4 ms·

In practice, most conferences don't want to allow transferable tickets because it ends up with a scalper situation. The scalper will annoy everyone and take an

In practice, most conferences don't want to allow transferable tickets because it ends up with a scalper situation. The scalper will annoy everyone and take any money that would otherwise go to conference. Secondary market for tickets is very small.

bombcar 4y ago
Stubhub disagrees. And venues would love scalper if they got a cut.
- XorNot 4y ago
  I helped build this system for a major ticketing company. We used a database, that was it - because its pretty simple overall when you're taking a cut. Confirm original barcode, mark transaction, issue a new barcode. At performance time only the new barcodes work, and if you didn't get it through the ticketing company then you were just out of luck.
runnerup 4y ago
As with all things that scalpers re-sell which are not necessary for survival and health I find myself unable to come to a reasonable answer for why the first sale shouldn't be at market price.
- jcparkyn 4y ago
  Complete speculation, but I would guess that in many cases the company/organisation running the conference would want lots of people to come (e.g. for marketing or hiring purposes), even if they could increase total ticket revenue by raising prices. Selling expensive tickets is also bad PR, which might be worth more to the organisers than the extra ticket revenue.
  - iamkroot 4y ago
    I've always figured you could just do an auction. Say you have 500 tickets. You give everyone who wants to go 48 hours to submit how much they're willing to pay for a ticket. At the end of the time period the 500 people whose bids were the highest all get the tickets. You could publish the current price of the tickets during the bidding time frame and allow people to modify their bids at any point. The final price would be whatever the 500th lowest bid was. In the event of a tie, choose randomly among the people tied for 500th. I imagine this would be greeted with complaints about how it gives the rich an advantage, but I can't think of a fairer way to distribute tickets that also avoids the scalper problem.
- ddevault 4y ago
  Cultural events should not be the exclusive domain of the wealthy. The free market is not God. Rubbing more capitalism into a problem makes that problem worse, not better. https://pitchfork.com/news/ticketmaster-hit-with-class-action-lawsuit-over-alleged-collusion-with-scalpers/ https://pitchfork.com/news/ticketmaster-hit-with-class-actio...
yellowapple 4y ago
> In practice, most conferences don't want to allow transferable tickets because it ends up with a scalper situation. In practice, whether or not scalpers exist is of very little relevance to most conferences, because... > The scalper will annoy everyone and take any money that would otherwise go to conference. ...that money wasn't going to go to the conference anyway, because the conference is charging less than the market price (i.e. what the scalper is able to get away with charging). That money would go to the conference if the conference did charge the market price... and then the scalpers wouldn't have any margins left and therefore would have no reason to be scalpers anyway. As for "annoy everyone", in practice that's also of very little relevance once the conference actually has your money. The only people it'd annoy are the ones trying to buy tickets, and it'd only be particularly annoying if scalpers were the only option - i.e. if the conference was already sold out, and therefore had already taken as much money as it possibly could. ---- The more reasonable answer for why conferences don't want transferable tickets is because they often tie tickets to attendees' identities (e.g. photo ID) and that connection becomes impractical unless the conference is actively involved in the transfer process. The reasons for that are partially addressed through NFTs (namely: wanting to ensure that it's an authentic ticket that actually belongs to you), but also partially not addressed (namely: security, especially if you have particularly-high-profile speakers and/or attendees).
- RHSeeger 4y ago
  Many artists specifically don't charge "market value" (ie, the most they possibly can) for tickets, because they want their fans to be able to attend the event; not just the wealthy ones. Scalpers buying out the tickets and reselling them higher defeats the point of this.

bombcar 4y ago

Stubhub disagrees. And venues would love scalper if they got a cut.

XorNot 4y ago
I helped build this system for a major ticketing company. We used a database, that was it - because its pretty simple overall when you're taking a cut. Confirm original barcode, mark transaction, issue a new barcode. At performance time only the new barcodes work, and if you didn't get it through the ticketing company then you were just out of luck.

runnerup 4y ago

As with all things that scalpers re-sell which are not necessary for survival and health I find myself unable to come to a reasonable answer for why the first sale shouldn't be at market price.

jcparkyn 4y ago
Complete speculation, but I would guess that in many cases the company/organisation running the conference would want lots of people to come (e.g. for marketing or hiring purposes), even if they could increase total ticket revenue by raising prices. Selling expensive tickets is also bad PR, which might be worth more to the organisers than the extra ticket revenue.
- iamkroot 4y ago
  I've always figured you could just do an auction. Say you have 500 tickets. You give everyone who wants to go 48 hours to submit how much they're willing to pay for a ticket. At the end of the time period the 500 people whose bids were the highest all get the tickets. You could publish the current price of the tickets during the bidding time frame and allow people to modify their bids at any point. The final price would be whatever the 500th lowest bid was. In the event of a tie, choose randomly among the people tied for 500th. I imagine this would be greeted with complaints about how it gives the rich an advantage, but I can't think of a fairer way to distribute tickets that also avoids the scalper problem.
ddevault 4y ago
Cultural events should not be the exclusive domain of the wealthy. The free market is not God. Rubbing more capitalism into a problem makes that problem worse, not better. https://pitchfork.com/news/ticketmaster-hit-with-class-action-lawsuit-over-alleged-collusion-with-scalpers/ https://pitchfork.com/news/ticketmaster-hit-with-class-actio...

yellowapple 4y ago

> In practice, most conferences don't want to allow transferable tickets because it ends up with a scalper situation. In practice, whether or not scalpers exist is of very little relevance to most conferences, because... > The scalper will annoy everyone and take any money that would otherwise go to conference. ...that money wasn't going to go to the conference anyway, because the conference is charging less than the market price (i.e. what the scalper is able to get away with charging). That money would go to the conference if the conference did charge the market price... and then the scalpers wouldn't have any margins left and therefore would have no reason to be scalpers anyway. As for "annoy everyone", in practice that's also of very little relevance once the conference actually has your money. The only people it'd annoy are the ones trying to buy tickets, and it'd only be particularly annoying if scalpers were the only option - i.e. if the conference was already sold out, and therefore had already taken as much money as it possibly could. ---- The more reasonable answer for why conferences don't want transferable tickets is because they often tie tickets to attendees' identities (e.g. photo ID) and that connection becomes impractical unless the conference is actively involved in the transfer process. The reasons for that are partially addressed through NFTs (namely: wanting to ensure that it's an authentic ticket that actually belongs to you), but also partially not addressed (namely: security, especially if you have particularly-high-profile speakers and/or attendees).

RHSeeger 4y ago
Many artists specifically don't charge "market value" (ie, the most they possibly can) for tickets, because they want their fans to be able to attend the event; not just the wealthy ones. Scalpers buying out the tickets and reselling them higher defeats the point of this.