are supporting TicketMaster's current monopoly. But if there were ever a foothold for a new contender to take them on, this seems like it.
- kgrin 17y ago
  a) The barriers supporting Ticketmaster's current monopoly are pretty significant - mainly, exclusivity deals with venues. Ironically, the most successful challenge thus far has come from LiveNation... which managed to one-up Ticketmaster in some markets by owning both venues and artists. (And is now trying to merge with Ticketmaster, pending fairly blatant antitrust issues). b) Interesting sidenote: in its day, Ticketmaster was the tech-savvy upstart, aggressively competing on both the business and tech side with the then-dominant Ticketron. (That's not to say that they're not a monopolist ripe for the picking...)
cduan 17y ago
There are plenty of good reasons for selling tickets at lower-than-necessary prices on a first-come, first-served basis. If tickets were sold at market price (or auctioned off), they would tend to go to more affluent--and likely then older--customers. If they were sold by lottery, then they would be distributed to random customers. However, ticket sellers want to sell to younger customers who are more likely to become loyal fans, buy merchandise, promote to friends, etc. The low prices help attract younger customers who likely are not as well off, and the first-come, first-serve policy tends to weed out customers who only have a marginal interest (and thus would not serve as loyal fans). This isn't to say that this business model is the best; just to point out that there are more considerations than the volume of tickets sold or fairness in the sales.

by lars512 17y ago

teaspoon 17y ago

I'm curious, is there a lottery-based alternative to TicketMaster? Or an option to use lottery rather than FCFS within TicketMaster? If not, I think that would be a great project for a handful of enterprising engineers. There would be some legal and payment-related related problems to solve, I'm sure, as well as whatever barriers are supporting TicketMaster's current monopoly. But if there were ever a foothold for a new contender to take them on, this seems like it.

kgrin 17y ago
a) The barriers supporting Ticketmaster's current monopoly are pretty significant - mainly, exclusivity deals with venues. Ironically, the most successful challenge thus far has come from LiveNation... which managed to one-up Ticketmaster in some markets by owning both venues and artists. (And is now trying to merge with Ticketmaster, pending fairly blatant antitrust issues). b) Interesting sidenote: in its day, Ticketmaster was the tech-savvy upstart, aggressively competing on both the business and tech side with the then-dominant Ticketron. (That's not to say that they're not a monopolist ripe for the picking...)

cduan 17y ago

There are plenty of good reasons for selling tickets at lower-than-necessary prices on a first-come, first-served basis. If tickets were sold at market price (or auctioned off), they would tend to go to more affluent--and likely then older--customers. If they were sold by lottery, then they would be distributed to random customers. However, ticket sellers want to sell to younger customers who are more likely to become loyal fans, buy merchandise, promote to friends, etc. The low prices help attract younger customers who likely are not as well off, and the first-come, first-serve policy tends to weed out customers who only have a marginal interest (and thus would not serve as loyal fans). This isn't to say that this business model is the best; just to point out that there are more considerations than the volume of tickets sold or fairness in the sales.