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Why do the organizations putting on events like these leave so much money on the table? Why don't they just charge the market-clearing price themselves, leaving
by josephcsible 3y ago
Why do the organizations putting on events like these leave so much money on the table? Why don't they just charge the market-clearing price themselves, leaving no room for scalpers to make any profit?
- capableweb 3y agoArtists generally want to have a diverse crowd in terms of disposable income, they don't want to have a crowd of just the people who can/will pay the most.
- reidjs 3y agoI don’t think the artist has much say in the matter at that scale
- fps-hero 3y agoTouring artist’s absolutely have a say in their ticket prices, after all it directly correlates to how much they will be paid. Once tickets are handed over to promoters and distributors then it becomes out of their control. Festival appearance rates are agreed on in advance of ticket sales, so tickets prices are the responsibility of festival organisers.
- Buttons840 3y agoTriple the ticket price but give half away by lottery. Although, I guess scalpers ruin lotteries as well :(
- armada651 3y agoThe article itself mentions how scalpers just register hundreds or thousands of accounts to dramatically increase their odds at winning fan lotteries.
- jppittma 3y agoDo fan-club registration in person.
- dylan604 3y agoThen they just pay homeless people to register. Whatever clever you can come up with, they will figure out a way around it.
- jppittma 3y agoThey're going to pay thousands of homeless people to register for the fan clubs of how many artists? Nevermind the logistics of the hiring, the payment alone eats into the margin.
- nayuki 3y agoWhen you're rich, you can do that. Being rich, by definition, means having more options available to you. That's really what money is - a transferable token to persuade other people to do stuff on your behalf.
- lizknope 3y agoIf the scalpers pay homeless people 10% of their profits rather than taking 100% then that's still better than the current situation.
- TeMPOraL 3y agoThis gets more complicated as they may go after gig economy workers first. They're a perfect target: the scalper's deal would have better reward/effort ratio than Uber, DoorDash, Deliveroo, et al.; gig workers look "normal" in ways homeless don't, and are desperate for cash to keep them from becoming homeless. At that point, would scalper's contribution be net positive? Net better than it was? I'm not sure how to answer that.
- 3y ago
- fps-hero 3y agoEvery action directed at making tickets more affordable will have the opposite effect of making scalping more profitable. Im amazed that a reverse auction style approach hasn’t caught on, when you are capacity limited it seems nearly optimal for extracting profit and kills the ticket scalping business model.
- slg 3y ago>it seems nearly optimal for extracting profit and kills the ticket scalping business model. Also seems nearly optimal for alienating all but your richest fans. The extra profit you might extract from the concert might not actually put you ahead in the long term when fans stop caring about you because of your profit maximizing business practices.
- c-linkage 3y ago[flagged]
- AnthonyMouse 3y agoWhat good is that when the scalpers and not your fans are the ones to benefit? All you're doing is screwing your fans even more because now they have to risk getting ripped off by a scam since tickets are only available from shady third party jerks. If demand is so high that people can't afford tickets and you want to do something for the fans, put the game in a bigger stadium.
- slg 3y agoBecause it is the scalpers charging that price and not the artist so people get angry at the scalpers and not the artist.
- AnthonyMouse 3y agoSo hire some designated middleman to wear a villain mustache and claim to be taking a huge cut on paper while actually giving all of the money back to the artist under NDA.
- hooverd 3y agoI don't know if artists negotiate ranges on ticket prices. But I assume most would want to make an acceptable amount of money and allow most of their fans to afford tickets, not just the rich ones.
- nickelpro 3y agoMost of their fans aren't going to the show at all. Demand far outstrips supply. In effect the number of less wealthy fans who can get into a show is a lottery. Ideally you would do just that, lottery off some tickets at affordable rates and sell the rest at market rate. But the market has adjusted to that too and re-sellers dominate such lotteries. If you offer the opportunity for arbitrage, the market will take advantage of that opportunity. So just sell at market rate, cut out the re-sellers entirely.
- bombcar 3y agoIt’s a perfect case for market segmentation - cheaper “less desirable” tickets that are NOT transferable (eg., tied to ID somehow, I could see them being cryptographically tied to a Apple Pay account, for example) and more expensive transferable tickets designed to soak the rich.
- mattnewton 3y agoTicket revenue is just one source for the artist who is betting they make more from the lifetime value of a fan buying their brand (merch and historically listening to their music, but I don’t know if streaming changed those numbers). It’s like a giant advertisement for their brand - early on in a band’s life, it can even be a loss leader after all the crew is paid. A key part of that concert experience is other people’s excitement too. For one extreme, a Grateful Dead show was basically a mini festival with one act. The crowd before, after and during is an integral part of the experience. Empty seats don’t tell others about the event or participate with the other ticket holders, degrading the value for artists and many concert-goers. So, a Dead show that sells just a few hundred many-many-thousand-dollar tickets might sit on a maximum supply / demand curve for the venue or scalpers just looking at ticket revenue, but could destroy much of the value of the event for the band and it’s everyday fans who want the event experience and want it for as many people as possible.
- username332211 3y agoFor the same reason why artists use Ticketmaster. Do you think they are stupid and just hand over ticket distribution to a company that routinely charges 30$ fees to a 40$ ticket? No, artists and producers aren't stupid, they get the most of the money from the Ticketmaster "fees". But when a fan sees a 70$ ticket, they'd may decide Bruce Springsteen (net worth 650$ million) isn't a man of the people. When they see a 40$ ticket and a 30$ ticket, fans just swear at Ticketmaster. I'm confident in a few years we'll read about how scalping enterprises do profit sharing with artists and producers.
- bradleyankrom 3y agoArtists do not get most of the money from Ticketmaster fees.
- username332211 3y agoYes, most go to the venue, which the artist/producer would have had to pay for (from the ticket price) otherwise. Because money is fungible it doesn't really matter if they pay the artist, or if they pay for the artist's expenses. What matters is how much fees they charge and how much do they keep. Can't find it right now, but I remember an article claiming they rarely keep 50% of their fees.
- hackeraccount 3y agoI don't have a source but I've read the same thing; that a lot of what ticket master takes in is getting bounced around. It's a view I find very plausible intuitively. The artists (esp. the "name" artists) have all or nearly all of the leverage - whatever the ticket costs above what you'd paid if you bought at the gate is money they're leaving on the table.
- bombcar 3y agoIt’s not just Ticketmaster. Many “event platforms” allow you to add fees that cover the credit card percentage, but if they’re higher you just get to keep the extra.
- scott_w 3y agoBecause, ironically, a show that only rich people can afford to attend will be pretty terrible. Rich people tend not to loudly enjoy the show, so the atmosphere isn't there. This is bad for the rest of the audience and for the performer. It's hard to put 100% in when all you can see is a bunch of people staring solemnly at you. It happens in football (soccer for my American friends) for clubs like Man Utd (and probably Man City now) where ticket prices are out of reach of working class fans. The visiting fans make a point of trying to out-sing the local support then insulting them for only being there because the club is winning trophies. All football fans know the song "where were you when you were shit!"
- peteradio 3y agoWhy is it that rich people are solemnly staring in general? You'd think they'd be whooping it up on account of being made.
- AussieWog93 3y agoProbably a case of people knowing how to reach their mouth shut climbing hierarchies faster ;)
- Horffupolde 3y agoIf you have to ask
- kortilla 3y agoRich people involved in business or politics have reputation risk and can’t be seen “letting loose”. See the Dean Scream.
- diego_sandoval 3y agoMeanwhile, Steve Ballmer: "Developers, developers, developers, developers. Developers, developers, developers, developers!!! Yes!!!"
- 3y ago
- BazookaMusic 3y agoThey might be doing that already by acting as scalpers. I don't see why the solution isn't simply what airlines are doing where you register a ticket to a name and it's non-transferable.
- ajb 3y agoWell, one reason is that it would let venues in for a lot more work to properly check everyone's ID. At an airport, Homeland Security pays for that part Both venues and airlines normally segment the market by how good a seat you get.
- dghlsakjg 3y agoA lot of venues already check a id’s at the entrance for alcohol sales, and that doesn’t seem to hold up the line, especially with modern machine readable id’s. No reason why that couldn’t be applied to name checks too.
- mattmaroon 3y agoNot with digital ticketing. No ID is necessary. It is a rotating code so you can't just ship someone a screenshot. You have to have the Ticketmaster app, logged into your account. Unless scalpers want to start giving away their entire Ticketmaster accounts, it would stop it easily.
- Scalene2 3y agoThey already sell accounts along with tickets.
- mattmaroon 3y agoYes, because TM isn't trying to stop them. It'd be fairly easy. Hell, make you use Apple Wallet or Google Pay. Then you'd have to sell the phone too.
- generj 3y agoThe flying public pays Homeland Security / the TSA a $5.60 fee to check ID and perform screening. The cost to the concert going public of ID verification would probably be a lot lower than the costs scalping imposes. And the concert venues could certainly capture more than $5 per concert goer by raising prices closer to what the typical person actually pays.
- sneak 3y agoBecause the majority of the fans wouldn't be able to afford to go. This damages the act's fan base, which in turn negatively affects future revenues via streaming, merchandise, co-branding, and future ticket sales.
- ChadNauseam 3y agoThe logic doesn't quite work because the same number of people would get to go in either scenario
- flangola7 3y agoSame number but not same the community, since this pushes out anyone who can't afford it. Artists are usually not MBA types trying to minmax profit and want to appeal to more than just the privileged Coachella crowd.
- SoftTalker 3y agoThe artists may not be MBA types but their managers are. If the artists really cared they could do like Garth Brooks (?) and book repeated nights in one venue until the shows no longer sell out. (I may be wrong about the artist but recall reading about at least one act that toured like this).
- chongli 3y agoIf you want to see what it looks like to be a musician whose fanbase is all rich people, look no further than your local symphony orchestra.
- bigstrat2003 3y agoWhich, honestly, is a much more pleasant experience than going to the concerts under discussion. I don't enjoy the music as much, but I also don't have to jump through hoops, compete with scalpers, or put up with the rank smell of weed hanging over the concert venue.
- supportengineer 3y agoRolex has the exact same problem.
- bbreier 3y agoRolex actively engineers this situation, though
- TeMPOraL 3y agoApparently so do artists and Ticketmaster. This seems to be a general rule: if some problem is annoying to people with money and clout, and it persists for long, then perhaps it's not actually a problem for those people, but rather a money maker they perpetuate.
- delusional 3y agoI think live performance music is still one of the few things in this hyper capitalist world directed by the performers. I base this absolutely no information expect the interviews I've seen, but it's my impression that performers are heavily involved with everything in a live performance, including the price setting. That is to say. I think the artist just like the idea of the tickets being affordable to allow their younger and less well off fans access. I think any argument here has to acknowledge the artists rights in this. Charging more might alleviate the issue, but if private ownership of the performance is to have any meaning, it must include the right to set a price below the market rate. If the artist wants to be "economically inefficient" we as a society must protect that right.
- TylerE 3y agoOh lawd. Most venues ARE hypercapitalists. That club down on the corner where the cool touring bands play? They take a 15-20% cut on the hands merch in exchange for the oh so vauablr service of providing maybe a beat up old folding table.
- analog31 3y agoFrom a cynical marketing standpoint, the perceived composition of the audience is part of the product. The same is true, oddly enough, for universities. Whom you're sitting next to matters, or whom others think you're sitting next to.
- fallingknife 3y agoGreat point. Harvard could charge $500K per year and easily fill out their classes, but they never will because their value proposition epends on being perceived as the smartest, not the richest.
- envsubst 3y ago> Harvard could charge $500K per year They do, they just price discriminate.
- wredue 3y agoBecause people will pay huge amount more regardless. Kind of like how when the 4090 released and was being instantly scalped at every website it popped up on then resold for double to triple retail, and yet thousands of redditors were magically “just stumbling on to one totally randomly, oh and my 2050 also sold for $1200!!”
- nerdjon 3y agoThen the view of greed falls on the organization and the artists instead of on scalpers. It also is up in the air of the market value is really what people are paying or if it’s being inflated by scalpers. Some people will pay it but I don’t think it’s an accurate view of what the price should be in that situation. But we saw exactly this with the recent Lorcana release. Local game stores acted like scalpers charging scalper prices, it is hurting the perception of the game of what normal prices are.
- charcircuit 3y ago>It also is up in the air of the market value is really what people are paying or if it’s being inflated by scalpers Then use some form of a Dutch auction to sell them.
- emodendroket 3y agoWhen you consider how fashion- and trend-driven music is the optics of tickets getting slashed in price because they haven’t sold for a month are terrible.
- charcircuit 3y agoYou could have it go from $10k to $50 over a single weekend. It's not bad optics if you don't sell out a venue at $10k per ticket.
- emodendroket 3y agoHaving to slash the prices so drastically is also embarrassing and doesn't build hype the way the tickets being instantly sold out everywhere does.
- charcircuit 3y agoThere is nothing embarrassing about a Dutch auction. What's the point of generating hype by selling out tickets? All of the tickets get sold out either way, it's just that now more fans end up with tickets instead of scalpers.
- djitz 3y agoThey get the service fees for the original sale, and any subsequent ridiculously priced resale made on the platform
- xkjyeah 3y agothere's no market clearing price in the market for concert tickets. the scalpers would exercise perfect price discrimination if they could.
- josephcsible 3y ago> there's no market clearing price in the market for concert tickets. How do you figure? Are you using a nonstandard definition of "market clearing price"? > the scalpers would exercise perfect price discrimination if they could. So what?
- rtpg 3y agoBecause while the point is to make money, the point is not to maximize the earnings for tours. Instead, it's to make enough to make it worthwhile, while giving fans "what they want". Artists care about doing fun/good/cool stuff! This is similar to stuff like auctions to have dinners with certain successful people. Those people have many dinners where they don't ask for a bunch of money from the participant, because then they would only have boring dinners!
- phone8675309 3y agoThe cynical side of me says that they do this to minimize what they have to pay the band for touring - some dodge where perhaps they only pay the band based on what the face value of the tickets are.
- Spooky23 3y agoNot every event is Taylor Swift and prices are dynamic. Great example: I bought a bunch of tickets to take my little league to a Mets game, which turned out to be the game where David Wright retired. I sold the leftover tickets, which I purchased for between $12 and $30, for a minimum of $350. We built a batting cage with the proceeds. On the other side, whenever I’m in the city for a few days, I’ll try to score a cheap premium ticket from a season ticket holder who can’t make the game - and frequently do. IMO the biggest issue with tickets is that it’s 2023 and we live in a pseudo libertarian business climate. It’s a market that should be regulated, as the ticket platform has an incentive to optimize their own self-dealing. The platform gets a vig for each transfer, so maximizing transactions is the optimal path. I worked for a company whose successful entry into event ticketing prompted a buyout by Ticketmaster.
- nomilk 3y agoI was thinking about this recently, and came up with two possible reasons: 1. The enjoyment of attendees can be partly dependent on the enthusiasm of other attendees. Consider the extremes: an audience entirely comprised of people who hardly know the artist, but can afford it Vs an audience comprised of only die-hard fans, irrespective of their ability to afford a ticket. The first has a flat atmosphere, the second, a special one. 2. A simple desire by the artist to make their show available to a cross-section of society (this could be viewed as altruistic, since most other products/services don't usually offer the same thing at a lower price just to help those who can't afford it). A possible solution to problem 1: If the goal is to ensure that only die-hard fans get the tickets, why not use their spotify/apple music/other histories to work out who's really a fan of that artist? It should be trivial to get a very high degree of accuracy, and would be costly for scalpers to imitate (they'd need a subscription and to listen to random music years in advance).
- cdchn 3y agoGuess if you don't use a streaming music service you're SOL seeing an artist you look. This is such a Hacker News suggestion.
- kjellsbells 3y agoAlso I suspect that it would be trivially easy to script your client to open up spotify and play a never ending stream of Taylor Swift, dumping the audio to /dev/null, and to have multiple tabs playing other popular artists using other accounts, so that at least one account always looked like a superfan.
- notSupplied 3y agoAlas, every metric that isn’t “paying more money” can be horrendously gamed and corrupted. This is why despite all its flaws, the “price signal” is still the tried and true “least bad way to allocate scarce resources” for most cases.
- gist 3y ago
- imtringued 3y agoBecause the premium customers only listen to popular artists and the artist needs fremium fodder to make the artist popular.