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> For the fans who were complaining that they couldn't get tickets for low-seating high-interest events, well that's just too bad. You had the same chance as ev
by jdmichal 9y ago
> For the fans who were complaining that they couldn't get tickets for low-seating high-interest events, well that's just too bad. You had the same chance as everyone else. I've sat in ticket queues (offline and online), I've furiously refreshed ticket pages for events with room for less than 100 people just to be sure to get a ticket, 5+ months in advance. I really like the system we have here, where a big wallet is not some kind of guarantee that you'll get a ticket.
These same arguments are / were used in favor of unpaid internships. Except, of course, that it takes a certain level of financial freedom or support to do things like wait in lines for concert tickets. Just because your paying time instead of money in these queues, does not mean that it doesn't carry a cost.
- KozmoNau7 9y agoI don't it's the same as unpaid internships. You can never completely eliminate the cost, as there is a limited supply and you can't give away the tickets for free. But you can certainly minimize the costs. The tickets have to be put up for sale at some specific time that is usually advertised well in advance, which allows (most) people to plan for it. For some artists, a number of tickets are sold earlier to members of the official fan clubs and so on. What is the alternative? Putting the tickets up for sale as a slow drop? I'm pretty sure that would significantly harm sales.
- jdmichal 9y agoUse a lottery system with prepaid authorizations? Pretty much any system where people can put up some money and walk away. Fixed price, no queues.
- KozmoNau7 9y agoThen it's just random chance. People usually don't like that sort of thing, outside of literal lotteries.
- jdmichal 9y agoThat's the entire point. Anything other than random chance means that someone has "priority". Priority which is typically decided by spending resources. Either time by waiting in queue. Or money by buying at higher than face value from a scalper -- who probably waited in queue, thereby exchanging their time for money. If the principle being striven for is fair, then most fair to me would be to allow all potential attendees to participate in the sale. If there are more participants than tickets, then the most fair mechanism which does not reward time-rich participants is random lottery, not a queue. A queue rewards those who happen to be available for registration the moment it opens.
- KozmoNau7 9y agoFans don't want a lottery, though. They want to be 100% sure they have a ticket to the show. It's a gratification thing. Not everything can be 100% optimal and profit maximized. The current ticket sales method works great, if you eliminate the rent-seeking scalpers, through simple regulation. However, ideally we should also consider it shameful to buy from scalpers. You run a high risk being scammed, they can resell the same ticket multiple times, and you have no recourse.
- jdmichal 9y agoYour original response was that there wasn't a similarity between unpaid internships and concert ticket sales. And now your response is that more optimal systems are less desirable, which is a fine answer. But it's certainly a choice to choose the less-optimal system, with the understanding that that choice is going to lock out some people due to resource constraints. And the current method rewards time-rich people in a very similar way as unpaid internships. They receive access to experiences that others can't "afford".
- KozmoNau7 9y agoThat only goes for very high-profile shows. The vast majority of shows do not sell out in minutes, or even at all.