4 ms·

Viagogo is one of the worst out there. Back in 2015 I bought 2 tickets for AC/DC through them and I paid ~£270. When I got the tickets in my hands I saw that t

by sakisv 4y ago

Viagogo is one of the worst out there. Back in 2015 I bought 2 tickets for AC/DC through them and I paid ~£270. When I got the tickets in my hands I saw that the price was ~£75-£80 each and Viagogo added more than £100, just because they could. Kudos to Rammstein and I hope more bands will follow and help us get rid of these scammers.

cortesoft 4y ago
> Viagogo added more than £100, just because they could. It is not ‘just because’, it’s because there are more people who want to go than there are tickets. The reason you paid an extra 100 pounds is because someone else wanted that ticket, too, but would only pay 90 extra. That is the market allocating a scarce resource. If there are only 10000 tickets and 100000 people would be willing to pay face value for the ticket, how do you suggest the tickets be allocated? A lottery? If the reseller wasn’t selling them for more, you would have instead only a 1 in 10 chance to get a ticket at all. Would you rather have a ticket and pay 100 pounds more, or pay nothing but get zero tickets? That is your choice anyway.
- polygamous_bat 4y ago
  > If there are only 10000 tickets and 100000 people would be willing to pay face value for the ticket, how do you suggest the tickets be allocated? A lottery? Why not? If the artist prices their concerts at $100 because they want all of their fans to be able to attend, and if their fans are willing to spend $100 to go see them, why do scalpers get to "ackshually free market dynamics" there? I am quite happy with a ticket lottery as long as there are no sybill attacks possible on the system.
  - cortesoft 4y ago
    > If the artist prices their concerts at $100 because they want all of their fans to be able to attend But that means all the fans won't be able to attend, because there aren't enough tickets. If I have a 1 in 10 chance of going to a concert I want, I would rather save my money and spend more to go to a particular concert I really want to go to rather than just have a 1/10 chance and end up winning the lottery on one I don't really want to go to that much.
- noahtallen 4y ago
  Ok, but that’s an arbitrary middleman creating artificial scarcity without permission from the seller. 1. That’s viagogo making $100 without directly providing value, and while creating artificial (e.g. non-free) market conditions. 2. The concert sells out anyways because the scalper buys everything. So it’s not like the scalper is improving availability in general. 3. The artist should be getting most of the profit from ticket sales and even resales. 4. The artist should be allowed to forbid resale of tickets if they want them to be affordable. And finally, the market is not “solving” a problem here. The same number of people attend either way, so the same amount of non-monetary value is being received no matter what. The only difference is “can a rich person get themselves to the front of a line?” Why would that be valuable in general for the market?
  - zajio1am 4y ago
    > The same number of people attend either way, so the same amount of non-monetary value is being received no matter what. Well, no. Different people have different preferences, therefore assigning tickets to ones that prefer them most would create most non-monetary value.
- Dylan16807 4y ago
  > Would you rather have a ticket and pay 100 pounds more, or pay nothing but get zero tickets? That is your choice anyway. Even if we assume that's the only way to make it work, Viagogo shouldn't be the one getting that money. They're a minor facilitator, and in a more open market they would only get a little sliver of profit or have no role at all. Especially when they're buying tickets under false pretenses.
- throw_m239339 4y ago
  > It is not ‘just because’, it’s because there are more people who want to go than there are tickets. No, it's Viagogo artificially limiting the ticket supply. Then price gouging.
- aendruk 4y ago
  > A lottery? Yes, that’s the fair solution. A lottery with some mechanic for friends to enter as a group.
  - noxvilleza 4y ago
    In some sense there already is a lottery - except the scalpers use bots and other methods to firstly inflate the number of people seeking a ticket, and secondly to bid faster than normal humans can. A lottery of only people who actually intend to go to the concert (or resell the tickets at face value) would be the best for consumers.
  - Ekaros 4y ago
    Why have any of such mechanism? I see that as extreme discrimination of solo goers. Everyone should be treated equally.
  - cortesoft 4y ago
    I don’t think a lottery is very fair. Some of the people entering the lottery might just only kind of be fans, and are happy to go but wouldn’t be that disappointed if they don’t get tickets. Other people are die hard fans and want to go more than they want to do anything else in this world. Is it fair that both of those fans get the same chance of getting a ticket? How about instead you give every music fan 1000 music points a year, and they can use those points to bid on tickets? That way, every fan has an equal opportunity, and can allocate their points to the concerts they most want to go to? Maybe someone allocates all their points for Rammstein because they want to go so bad, and someone else instead would rather go to 10 less in demand concerts. But wait, that still isn’t fair… some people like music way more than other people. Huge music fans shouldn’t have the same amount of points as people who only kind of like music, but are actually more into sports. The huge music fans should get more music points and the sports fans more sports points. To solve this, we could just give out generic points to everyone and you could spend it on music OR sports, or whatever… so now the huge music fans spend all their points on music and sports fans spend it on sports… But then what about people who would be willing to do extra work to be able to do more things, where other people would rather relax more and not go to as many things. Maybe people could trade their points to other people in exchange for goods and services… Oh wait, we just invented money and the system we already have.
- sakisv 4y ago
  > It is not ‘just because’, it’s because there are more people who want to go than there are tickets. The emphasis is on the last part, i.e. "just because they could". My point is that they should not have been allowed in the first place. > how do you suggest the tickets be allocated First come first served. There are usually different price ranges anyway, so the market forces are already at play. I don't understand why we need to have black-market-as-a-service.
  - cortesoft 4y ago
    First come first serve sucks for people who have jobs and lives and can't just wait in line to get tickets, or sit at their computer and hit refresh at a specific time
    - sakisv 4y ago
      Well following your reasoning, maybe they didn't want it that badly /shrug In both cases you trade your time for a ticket, either directly or indirectly. In both cases, having blackmarket as a service is not helping.
snidane 4y ago
My Viagogo experience in 2019. After an hour waiting in line for the event I get my ticket scanned only to realize they sold it to somebody else at the same time. Another 30 mins waiting at the security trying to get somebody from their call center to pick up the phone and tell me I was out of luck that day. I only got a refund in form of viagogo credits which expired worthless as there were no events happening due to covid. Buyer beware.

by sakisv 4y ago

cortesoft 4y ago

> Viagogo added more than £100, just because they could. It is not ‘just because’, it’s because there are more people who want to go than there are tickets. The reason you paid an extra 100 pounds is because someone else wanted that ticket, too, but would only pay 90 extra. That is the market allocating a scarce resource. If there are only 10000 tickets and 100000 people would be willing to pay face value for the ticket, how do you suggest the tickets be allocated? A lottery? If the reseller wasn’t selling them for more, you would have instead only a 1 in 10 chance to get a ticket at all. Would you rather have a ticket and pay 100 pounds more, or pay nothing but get zero tickets? That is your choice anyway.

polygamous_bat 4y ago
> If there are only 10000 tickets and 100000 people would be willing to pay face value for the ticket, how do you suggest the tickets be allocated? A lottery? Why not? If the artist prices their concerts at $100 because they want all of their fans to be able to attend, and if their fans are willing to spend $100 to go see them, why do scalpers get to "ackshually free market dynamics" there? I am quite happy with a ticket lottery as long as there are no sybill attacks possible on the system.
- cortesoft 4y ago
  > If the artist prices their concerts at $100 because they want all of their fans to be able to attend But that means all the fans won't be able to attend, because there aren't enough tickets. If I have a 1 in 10 chance of going to a concert I want, I would rather save my money and spend more to go to a particular concert I really want to go to rather than just have a 1/10 chance and end up winning the lottery on one I don't really want to go to that much.
noahtallen 4y ago
Ok, but that’s an arbitrary middleman creating artificial scarcity without permission from the seller. 1. That’s viagogo making $100 without directly providing value, and while creating artificial (e.g. non-free) market conditions. 2. The concert sells out anyways because the scalper buys everything. So it’s not like the scalper is improving availability in general. 3. The artist should be getting most of the profit from ticket sales and even resales. 4. The artist should be allowed to forbid resale of tickets if they want them to be affordable. And finally, the market is not “solving” a problem here. The same number of people attend either way, so the same amount of non-monetary value is being received no matter what. The only difference is “can a rich person get themselves to the front of a line?” Why would that be valuable in general for the market?
- zajio1am 4y ago
  > The same number of people attend either way, so the same amount of non-monetary value is being received no matter what. Well, no. Different people have different preferences, therefore assigning tickets to ones that prefer them most would create most non-monetary value.
Dylan16807 4y ago
> Would you rather have a ticket and pay 100 pounds more, or pay nothing but get zero tickets? That is your choice anyway. Even if we assume that's the only way to make it work, Viagogo shouldn't be the one getting that money. They're a minor facilitator, and in a more open market they would only get a little sliver of profit or have no role at all. Especially when they're buying tickets under false pretenses.
throw_m239339 4y ago
> It is not ‘just because’, it’s because there are more people who want to go than there are tickets. No, it's Viagogo artificially limiting the ticket supply. Then price gouging.
aendruk 4y ago
> A lottery? Yes, that’s the fair solution. A lottery with some mechanic for friends to enter as a group.
- noxvilleza 4y ago
  In some sense there already is a lottery - except the scalpers use bots and other methods to firstly inflate the number of people seeking a ticket, and secondly to bid faster than normal humans can. A lottery of only people who actually intend to go to the concert (or resell the tickets at face value) would be the best for consumers.
- Ekaros 4y ago
  Why have any of such mechanism? I see that as extreme discrimination of solo goers. Everyone should be treated equally.
- cortesoft 4y ago
  I don’t think a lottery is very fair. Some of the people entering the lottery might just only kind of be fans, and are happy to go but wouldn’t be that disappointed if they don’t get tickets. Other people are die hard fans and want to go more than they want to do anything else in this world. Is it fair that both of those fans get the same chance of getting a ticket? How about instead you give every music fan 1000 music points a year, and they can use those points to bid on tickets? That way, every fan has an equal opportunity, and can allocate their points to the concerts they most want to go to? Maybe someone allocates all their points for Rammstein because they want to go so bad, and someone else instead would rather go to 10 less in demand concerts. But wait, that still isn’t fair… some people like music way more than other people. Huge music fans shouldn’t have the same amount of points as people who only kind of like music, but are actually more into sports. The huge music fans should get more music points and the sports fans more sports points. To solve this, we could just give out generic points to everyone and you could spend it on music OR sports, or whatever… so now the huge music fans spend all their points on music and sports fans spend it on sports… But then what about people who would be willing to do extra work to be able to do more things, where other people would rather relax more and not go to as many things. Maybe people could trade their points to other people in exchange for goods and services… Oh wait, we just invented money and the system we already have.
sakisv 4y ago
> It is not ‘just because’, it’s because there are more people who want to go than there are tickets. The emphasis is on the last part, i.e. "just because they could". My point is that they should not have been allowed in the first place. > how do you suggest the tickets be allocated First come first served. There are usually different price ranges anyway, so the market forces are already at play. I don't understand why we need to have black-market-as-a-service.
- cortesoft 4y ago
  First come first serve sucks for people who have jobs and lives and can't just wait in line to get tickets, or sit at their computer and hit refresh at a specific time
  - sakisv 4y ago
    Well following your reasoning, maybe they didn't want it that badly /shrug In both cases you trade your time for a ticket, either directly or indirectly. In both cases, having blackmarket as a service is not helping.

snidane 4y ago

My Viagogo experience in 2019. After an hour waiting in line for the event I get my ticket scanned only to realize they sold it to somebody else at the same time. Another 30 mins waiting at the security trying to get somebody from their call center to pick up the phone and tell me I was out of luck that day. I only got a refund in form of viagogo credits which expired worthless as there were no events happening due to covid. Buyer beware.