21 ms·

A scalper who used bots to buy millions of tickets, now wants to stop them

134 points by pmcpinto 10y ago

tyingq 10y ago
"Wiseguy learned that Ticketmaster's CAPTCHA system had only loaded 30,000 unique images into its database, rather than millions. So Lowson's team downloaded every image they could find as a .jpeg file, stayed up all night typing them out, and taught their bot how to match the images." Wow. I had the impression Ticketmaster had invested a lot of thought into anti bot tech. Apparently not.
- laurencei 10y ago
  What is more interesting about that statement is how did he learn that fact? Possibly some help from the inside? Or some other method...?
  - Omniusaspirer 10y ago
    Probably just started saving them. The value on doing so was high enough that even if it was 10's of millions it would be worth doing. It's not particularly expensive (other than time) to do so.
  - AznHisoka 10y ago
    Just scrape.. store the captchas, use Amazon Turk, have them store the image + word in a database to recognize automatically later, and then realize the database never seems to increase in size.
  - striking 10y ago
    He might've tried to write a computer vision solution to solve TicketMaster captchas. In order to test your solution, you need a bank of images to test from. So you download the first, say, 50k. And realize that you're getting a whole lot of repeats. 30k is still really annoying to get around without computer vision. But OpenCV is really, really fun and easy to use.
    - acchow 10y ago
      It's a CV arms race - the CAPTCHAs are meant to stay ahead of state-of-the-art CV tech. That's the entire premise behind reCAPTCHA - if you've solved it, then we've sold useful real-world problems and can move onto the next ones.
      - dsp1234 10y ago
        That's the entire premise behind reCAPTCHA - if you've solved it, then we've sold useful real-world problems and can move onto the next ones. The original premise of reCAPTCHA was to help crowdsource the digitization of books by providing spam bot prevention. It's slogan was "Stop Spam, Read Books." up until 2014.
        acchow 10y ago
        Exactly. I had a typo where I meant "solved" but put "sold". reCAPTCHA directed the efforts in the spambots arms race towards a real-world problem - reading old books.
  - adekok 10y ago
    The birthday paradox. After a few hundred to low thousands of manual captcha's, someone goes Hey... I've seen this one before!. After 2-3 duplicates, they're pretty sure that the corpus is small. At that point, it's worth writing a script to grab as many captchas as possible. They can then manually analyze them. A back of the envelope calculation shows that with 30 people, they should be able to solve all of the captchas in a working day, even accounting for breaks.
  - allenz 10y ago
    The files could have been numbered consecutively.
  - 1024core 10y ago
    If they had just scraped ~205 images, they would have a > 50% chance of getting a repeat.
    - greeneggs 10y ago
      Indeed, by the "birthday paradox." And, by the "coupon collector's problem," the expected time to have seen all 30,000 images is about n*log(n) ~= 310,000 random images. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coupon_collector's_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coupon_collector's_problem
  - Spivak 10y ago
    One method is to use capture-recapture sampling. He takes a sample of the images of size N and remembers them. Then he takes another sample of the images with size M and notes that K of them are repeated. Then an estimator for the total number of images is given by NM/K. Or more concretely, if you take a random sample of 100 images and remember them, then take another sample of 100 images and you recognize half 50 of them. Then you're reasonably confident that 100 is half of the images. (This does assume that the images presented follow a discrete uniform distribution but it's probably a good assumption given how people write software.)
- whatever_dude 10y ago
  Ticketmaster celebrates scalpers.
  - austenallred 10y ago
    Yup. They just want to be the scalpers
    - bogomipz 10y ago
      They already are to some extent: http://www.thembj.org/2013/10/ticketmaster-and-the-business-of-scalping/ http://www.thembj.org/2013/10/ticketmaster-and-the-business-...
ryandrake 10y ago
> "There's an emotional aspect to what artists do, which is to say 'I'm not willing to charge $500 even though clearly the market value is $500. I'm going to charge $100, and at the end of the day someone else is going to make that money,'" The bots are just a symptom. Seems like this is likely the root of the problem. If the primary market was efficient, then there would be no secondary market, and the whole point of developing these bots and sophisticates scalping systems would be moot.
- kbenson 10y ago
  Even with an accurate primary market, the secondary market would exist. For example, and artist may sell out their event, but then become more popular, causing tickets to be worth more. Some percentage of people will decide that they would rather have the profit than the ticket. Ticket holders may also find they are unable (or no longer want to) attend, so may want to sell their tickets.
  - Kiro 10y ago
    Sure, just as any other good with a functioning supply and demand.
- matwood 10y ago
  >Seems like this is likely the root of the problem. The artist/venue wins because the show gets sold out and they get to claim 'good guy' by offering lower priced tickets. The people who want to get rid of scalping are going to be really upset when they find out it means that Ticketmaster just implements a ticket auction.
- alex_duf 10y ago
  But an efficient primary market disconnects you from your fans by advantaging richer customers. Probably not the best way to get the crowd that actually care about your music.
  - ryandrake 10y ago
    If the value of the ticket is more than the price, you're just going to have what you have today: scalper-bots gobbling them up and re-selling them to those richer customers anyway. The people who can't afford the tickets still can't afford them. Whenever you price something under its value, you are just opening up an arbitrage opportunity for someone else.
jkoebler 10y ago
I wrote this story and am happy to answer any questions you guys might have. Lots of information I ended up not using because the article was already incredibly long or I couldn't corroborate it (but believe it to be true from various interviews), etc.
- cb21 10y ago
  Thanks for the article! I love going to concerts (actually I grabbed pre-sale tickets for Lady Gaga just last week) so I found it all super interesting.
- metaphorm 10y ago
  can you explain some more details about the attempt of the prosecutors to argue for "hacking" based on their (apparently wrong) assumption that Wiseguy's system was using OCR to answer a Captcha? this part just doesn't make any sense to me. you said > The government argued that OCR-using bots would need to use Ticketmaster's source code to be implemented properly on the site, and would therefore be a "circumvention" of Ticketmaster's software. I don't understand why they were trying to make this argument. OCR is a sub-domain of computer vision. It involves having a program look at an image and attempt to discern alphabet characters in it. This definitely _does not_ involve accessing the source code of the system. It's interacting only with what is shown publicly to normal users. So what gives? Why did the prosecutor try to make this argument? It's technically incorrect in a serious way.
  - dkersten 10y ago
    This is the exact question I came here to ask. Surely OCR is more "humanlike" and less "hacks" than the trick of indexing all of the images.
jstanley 10y ago
> The scourge of ticket bots and the immorality of the shady ticket scalpers using them is conventional wisdom I very much disagree. If I am willing to pay the asking price for tickets, I should be able to buy them. If you're offering them so cheaply that I will happily buy all of the tickets then you're offering them too cheap and you can't really complain if I buy them. If it weren't for ticket-scalpers, die-hard fans who are willing to pay extra to secure a place would have no option. Thanks to ticket-scalpers, it is possible for die-hard fans to ensure they can get one even if the tickets are "sold out" by just offering more money. This is a classic case of an inefficient market being made more efficient. Without ticket scalping: the original seller sells all the tickets. Some fans get to watch the gig, and others don't, and the availability of tickets bears no relation to how much you're willing to pay to get hold of one, only to how quickly you decide to book one. With ticket scalping: the original seller sells all their tickets more quickly. The fans who want to see the gig the most get to see it, with less chance of tickets being made unavailable by people who don't want to see it as badly (i.e. don't want to pay as much money), and the ticket scalper makes a profit. Everyone's a winner.
- knz 10y ago
  There is a middle ground of letting legitimate buyers purchase tickets and then selling them on the secondary market if they are unable to attend. Automated bots/teams of people buying many tickets purely for the sake of profit doesn't benefit anyone other than the scalpers.
  - rubber_duck 10y ago
    >Automated bots/teams of people buying many tickets purely for the sake of profit doesn't benefit anyone other than the scalpers. He just told you - it benefits people who want to pay more but would otherwise have to rely on luck to buy the tickets - this is the entire reason the system works.
    - rhino369 10y ago
      The people running the show could just sell the tickets using an auction mechanism. It doesn't make sense to let a middle man take a huge cut. Well it probably does make sense for PR reasons. Nobody wants to be the band/team/event gouging their fans.
conjectures 10y ago
I'm still trying to understand why they don't just auction tickets.
- itchyouch 10y ago
  Because it is about being equitable to middle and lower-income fans. Otherwise, only the richest fans would outbid everyone else and the artists don't want to alienate a large majority of their fan base by making their shows unavailable to only but the folks with the means.
  - matwood 10y ago
    > Because it is about being equitable to middle and lower-income fans. It's about the perception of being equitable. As a comment mentions above, many artists/venues work directly with scalpers.
  - conjectures 10y ago
    So start a mailing list when you're a small band. Email your oldest fans a promo code with priority booking and/or first tranche auction option. Give people with an academic email address early options. Give people who like you on social media early options. Include a promo code in sales of online merchandise for future gigs. There are lots of potential ways to do it, while undermining the scalpers. Also gigs seem pretty unaffordable already.
    - celim307 10y ago
      as the article mentions, those tactics you described actually helped the scalpers more than an average person.
      - gpawl 10y ago
        Do you have any evidence for your claim of what the article mentions?
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
austenallred 10y ago
I spent some of my formidable years scalping and brokering event (mostly broadway) tickets in various forms. The company I co-founded made a few million and I learned an expensive lesson in equity at age 18 (I opted instead for the $14/hr salary). We worked in broadway (meaning the style of show, not just the street), and I met the Wiseguys folks at secondary market trade shows, but I had no idea they were this big, and to be honest didn't care. We always got tickets long before they ever went on sale, as does almost anyone who has been in the game a while. We would buy tickets up to 18 months in advance, and we're a security blanket of guaranteed sales for the artists and venues. We thought the retail sales were always a losing bet (except for, ironically, the artists and venues that tried to fight scalpers). When we started figuring out how to circumvent the safeguards (deciding deliberately not to use bots or "spinners" as they used to be called), we realized we didn't need to because most of the venues loved us. Just like the wiseguys, they didn't want to be in the business of scalping and arbitrage, they just wanted to move all of their tickets quickly and efficiently with as little loss as possible. So if we wanted to buy 5,000 of 10,000 seats for a show they were thrilled, and we'd get a discount. When a show was about to go on sale they'd call us. Then thy may turn around and say "sorry tickets are on the secondary market, we don't like scalpers" but usually that was PR-style BS. They wanted someone to absorb that risk. There are certainly artists and venues (e.g. Metallica) that hate scalpers and try to fight them. But we noticed that really only eliminates the "beer money" scalpers and leaves all of the money to the more sophisticated one. I have never yet seen a system that cannot be beat by scalpers, including paperless ticketing, and I find that most venues and artists want to maximize profits and, more importantly, minimize risk anyway.
- koolba 10y ago
  > I have never yet seen a system that cannot be beat by scalpers, including paperless ticketing, and I find that most venues and artists want to maximize profits anyway. How would a scalper get around ticketing that requires presenting ID that matches the name of the person on the ticket? I've been to a few shows that were like that for pickup up tickets at the will call booth. I suppose you could get them there and hand them off to the true purchaser but that would require boots on the ground at each show. Also, not sure how do deal with ID presented at the door to get into the venue if it has to match the ticket purchaser. (All of this assumes no resales to rename the ticket owner)
hitgeek 10y ago
venues need to just formalize the unofficial auction + lottery system that already exists in various secondary markets. some tickets are sold via auction, others are offered at a set price to those who win a lottery. The only difference is that venues + artists can benefit rather than middlemen. I think VR has the potential to help alleviate some of the market pressures by offering an experience with nearly limitless supply.
kalleboo 10y ago
Here in Japan it's quite common to have ticket lotteries and ID checks for certain popular/easily oversold artists. Better odds are given to early-bird applicants and fanclub members. Why is that so hard to implement?
- yoodenvranx 10y ago
  If I remember correctly then Rammstein is doing this on their tours. You can only buy a ticket with your name on it and it will be checked at the entrance.
- hackermailman 10y ago
  Live Nation and its ticket distributor Ticketmaster consistently promote scarcity by diverting the majority of tickets into the hands of resellers like TicketsNow, which is a Ticketmaster subsidiary so they can get the full demand rate in the secondary market. The artist gets a cut of this, it's all a scheme and nobody at Ticketmaster cares about the bots who fight over the tiny amount of released tickets. Artists know they can charge much more for tickets, but can't do so overtly because everybody will cry in the media about them locking out their "true fans", so hence we have this scheme where bands like U2 scalp their own tickets to get paid what they are worth.
  - got2surf 10y ago
    Also, doesn't Ticketmaster benefit from the scalping through more transaction fees anyway? Between TicketsNow and the increased transaction volume from scalpers/flippers, seems like TicketMaster can't really lose.
    - hackermailman 10y ago
      Live Nation owns Ticketmaster, and often the venues too, so in the end it all flows back to the promoter from drink pricing to ticket reselling. We used to joke in highschool that the guys punting tickets for 10x the price in the parking lot of shows were Ticketmaster employees and now they actually are.
  - 10y ago
antisthenes 10y ago
I'm really surprised to see so many from the HN audience against scalpers, considering how libertarian the site leans. If there's any market where a completely free market approach is applicable and actually desirable, it's this one. I've bought maybe 40-50 tickets for various events (gaming, concerts, sports) over the last 5 years, and 99% of the time, the price of the ticket was negligible next to all the other expenses (travel and lodging mostly, but also food). And yes, most of those tickets had scalpers operating on them, pricing 2-3x higher than the nominal sale price. Even at 2-3x price, the price of the ticket is a relatively small portion of the total cost of attending. People without money get screwed out of entertainment? Boo Hoo. How about Healthcare or housing? You know, actual essential things. Thinking that being a hardcore fan makes you somehow more deserving to attend is entitled child mentality, plain and simple. It's one of those concepts that make you feel good, but in reality no one cares, and certainly not going to cry over 1 fan attending over another. If you can't afford the auction price of the ticket, sit at home and watch their live youtube videos. It's arguably not even much worse and you won't have to deal with the smelly crowds.
- nradov 10y ago
  You're logically and economically correct, but people have a visceral negative emotional reaction to arbitrageurs since they didn't do anything to "earn" their profits. The only way to eliminate scalping would be for the original sellers to raise prices to match the clearing price (perhaps with auctions) but the optics on that are also bad since artists don't like to seem too greedy.
  - ue_ 10y ago
    >but people have a visceral negative reaction to arbitrageurs since they didn't do anything to "earn" their profits I don't think there's anything wrong with getting money that you didn't earn (so long as you're not exploiting people, as the bourgeoisie do); I do think there is something ethically questionable about forcing (I use the word 'forcing' to refer to the idea that within the confines of show-going, it is the only available choice) people to pay 3x more for something out of greed.
the_watcher 10y ago
Not directly related, but my dad used to take people to major tennis tournaments through a company he started. Many times, those who'd purchased tickets for the entire tournament didn't want to go to every match, so they'd ask him if they could sell him back individual tickets, happily taking face value. My dad, who speaks several languages, was nearly always able to move the tickets for far more than face value, and has told me many a story about getting to know professional scalpers across Europe. Every time I read a story about scalping it reminds me of him.
1024core 10y ago
> The government's case hinged mostly on whether Wiseguy had "circumvented" Ticketmaster's system. While I hate scalpers, I have to ask: why is this illegal? Is using a screen reader "circumventing the system" if I get rid of all font and graphics? Is using an adblocker "circumventing the system" ?
- nerdponx 10y ago
  The site might (and hopefully does) have an explicit TOS/EULA prohibiting scraping for the purpose of scalping.
  - kentt 10y ago
    I don't think that necessarily make it's illegal to do it anyway.
- mthoms 10y ago
  The law is intentionally vague on what "circumventing" means. That's so that: (a) It can catch previously unforeseen schemes (b) It can be selectively enforced (c) Both (a) and (b) The answer is (c) IMHO.
scraft 10y ago
Big artists, that have gigs where tickets cost the best part of $100 (I'm UK based and I'm converting what we'd pay for big name artists gigs from GBP to USD) are saying they have 10X the demand of people wanting to see them than the stadiums can take.... ...wow that sounds like an awesome problem to solve! Like play 10 dates, or if that is too tiring, maybe they could let a lot of people watch live on VR headsets for a much cheaper rate (like $10 or something) - I am always hearing the global number of Gear VR sales is large and getting larger and larger. I understand this problem is different to normal computer problems, but I'm used to it being the case that you don't need to worry too much about scalability - because if you are in the position that you do, you should have the resources to be able to find a nice way to solve it! Maybe some sort of bitcoin/blockchain + verifiable ID, so on the door you can prove: 1. You are the person who paid the ticket 2. The price you paid for the ticket, is the price on the ticket
- k-mcgrady 10y ago
  I really don't see the point of a live concert VR. The experience will be completely different. Releasing a well recorded and edited version once per tour makes much more sense to me. The ticket problem needs to be solved but it won't when you have the biggest ticket sellers (Ticketmaster) owning marketplaces for second-hand tickets. I recently read one of these companies was buying tickets and then putting them on the secondary marketplace themselves at a huge markup. As for booking extra shows - I don't know why this doesn't happen. Maybe they don't have the data? Much better for an artists brand if they sell out 2 nights than have 3 nights with none of them sold out. NB: The biggest artists (selling out places like the O2 Arena in London for multiple nights) rarely charge over $60/£50 for general admission. The only people I see charging $100 are well established older acts (Fleetwood Mac, Tom Petty, etc.).
  - scraft 10y ago
    It isn't that I don't appreciate your point about a live VR concert being different, and right now if I simply put on a VR headset and was there (without any other tweaks at all) there would be a limit to how 'cool' it would be. That said, I'm a Radiohead fan, if they offered an option to go to a rare gig to see them play, in VR (either VR or nothing) I would certainly consider it. If you then said that VR technology is going to continue to improve, and I'll be able to sit there with my friends, watching the band, taking virtual photographcs of the band, optionally discussing the show with others, etc. maybe it starts to actually start getting quite interesting.
bogomipz 10y ago
>"When the sale dropped, we took 496 in New York, 492 in Boston, 496 in LA," Lowson, the former CEO of Wiseguy Tickets, told me in one of our many phone calls over the course of the last six months. "They apologized on the Grammys because of us, and then they had a second round of sales to make up for it. We took all the good tickets in that second round, too." He seems proud of this, this person has zero morals. He's scum. >"We pulled so many tickets that really we had to choose which seats we didn't want," he said." This is just unbridled greed. It wasn't enough to do this for handful of tickets, it had to be done for all of them. I'm always suspicious of people that want to do the right thing only once their own morally questionable practices have run out of steam. I don't think what he's doing now is motivated by any sense of concern or common good.
- metaphorm 10y ago
  he was scalping concert tickets, not price gouging on food or medicine here. a little perspective would help. this is leisure activities we're talking about.
  - bogomipz 10y ago
    Wait, because its concert tickets its less of a violation? So price gouging and depriving people of a good or service is OK as long as its not life essential? Where does that line stop? Tell that to someone who was shut out of seeing their favorite band because 492 of the total 496 tickets that were put on sale went to this guy. Is that the little perspective that would help?
    - metaphorm 10y ago
      > Wait, because its concert tickets its less of a violation? yes, exactly that. what's so hard to understand? price gouging on essentials is clearly a worse thing to do than price gouging on leisure items.
      - bogomipz 10y ago
        So by your logic it is OK because there are worse things? Do you use that metric in all aspects of your judgement? If so you must be able rationalize a lot of questionable behavior because you can always think of something 'worse" that you "could" be doing instead. What's so hard to understand is that your logic is pretty twisted.
rurabe 10y ago
Ticketmaster is actually a fairly unusual market in that it discriminates based on speed, which is pretty unusual in our market economy where things are usually discriminated based on price. As long as this structural difference exists there will always be an incentive to arbitrage the market, whether those arbitrageurs are one person or a thousand, bots or Turks or employees. Everyone seems to get morally outraged about this, but I've yet to see anyone suggest an alternative system that solves the underlying issue of incentives. Most bans and limits are ineffective because they are at odds with the incentives of Ticketmaster. Do you make secondary markets illegal? What if someone can't go? Just balancing the incentives is a tricky issue to say nothing of finding the optimal balance of fair.
brudgers 10y ago
When the Rolling Stones did their last tour in 1981 --those were still the days when rock and rollers hoped to die before their geriatric years and The Who would perform their Final Tour just a year later -- the tickets (at least in the US) were by mail and via lottery. Payment was with cashier's check only and only two tickets per order. [1] It would still work today. For fans with money, it would be less convenient than buying through a scalper. It would be more convenient than TicketMaster since ordinary fans cannot buy tickets through it anyway. It would raise costs for scalping businesses and somewhat level the playing field (it is impossible to completely level a playing field between individuals and well capitalized businesses). Anyway, TicketMaster's business has changed less than the music industry and get off my lawn. [1]: The price was an outrageous $16 each. But it was also the days of festival seating and the best seat in the house was a matter of will. Down on the stadium field, over the course of the day we had worked our way to within ten feet of the stage by the time the Stones opened with their new hit single, "Start Me Up." No really, get off my lawn.
- M_Grey 10y ago
  Is it cool if I just sit on your lawn and listen to your interesting stories? I'll pluck weeds!
  - creativityhurts 10y ago
    My bot already purchased all the tickets for his lawn in case you'd like to buy one.
- rurabe 10y ago
  That may meet your priorities and maybe even the band's but it most definitely does not meet Ticketmaster's in a world where they can offload all the tickets in 15 minutes and charge the maximum palatable fees with basically no variable costs. And Ticketmaster is in control of this process, so...
  - brudgers 10y ago
    After commenting, I suspect that the TicketMaster system meets the requirements of most bands. This is noted in the article for the reason you mentioned, but I think the current situation provides additional business utility to the performers. $70 tickets don't segment the market in the same way $700 tickets do. The expected lifetime value of one $700 a ticket fan is probably much more than the expected lifetime value of a $70 a ticket fan. The $70 a ticket fan might be stretched and is less likely buy a hoodie and get drunk on craft beer and use valet parking...all of which the band gets a cut.
waterside81 10y ago
As others have pointed out here, a lottery system with ID can help beat this. Pearl Jam's fan club ticket sales require you to choose ahead of time which concerts you want to go to (max 2 tickets per show) and then on lottery day, you're informed if you won or not and your card is charged. Although a bit opaque, it does make it harder to game the system.
- durango 10y ago
  two ticket max is a bummer.. are there specific seats for PJ's concerts? Would suck if you and 4 other friends wanted to go, just curious
  - waterside81 10y ago
    Yeah the fan club sections are always around the stage so if four of you go, although you're not guaranteed to be in the same row/section, you're close-ish.
ChuckMcM 10y ago
I've wondered if you could price tickets with an algorihm where they start out high and then over time or volume get cheaper and cheaper. If a scalper jumped in first they would pay a high price, later buyers could get tickets much more cheaply, if they come in later they won't have the desirable tickets which sold early.
- supercanuck 10y ago
  How would this be in the best interest of the venue/artist who want to move tickets quickly and reduce risk? Seems like this would favor only those concerts destined to sell out or be popular.
  - ChuckMcM 10y ago
    Ideally it would maximize the revenue going to the artist and not to the scalper. Lets assume you worked it this way. Artist X, playing 3 shows (Friday eve, Saturday Mat, Saturday Eve) would normally put tickets on sale lets say a month in advance for $20/$30/$50 (General Admission, Main Floor, Orchestra (rows 1-3)) each. Now in this new system they put tickets on sale 6 weeks before the event and in the additional two weeks prior the prices start at $200/$300/$500 and decay in price linearly by date to their 'marked' price over those two weeks. So each day sees a 7% drop in the 'over' price (so from $200 -> $20). Landing at the one month mark at the 'regular' prices. In scenario one, it does nothing and no one takes advantage of early access to higher priced tickets and the tickets are on sale at "list' price 1 month ahead of the date as usual. In scenario two, some people are really looking forward to the show and wait until the prices come down to what they are willing to pay for the seats they want prior to the tickets reaching their "list" price. That gives the artist/venue a bit more money for the show. Scenario 3, lots of people want to go, they buy out all the tickets during the first two weeks of availability at higher prices. The artist/venue get a lot more money for the show. The challenge for scalpers is that if they buy the tickets when they are expensive, they might take a loss on them (they don't really want to go to the show). What this scheme tries to do is to move the market dynamics around a potentially mispriced product so that the artist/venue benefits if it is mispriced rather than the scalpers.
  - 10y ago
degenerate 10y ago
Louis CK went the extra mile to work with specific venues to circumvent Ticketmaster and eliminate scalping. Some venues have contracts with Ticketmaster and could not be used. It's totally doable if you sell your own tickets, but most artists (band managers) are not up for the challenge. He explains: “Most tickets are $50 or less. There are no ticket fees for any shows. My agent worked hard to accomplish this by negotiating in every city and finding venues that were willing to help us make the shows affordable. In some cases, the venues and I are splitting the ticket charges between us so you don’t have to pay it. In the end it’s worth it to me because I don’t want coming to see me to be a painful choice for anyone and either way I’m making plenty of money on the tour. I sincerely hope that everyone takes advantage of this by simply buying the affordable tickets and coming to the shows. For those of you who plan to take the opportunity of the simple and cheap ticketing on this tour to make a profit at the expense of my fans, please note that we are working hard to prevent scalping and that if you resell your tickets at an unfair price, you are risking having your tickets invalidated. Also if you purchase tickets to my shows from Stubhub or other scalping sites, that ticket may not be valid. Source: http://consequenceofsound.net/2016/05/louis-c-k-announces-22-city-world-tour-and-he-promises-to-fuck-over-scalpers/ http://consequenceofsound.net/2016/05/louis-c-k-announces-22...
bogomipz 10y ago
The article states: "Tickets are incorrectly priced, which incentivizes scalping If there's a reliably profitable secondary market for tickets, that means tickets are being priced too inexpensively by the artist." This is a refrain that is put forth time and time again but people who's business is reselling tickets in the secondary market. The blame is somehow shifted to the artists. Touring and tour routing are incredibly difficult logistical operations. A touring act has so many variables that they have to consider when they put tickets on sale - availability of venues for dates that coincide with their tour routing, release date of an album their supporting, time of year in which their touring, gauging the current demand, possible competing shows the same night with similar a fan base. The local promoters need lead time to promote the show. If it was a single show in single place then yes they could exploit dynamic pricing and maximize the price of each individual ticket, much like an airline does. This is not the reality though and as such there may end up being some inefficiencies created inadvertently. This however is not same thing as what is stated here - "the artists are the ones that created this by mis-pricing their tickets." Pricing tickets is a compromise between all of those things I mentioned above. I don't think that necessarily means its someone else's for the taking however.
habosa 10y ago
My favorite band is Wilco, and they have effectively eliminated scalping of their tickets. Here's how: When you buy a ticket you can only buy 2 at a time and you must provide your name. To attend the show, you show your ID at the venue and they find you the the ticket(s) that match your name. At this point you and your guest must enter immediately and there are no "ins and outs". So to scalp a ticket, you'd have to bring the person you sold it to into the show with you. That's a lot of effort! Are there downsides to this? Sure. The first is that I'd gladly pay more to see Wilco but I can't but my way into the show. The second is if I buy tickets and something comes up I can't easily transfer them to another fan. Is all of this probably worth it to make sure that they can have an intimate connection with their fans and nobody else profits off their shows? Yeah, I think so.
intrasight 10y ago
I find it hard to believe that in the age of ubiquitous and relatively secure smartphones that we can't write a ticket auction app. So I have assume that there are powerful stakeholders whose interests would not be served.
iamjdg 10y ago
Couldn't ticketmaster put a minimum time limit on each ticket sale? So a bot tries to buy a ticket and ticketmaster says sorry you completed the transaction too fast, you are probably a bot. Pick a min time consistent with how long it typically takes a person. This would level the playing field between bots and humans.

134 points by pmcpinto 10y ago

"Wiseguy learned that Ticketmaster's CAPTCHA system had only loaded 30,000 unique images into its database, rather than millions. So Lowson's team downloaded every image they could find as a .jpeg file, stayed up all night typing them out, and taught their bot how to match the images." Wow. I had the impression Ticketmaster had invested a lot of thought into anti bot tech. Apparently not.

laurencei 10y ago
What is more interesting about that statement is how did he learn that fact? Possibly some help from the inside? Or some other method...?
- Omniusaspirer 10y ago
  Probably just started saving them. The value on doing so was high enough that even if it was 10's of millions it would be worth doing. It's not particularly expensive (other than time) to do so.
- AznHisoka 10y ago
  Just scrape.. store the captchas, use Amazon Turk, have them store the image + word in a database to recognize automatically later, and then realize the database never seems to increase in size.
- striking 10y ago
  He might've tried to write a computer vision solution to solve TicketMaster captchas. In order to test your solution, you need a bank of images to test from. So you download the first, say, 50k. And realize that you're getting a whole lot of repeats. 30k is still really annoying to get around without computer vision. But OpenCV is really, really fun and easy to use.
  - acchow 10y ago
    It's a CV arms race - the CAPTCHAs are meant to stay ahead of state-of-the-art CV tech. That's the entire premise behind reCAPTCHA - if you've solved it, then we've sold useful real-world problems and can move onto the next ones.
    - dsp1234 10y ago
      That's the entire premise behind reCAPTCHA - if you've solved it, then we've sold useful real-world problems and can move onto the next ones. The original premise of reCAPTCHA was to help crowdsource the digitization of books by providing spam bot prevention. It's slogan was "Stop Spam, Read Books." up until 2014.
      - acchow 10y ago
        Exactly. I had a typo where I meant "solved" but put "sold". reCAPTCHA directed the efforts in the spambots arms race towards a real-world problem - reading old books.
- adekok 10y ago
  The birthday paradox. After a few hundred to low thousands of manual captcha's, someone goes Hey... I've seen this one before!. After 2-3 duplicates, they're pretty sure that the corpus is small. At that point, it's worth writing a script to grab as many captchas as possible. They can then manually analyze them. A back of the envelope calculation shows that with 30 people, they should be able to solve all of the captchas in a working day, even accounting for breaks.
- allenz 10y ago
  The files could have been numbered consecutively.
- 1024core 10y ago
  If they had just scraped ~205 images, they would have a > 50% chance of getting a repeat.
  - greeneggs 10y ago
    Indeed, by the "birthday paradox." And, by the "coupon collector's problem," the expected time to have seen all 30,000 images is about n*log(n) ~= 310,000 random images. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coupon_collector's_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coupon_collector's_problem
- Spivak 10y ago
  One method is to use capture-recapture sampling. He takes a sample of the images of size N and remembers them. Then he takes another sample of the images with size M and notes that K of them are repeated. Then an estimator for the total number of images is given by NM/K. Or more concretely, if you take a random sample of 100 images and remember them, then take another sample of 100 images and you recognize half 50 of them. Then you're reasonably confident that 100 is half of the images. (This does assume that the images presented follow a discrete uniform distribution but it's probably a good assumption given how people write software.)
whatever_dude 10y ago
Ticketmaster celebrates scalpers.
- austenallred 10y ago
  Yup. They just want to be the scalpers
  - bogomipz 10y ago
    They already are to some extent: http://www.thembj.org/2013/10/ticketmaster-and-the-business-of-scalping/ http://www.thembj.org/2013/10/ticketmaster-and-the-business-...

ryandrake 10y ago

> "There's an emotional aspect to what artists do, which is to say 'I'm not willing to charge $500 even though clearly the market value is $500. I'm going to charge $100, and at the end of the day someone else is going to make that money,'" The bots are just a symptom. Seems like this is likely the root of the problem. If the primary market was efficient, then there would be no secondary market, and the whole point of developing these bots and sophisticates scalping systems would be moot.

kbenson 10y ago
Even with an accurate primary market, the secondary market would exist. For example, and artist may sell out their event, but then become more popular, causing tickets to be worth more. Some percentage of people will decide that they would rather have the profit than the ticket. Ticket holders may also find they are unable (or no longer want to) attend, so may want to sell their tickets.
- Kiro 10y ago
  Sure, just as any other good with a functioning supply and demand.
matwood 10y ago
>Seems like this is likely the root of the problem. The artist/venue wins because the show gets sold out and they get to claim 'good guy' by offering lower priced tickets. The people who want to get rid of scalping are going to be really upset when they find out it means that Ticketmaster just implements a ticket auction.
alex_duf 10y ago
But an efficient primary market disconnects you from your fans by advantaging richer customers. Probably not the best way to get the crowd that actually care about your music.
- ryandrake 10y ago
  If the value of the ticket is more than the price, you're just going to have what you have today: scalper-bots gobbling them up and re-selling them to those richer customers anyway. The people who can't afford the tickets still can't afford them. Whenever you price something under its value, you are just opening up an arbitrage opportunity for someone else.

jkoebler 10y ago

I wrote this story and am happy to answer any questions you guys might have. Lots of information I ended up not using because the article was already incredibly long or I couldn't corroborate it (but believe it to be true from various interviews), etc.

cb21 10y ago
Thanks for the article! I love going to concerts (actually I grabbed pre-sale tickets for Lady Gaga just last week) so I found it all super interesting.
metaphorm 10y ago
can you explain some more details about the attempt of the prosecutors to argue for "hacking" based on their (apparently wrong) assumption that Wiseguy's system was using OCR to answer a Captcha? this part just doesn't make any sense to me. you said > The government argued that OCR-using bots would need to use Ticketmaster's source code to be implemented properly on the site, and would therefore be a "circumvention" of Ticketmaster's software. I don't understand why they were trying to make this argument. OCR is a sub-domain of computer vision. It involves having a program look at an image and attempt to discern alphabet characters in it. This definitely _does not_ involve accessing the source code of the system. It's interacting only with what is shown publicly to normal users. So what gives? Why did the prosecutor try to make this argument? It's technically incorrect in a serious way.
- dkersten 10y ago
  This is the exact question I came here to ask. Surely OCR is more "humanlike" and less "hacks" than the trick of indexing all of the images.

jstanley 10y ago

> The scourge of ticket bots and the immorality of the shady ticket scalpers using them is conventional wisdom I very much disagree. If I am willing to pay the asking price for tickets, I should be able to buy them. If you're offering them so cheaply that I will happily buy all of the tickets then you're offering them too cheap and you can't really complain if I buy them. If it weren't for ticket-scalpers, die-hard fans who are willing to pay extra to secure a place would have no option. Thanks to ticket-scalpers, it is possible for die-hard fans to ensure they can get one even if the tickets are "sold out" by just offering more money. This is a classic case of an inefficient market being made more efficient. Without ticket scalping: the original seller sells all the tickets. Some fans get to watch the gig, and others don't, and the availability of tickets bears no relation to how much you're willing to pay to get hold of one, only to how quickly you decide to book one. With ticket scalping: the original seller sells all their tickets more quickly. The fans who want to see the gig the most get to see it, with less chance of tickets being made unavailable by people who don't want to see it as badly (i.e. don't want to pay as much money), and the ticket scalper makes a profit. Everyone's a winner.

knz 10y ago
There is a middle ground of letting legitimate buyers purchase tickets and then selling them on the secondary market if they are unable to attend. Automated bots/teams of people buying many tickets purely for the sake of profit doesn't benefit anyone other than the scalpers.
- rubber_duck 10y ago
  >Automated bots/teams of people buying many tickets purely for the sake of profit doesn't benefit anyone other than the scalpers. He just told you - it benefits people who want to pay more but would otherwise have to rely on luck to buy the tickets - this is the entire reason the system works.
  - rhino369 10y ago
    The people running the show could just sell the tickets using an auction mechanism. It doesn't make sense to let a middle man take a huge cut. Well it probably does make sense for PR reasons. Nobody wants to be the band/team/event gouging their fans.

conjectures 10y ago

I'm still trying to understand why they don't just auction tickets.

itchyouch 10y ago
Because it is about being equitable to middle and lower-income fans. Otherwise, only the richest fans would outbid everyone else and the artists don't want to alienate a large majority of their fan base by making their shows unavailable to only but the folks with the means.
- matwood 10y ago
  > Because it is about being equitable to middle and lower-income fans. It's about the perception of being equitable. As a comment mentions above, many artists/venues work directly with scalpers.
- conjectures 10y ago
  So start a mailing list when you're a small band. Email your oldest fans a promo code with priority booking and/or first tranche auction option. Give people with an academic email address early options. Give people who like you on social media early options. Include a promo code in sales of online merchandise for future gigs. There are lots of potential ways to do it, while undermining the scalpers. Also gigs seem pretty unaffordable already.
  - celim307 10y ago
    as the article mentions, those tactics you described actually helped the scalpers more than an average person.
    - gpawl 10y ago
      Do you have any evidence for your claim of what the article mentions?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

austenallred 10y ago

I spent some of my formidable years scalping and brokering event (mostly broadway) tickets in various forms. The company I co-founded made a few million and I learned an expensive lesson in equity at age 18 (I opted instead for the $14/hr salary). We worked in broadway (meaning the style of show, not just the street), and I met the Wiseguys folks at secondary market trade shows, but I had no idea they were this big, and to be honest didn't care. We always got tickets long before they ever went on sale, as does almost anyone who has been in the game a while. We would buy tickets up to 18 months in advance, and we're a security blanket of guaranteed sales for the artists and venues. We thought the retail sales were always a losing bet (except for, ironically, the artists and venues that tried to fight scalpers). When we started figuring out how to circumvent the safeguards (deciding deliberately not to use bots or "spinners" as they used to be called), we realized we didn't need to because most of the venues loved us. Just like the wiseguys, they didn't want to be in the business of scalping and arbitrage, they just wanted to move all of their tickets quickly and efficiently with as little loss as possible. So if we wanted to buy 5,000 of 10,000 seats for a show they were thrilled, and we'd get a discount. When a show was about to go on sale they'd call us. Then thy may turn around and say "sorry tickets are on the secondary market, we don't like scalpers" but usually that was PR-style BS. They wanted someone to absorb that risk. There are certainly artists and venues (e.g. Metallica) that hate scalpers and try to fight them. But we noticed that really only eliminates the "beer money" scalpers and leaves all of the money to the more sophisticated one. I have never yet seen a system that cannot be beat by scalpers, including paperless ticketing, and I find that most venues and artists want to maximize profits and, more importantly, minimize risk anyway.

koolba 10y ago
> I have never yet seen a system that cannot be beat by scalpers, including paperless ticketing, and I find that most venues and artists want to maximize profits anyway. How would a scalper get around ticketing that requires presenting ID that matches the name of the person on the ticket? I've been to a few shows that were like that for pickup up tickets at the will call booth. I suppose you could get them there and hand them off to the true purchaser but that would require boots on the ground at each show. Also, not sure how do deal with ID presented at the door to get into the venue if it has to match the ticket purchaser. (All of this assumes no resales to rename the ticket owner)

hitgeek 10y ago

venues need to just formalize the unofficial auction + lottery system that already exists in various secondary markets. some tickets are sold via auction, others are offered at a set price to those who win a lottery. The only difference is that venues + artists can benefit rather than middlemen. I think VR has the potential to help alleviate some of the market pressures by offering an experience with nearly limitless supply.

kalleboo 10y ago

Here in Japan it's quite common to have ticket lotteries and ID checks for certain popular/easily oversold artists. Better odds are given to early-bird applicants and fanclub members. Why is that so hard to implement?

yoodenvranx 10y ago
If I remember correctly then Rammstein is doing this on their tours. You can only buy a ticket with your name on it and it will be checked at the entrance.
hackermailman 10y ago
Live Nation and its ticket distributor Ticketmaster consistently promote scarcity by diverting the majority of tickets into the hands of resellers like TicketsNow, which is a Ticketmaster subsidiary so they can get the full demand rate in the secondary market. The artist gets a cut of this, it's all a scheme and nobody at Ticketmaster cares about the bots who fight over the tiny amount of released tickets. Artists know they can charge much more for tickets, but can't do so overtly because everybody will cry in the media about them locking out their "true fans", so hence we have this scheme where bands like U2 scalp their own tickets to get paid what they are worth.
- got2surf 10y ago
  Also, doesn't Ticketmaster benefit from the scalping through more transaction fees anyway? Between TicketsNow and the increased transaction volume from scalpers/flippers, seems like TicketMaster can't really lose.
  - hackermailman 10y ago
    Live Nation owns Ticketmaster, and often the venues too, so in the end it all flows back to the promoter from drink pricing to ticket reselling. We used to joke in highschool that the guys punting tickets for 10x the price in the parking lot of shows were Ticketmaster employees and now they actually are.
- 10y ago

antisthenes 10y ago

I'm really surprised to see so many from the HN audience against scalpers, considering how libertarian the site leans. If there's any market where a completely free market approach is applicable and actually desirable, it's this one. I've bought maybe 40-50 tickets for various events (gaming, concerts, sports) over the last 5 years, and 99% of the time, the price of the ticket was negligible next to all the other expenses (travel and lodging mostly, but also food). And yes, most of those tickets had scalpers operating on them, pricing 2-3x higher than the nominal sale price. Even at 2-3x price, the price of the ticket is a relatively small portion of the total cost of attending. People without money get screwed out of entertainment? Boo Hoo. How about Healthcare or housing? You know, actual essential things. Thinking that being a hardcore fan makes you somehow more deserving to attend is entitled child mentality, plain and simple. It's one of those concepts that make you feel good, but in reality no one cares, and certainly not going to cry over 1 fan attending over another. If you can't afford the auction price of the ticket, sit at home and watch their live youtube videos. It's arguably not even much worse and you won't have to deal with the smelly crowds.

nradov 10y ago
You're logically and economically correct, but people have a visceral negative emotional reaction to arbitrageurs since they didn't do anything to "earn" their profits. The only way to eliminate scalping would be for the original sellers to raise prices to match the clearing price (perhaps with auctions) but the optics on that are also bad since artists don't like to seem too greedy.
- ue_ 10y ago
  >but people have a visceral negative reaction to arbitrageurs since they didn't do anything to "earn" their profits I don't think there's anything wrong with getting money that you didn't earn (so long as you're not exploiting people, as the bourgeoisie do); I do think there is something ethically questionable about forcing (I use the word 'forcing' to refer to the idea that within the confines of show-going, it is the only available choice) people to pay 3x more for something out of greed.

the_watcher 10y ago

Not directly related, but my dad used to take people to major tennis tournaments through a company he started. Many times, those who'd purchased tickets for the entire tournament didn't want to go to every match, so they'd ask him if they could sell him back individual tickets, happily taking face value. My dad, who speaks several languages, was nearly always able to move the tickets for far more than face value, and has told me many a story about getting to know professional scalpers across Europe. Every time I read a story about scalping it reminds me of him.

1024core 10y ago

> The government's case hinged mostly on whether Wiseguy had "circumvented" Ticketmaster's system. While I hate scalpers, I have to ask: why is this illegal? Is using a screen reader "circumventing the system" if I get rid of all font and graphics? Is using an adblocker "circumventing the system" ?

nerdponx 10y ago
The site might (and hopefully does) have an explicit TOS/EULA prohibiting scraping for the purpose of scalping.
- kentt 10y ago
  I don't think that necessarily make it's illegal to do it anyway.
mthoms 10y ago
The law is intentionally vague on what "circumventing" means. That's so that: (a) It can catch previously unforeseen schemes (b) It can be selectively enforced (c) Both (a) and (b) The answer is (c) IMHO.

scraft 10y ago

Big artists, that have gigs where tickets cost the best part of $100 (I'm UK based and I'm converting what we'd pay for big name artists gigs from GBP to USD) are saying they have 10X the demand of people wanting to see them than the stadiums can take.... ...wow that sounds like an awesome problem to solve! Like play 10 dates, or if that is too tiring, maybe they could let a lot of people watch live on VR headsets for a much cheaper rate (like $10 or something) - I am always hearing the global number of Gear VR sales is large and getting larger and larger. I understand this problem is different to normal computer problems, but I'm used to it being the case that you don't need to worry too much about scalability - because if you are in the position that you do, you should have the resources to be able to find a nice way to solve it! Maybe some sort of bitcoin/blockchain + verifiable ID, so on the door you can prove: 1. You are the person who paid the ticket 2. The price you paid for the ticket, is the price on the ticket

k-mcgrady 10y ago
I really don't see the point of a live concert VR. The experience will be completely different. Releasing a well recorded and edited version once per tour makes much more sense to me. The ticket problem needs to be solved but it won't when you have the biggest ticket sellers (Ticketmaster) owning marketplaces for second-hand tickets. I recently read one of these companies was buying tickets and then putting them on the secondary marketplace themselves at a huge markup. As for booking extra shows - I don't know why this doesn't happen. Maybe they don't have the data? Much better for an artists brand if they sell out 2 nights than have 3 nights with none of them sold out. NB: The biggest artists (selling out places like the O2 Arena in London for multiple nights) rarely charge over $60/£50 for general admission. The only people I see charging $100 are well established older acts (Fleetwood Mac, Tom Petty, etc.).
- scraft 10y ago
  It isn't that I don't appreciate your point about a live VR concert being different, and right now if I simply put on a VR headset and was there (without any other tweaks at all) there would be a limit to how 'cool' it would be. That said, I'm a Radiohead fan, if they offered an option to go to a rare gig to see them play, in VR (either VR or nothing) I would certainly consider it. If you then said that VR technology is going to continue to improve, and I'll be able to sit there with my friends, watching the band, taking virtual photographcs of the band, optionally discussing the show with others, etc. maybe it starts to actually start getting quite interesting.

bogomipz 10y ago

>"When the sale dropped, we took 496 in New York, 492 in Boston, 496 in LA," Lowson, the former CEO of Wiseguy Tickets, told me in one of our many phone calls over the course of the last six months. "They apologized on the Grammys because of us, and then they had a second round of sales to make up for it. We took all the good tickets in that second round, too." He seems proud of this, this person has zero morals. He's scum. >"We pulled so many tickets that really we had to choose which seats we didn't want," he said." This is just unbridled greed. It wasn't enough to do this for handful of tickets, it had to be done for all of them. I'm always suspicious of people that want to do the right thing only once their own morally questionable practices have run out of steam. I don't think what he's doing now is motivated by any sense of concern or common good.

metaphorm 10y ago
he was scalping concert tickets, not price gouging on food or medicine here. a little perspective would help. this is leisure activities we're talking about.
- bogomipz 10y ago
  Wait, because its concert tickets its less of a violation? So price gouging and depriving people of a good or service is OK as long as its not life essential? Where does that line stop? Tell that to someone who was shut out of seeing their favorite band because 492 of the total 496 tickets that were put on sale went to this guy. Is that the little perspective that would help?
  - metaphorm 10y ago
    > Wait, because its concert tickets its less of a violation? yes, exactly that. what's so hard to understand? price gouging on essentials is clearly a worse thing to do than price gouging on leisure items.
    - bogomipz 10y ago
      So by your logic it is OK because there are worse things? Do you use that metric in all aspects of your judgement? If so you must be able rationalize a lot of questionable behavior because you can always think of something 'worse" that you "could" be doing instead. What's so hard to understand is that your logic is pretty twisted.

rurabe 10y ago

Ticketmaster is actually a fairly unusual market in that it discriminates based on speed, which is pretty unusual in our market economy where things are usually discriminated based on price. As long as this structural difference exists there will always be an incentive to arbitrage the market, whether those arbitrageurs are one person or a thousand, bots or Turks or employees. Everyone seems to get morally outraged about this, but I've yet to see anyone suggest an alternative system that solves the underlying issue of incentives. Most bans and limits are ineffective because they are at odds with the incentives of Ticketmaster. Do you make secondary markets illegal? What if someone can't go? Just balancing the incentives is a tricky issue to say nothing of finding the optimal balance of fair.

brudgers 10y ago

When the Rolling Stones did their last tour in 1981 --those were still the days when rock and rollers hoped to die before their geriatric years and The Who would perform their Final Tour just a year later -- the tickets (at least in the US) were by mail and via lottery. Payment was with cashier's check only and only two tickets per order. [1] It would still work today. For fans with money, it would be less convenient than buying through a scalper. It would be more convenient than TicketMaster since ordinary fans cannot buy tickets through it anyway. It would raise costs for scalping businesses and somewhat level the playing field (it is impossible to completely level a playing field between individuals and well capitalized businesses). Anyway, TicketMaster's business has changed less than the music industry and get off my lawn. [1]: The price was an outrageous $16 each. But it was also the days of festival seating and the best seat in the house was a matter of will. Down on the stadium field, over the course of the day we had worked our way to within ten feet of the stage by the time the Stones opened with their new hit single, "Start Me Up." No really, get off my lawn.

M_Grey 10y ago
Is it cool if I just sit on your lawn and listen to your interesting stories? I'll pluck weeds!
- creativityhurts 10y ago
  My bot already purchased all the tickets for his lawn in case you'd like to buy one.
rurabe 10y ago
That may meet your priorities and maybe even the band's but it most definitely does not meet Ticketmaster's in a world where they can offload all the tickets in 15 minutes and charge the maximum palatable fees with basically no variable costs. And Ticketmaster is in control of this process, so...
- brudgers 10y ago
  After commenting, I suspect that the TicketMaster system meets the requirements of most bands. This is noted in the article for the reason you mentioned, but I think the current situation provides additional business utility to the performers. $70 tickets don't segment the market in the same way $700 tickets do. The expected lifetime value of one $700 a ticket fan is probably much more than the expected lifetime value of a $70 a ticket fan. The $70 a ticket fan might be stretched and is less likely buy a hoodie and get drunk on craft beer and use valet parking...all of which the band gets a cut.

waterside81 10y ago

As others have pointed out here, a lottery system with ID can help beat this. Pearl Jam's fan club ticket sales require you to choose ahead of time which concerts you want to go to (max 2 tickets per show) and then on lottery day, you're informed if you won or not and your card is charged. Although a bit opaque, it does make it harder to game the system.

durango 10y ago
two ticket max is a bummer.. are there specific seats for PJ's concerts? Would suck if you and 4 other friends wanted to go, just curious
- waterside81 10y ago
  Yeah the fan club sections are always around the stage so if four of you go, although you're not guaranteed to be in the same row/section, you're close-ish.

ChuckMcM 10y ago

I've wondered if you could price tickets with an algorihm where they start out high and then over time or volume get cheaper and cheaper. If a scalper jumped in first they would pay a high price, later buyers could get tickets much more cheaply, if they come in later they won't have the desirable tickets which sold early.

supercanuck 10y ago
How would this be in the best interest of the venue/artist who want to move tickets quickly and reduce risk? Seems like this would favor only those concerts destined to sell out or be popular.
- ChuckMcM 10y ago
  Ideally it would maximize the revenue going to the artist and not to the scalper. Lets assume you worked it this way. Artist X, playing 3 shows (Friday eve, Saturday Mat, Saturday Eve) would normally put tickets on sale lets say a month in advance for $20/$30/$50 (General Admission, Main Floor, Orchestra (rows 1-3)) each. Now in this new system they put tickets on sale 6 weeks before the event and in the additional two weeks prior the prices start at $200/$300/$500 and decay in price linearly by date to their 'marked' price over those two weeks. So each day sees a 7% drop in the 'over' price (so from $200 -> $20). Landing at the one month mark at the 'regular' prices. In scenario one, it does nothing and no one takes advantage of early access to higher priced tickets and the tickets are on sale at "list' price 1 month ahead of the date as usual. In scenario two, some people are really looking forward to the show and wait until the prices come down to what they are willing to pay for the seats they want prior to the tickets reaching their "list" price. That gives the artist/venue a bit more money for the show. Scenario 3, lots of people want to go, they buy out all the tickets during the first two weeks of availability at higher prices. The artist/venue get a lot more money for the show. The challenge for scalpers is that if they buy the tickets when they are expensive, they might take a loss on them (they don't really want to go to the show). What this scheme tries to do is to move the market dynamics around a potentially mispriced product so that the artist/venue benefits if it is mispriced rather than the scalpers.
- 10y ago

degenerate 10y ago

Louis CK went the extra mile to work with specific venues to circumvent Ticketmaster and eliminate scalping. Some venues have contracts with Ticketmaster and could not be used. It's totally doable if you sell your own tickets, but most artists (band managers) are not up for the challenge. He explains: “Most tickets are $50 or less. There are no ticket fees for any shows. My agent worked hard to accomplish this by negotiating in every city and finding venues that were willing to help us make the shows affordable. In some cases, the venues and I are splitting the ticket charges between us so you don’t have to pay it. In the end it’s worth it to me because I don’t want coming to see me to be a painful choice for anyone and either way I’m making plenty of money on the tour. I sincerely hope that everyone takes advantage of this by simply buying the affordable tickets and coming to the shows. For those of you who plan to take the opportunity of the simple and cheap ticketing on this tour to make a profit at the expense of my fans, please note that we are working hard to prevent scalping and that if you resell your tickets at an unfair price, you are risking having your tickets invalidated. Also if you purchase tickets to my shows from Stubhub or other scalping sites, that ticket may not be valid. Source: http://consequenceofsound.net/2016/05/louis-c-k-announces-22-city-world-tour-and-he-promises-to-fuck-over-scalpers/ http://consequenceofsound.net/2016/05/louis-c-k-announces-22...

bogomipz 10y ago

The article states: "Tickets are incorrectly priced, which incentivizes scalping If there's a reliably profitable secondary market for tickets, that means tickets are being priced too inexpensively by the artist." This is a refrain that is put forth time and time again but people who's business is reselling tickets in the secondary market. The blame is somehow shifted to the artists. Touring and tour routing are incredibly difficult logistical operations. A touring act has so many variables that they have to consider when they put tickets on sale - availability of venues for dates that coincide with their tour routing, release date of an album their supporting, time of year in which their touring, gauging the current demand, possible competing shows the same night with similar a fan base. The local promoters need lead time to promote the show. If it was a single show in single place then yes they could exploit dynamic pricing and maximize the price of each individual ticket, much like an airline does. This is not the reality though and as such there may end up being some inefficiencies created inadvertently. This however is not same thing as what is stated here - "the artists are the ones that created this by mis-pricing their tickets." Pricing tickets is a compromise between all of those things I mentioned above. I don't think that necessarily means its someone else's for the taking however.

habosa 10y ago

My favorite band is Wilco, and they have effectively eliminated scalping of their tickets. Here's how: When you buy a ticket you can only buy 2 at a time and you must provide your name. To attend the show, you show your ID at the venue and they find you the the ticket(s) that match your name. At this point you and your guest must enter immediately and there are no "ins and outs". So to scalp a ticket, you'd have to bring the person you sold it to into the show with you. That's a lot of effort! Are there downsides to this? Sure. The first is that I'd gladly pay more to see Wilco but I can't but my way into the show. The second is if I buy tickets and something comes up I can't easily transfer them to another fan. Is all of this probably worth it to make sure that they can have an intimate connection with their fans and nobody else profits off their shows? Yeah, I think so.

intrasight 10y ago

I find it hard to believe that in the age of ubiquitous and relatively secure smartphones that we can't write a ticket auction app. So I have assume that there are powerful stakeholders whose interests would not be served.

iamjdg 10y ago

Couldn't ticketmaster put a minimum time limit on each ticket sale? So a bot tries to buy a ticket and ticketmaster says sorry you completed the transaction too fast, you are probably a bot. Pick a min time consistent with how long it typically takes a person. This would level the playing field between bots and humans.