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I think there’s a massive point which gets missed on this question… A lot of these tickets get resold on the platforms themselves. If a reseller buys the ticke

I think there’s a massive point which gets missed on this question… A lot of these tickets get resold on the platforms themselves. If a reseller buys the ticket, and then sells it again to the end user, Ticketmaster gets paid twice. This point results in at least hundreds of millions in revenue. Now, if one of the platforms “cracks down” and makes it harder to buy and sell people will prefer another platform. So platforms have a huge disincentive to do anything about resellers. Also…more obviously, demand pressure drives the price, so scalpers are helping create a market and getting paid for it.

rs999gti 3y ago
Simple fix then, ban reselling. The artist and TM still get the revenue, but the scalper gets inventory they can't move. What about the fans? Similar to airlines, let people buy standby tickets, at the event, check attendance, if there is space let the stand bys in. TM still gets paid twice, scalper has garbage, and fans get in. What about fans who can't go? Buy the insurance at checkout, if you can't go the insurance comps for the cost of the ticket.
- emodendroket 3y ago
  That would just return them to the status quo ante where scalpers sell through third parties.
  - Analemma_ 3y ago
    If you tied tickets to names and required ID at the venue (allowing refunds in case you couldn't make it), this wouldn't work and scalping would basically end overnight. The fact that neither Ticketmaster nor the performers nor the venues has ever taken this simple step is the proof that it's not in their interest to do so. Note that events where the promoters are actually interested in having people show up instead of in scraping for every dollar (e.g. PAX) do this, and it works fine.
    - musicale 3y ago
      Doesn't PAX just the badges out? They are readily and frequently resold, online and at the venue. More effective would be having to show your ID at the venue with no reentry. "Scalpy McScalper. Looks good to me. Enjoy the show!"
    - emodendroket 3y ago
      Or proof that getting in would take much longer if they did that. Anyway, there are legitimate reasons someone might want to resell, like no longer being free on the event date, so I’m not sure even legitimate buyers would prefer such a strict system.
      - musicale 3y ago
        I've been to a few events that required ID check for entry and it was pretty streamlined. It seems to work OK as long as there is enough capacity to get everyone in quickly. Refund with a small charge seems fine to me.
      - krisoft 3y ago
        > there are legitimate reasons someone might want to resell, like no longer being free on the event date Which can also happen with airplane tickets. What makes it ok for an airplane ticket to be strictly tied to an ID, but not for a show?
        emodendroket 3y ago
        The airline is allowed (in fact, required by law) to use security as a reason to pursue a policy that’s favorable to them. Do you like the experience of going to the airport and wish more things you did were similar?
    - sundvor 3y ago
      Yup if you applied for a refund, your ticket(s) could go back in the pool for someone wanting to get one/some last minute. If it/they are picked up, you get your money back minus transaction fees and perhaps a small penalty, and if it doesn't, you don't - but at least you tried and someone else had a chance to get it. Ticketmaster obviously doesn't GAF / care. (The above was for a last few hours or days cancellation type scenario; there could be variations to this where if the event is months out, you could get an instant almost full refund etc - benefits could very well be linked to a premium subscription service perhaps. Lots of ways here to play.)
- patrickscoleman 3y ago
  Also actual fans sometimes can’t make a show and need to resell their tickets
  - maven29 3y ago
    What is stopping the existence of a refund mechanism there?
    - xzel 3y ago
      Everyone in the entire chain. From artist to venue to promoter/booker to ticket platform. None of them want to refund. Not just for the obvious, but they make a killing selling ticket insurance.
    - d1sxeyes 3y ago
      Then scalpers have zero risk if they overbuy, encouraging scalpers even more.
      - maven29 3y ago
        If you restrict refunds to be permissible only until a certain point before the event, that will create a window in which unsuccessfully scalped tickets are released back into the pool for general public, bypassing scalpers. If scalpers choose to hold onto the tickets beyond the point, they wouldn't really be able to liquidate. I'd say that we shouldn't let perfect be the enemy of good, with regards to refunds.
  - oehpr 3y ago
    you have to make tradeoffs. If you want to ban reselling, you ban reselling. Scalpers locking out fans is a universal concern. How often do you hear the success story of "I can't make the concert so I sold the ticket online". Come on. An industry has propped up. This is small potatoes.
  - dazc 3y ago
    But people buy stuff everyday that they never actually use. Why should tickets be sacred?
- bko 3y ago
  This is only a problem because concert venues want to charge below market price and have the scalpers take the heat while they get their cut both ways. You can’t magically get around the market price. If you price too low you’ll have scalpers. If you beat the scalpers you’ll just have not enough tickets and a few people get tickets at below market value. Maybe that’s more fair but if you’re a fan that doesn’t feel comfortable buying tickets to a concert a year in advance, it’s likely you’re not going to be able to go at any price. People just don’t want to deal with the reality that the Taylor swift tickets that start at $40 or whatever were never real to begin with
  - mpixel 3y ago
    > People just don’t want to deal with the reality that the Taylor swift tickets that start at $40 or whatever were never real to begin with This. Here's a much more optimal semi-auction style solution. Tickets go on sale for 20 days, each day, all the seats and spots are worth the same price, you can buy anything, the price is always the same. Day 1, the price is $2000. Day 20, the price is $10. So you'd only pay $60 at most for a ticket? Sure, just check in on day 16. Since we start the price at the higher-than-scalp price, there's no scalping opportunity if you are paying the 'real market price'.
    - chongli 3y ago
      For someone like Taylor Swift, the tickets would sell out at $2000 on day 1. Then what? Her fans burn down her private jet on the tarmac for being greedy. The entire reason performers want their tickets sold below market value is so that non-rich "real fans" can actually afford them. All of the other shenanigans going on are there to get around this issue (and the performers definitely get a cut) while protecting the performer's shield of plausible deniability.
      - hamandcheese 3y ago
        If image is such a concern, sell (1/x) of tickets at the max possible price, give away the other (1 - 1/x) the day before the show for free. Ban transfers on the free tickets.
- mym1990 3y ago
  Instead of banning resale, why not just allow resale at face value? The French open(tennis) does this and makes it possible to still get tickets at a reasonable price up until the day of the event.
  - kazinator 3y ago
    Because you don't handle the money. If A shows up to the concert with tickets originally purchased by B, you have no idea how much A paid. Banning resale is not about selling per se but banning the changing of ownership. The person who paid is verified to be the one attending.
    - mym1990 3y ago
      What? In my example, Person B buys the change of ownership from person A at face value...its pretty clear how much they each paid. Absolutely no resale is just shifting the risk to the consumer, and affecting the 99% of people who want to see a good show. If the agency takes away the profit of resale, while still collecting a small fee on change of ownership, and allows customers to have flexibility in changing circumstances...its a win win win.
      - kazinator 3y ago
        > its pretty clear how much they each paid By what surveillance method is this? Or you mean there is a locked down trading platform, and only there can tickets be traded? What prevents additional money from changing hands via an off-platform backchannel? A law could discourage that, like the one in Norway your sibling comment pointed out.
    - matsemann 3y ago
      In Norway it's by law not legal to resell tickets at a higher price. That means that all listings on reputable buy/sell sites will immediately be taken down if you try. It of course still happens, but in a smaller scale. You can't base a business around it, exactly.
  - chpatrick 3y ago
- magicalhippo 3y ago
  > Simple fix then, ban reselling. In Norway they introduced a law[1] that forbids reselling for a higher price than that printed on the ticket. I do recall there was a lot of talk about scalping in the years before this law, and I haven't heard much since. I also noticed a drastic decrease of scalpers trying to sell tickets outside the venue. [1]: https://lovdata.no/dokument/NL/lov/2007-06-29-86 https://lovdata.no/dokument/NL/lov/2007-06-29-86
  - firebat45 3y ago
    >In Norway they introduced a law[1] that forbids reselling for a higher price than that printed on the ticket. For sale, desirable ticket at face value and $500 peanut. Only willing to sell as a bundle.
jallen_dot_dev 3y ago
> If a reseller buys the ticket, and then sells it again to the end user, Ticketmaster gets paid twice. So basically scalpers are being paid to be the scapegoat so Ticketmaster can make more money, at the expense of artists and fans.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- DrammBA 3y ago
  That's right, there's no incentive from TM to "fix" this.
  - zone411 3y ago
    No, Ticketmaster is the scapegoat for artists.
    - Retric 3y ago
      Extra transactions mean extra credit card fees, the artists would strictly be better off with demand based pricing. Ticketmaster however gets to double dip and play contract shenanigans. As a general rule more complex contracts favor the side with more experience. For example many people get hosed when leasing a car, there’s simply more levers a dealership can adjust to favor themselves.
      - lolinder 3y ago
        You're looking at this from a strictly monetary lens, but the entertainment industry lives and dies on reputation. It's worth a lot of money to have someone else take the fall for the inevitable results of high demand. Ticketmaster's one job is to launder the artist's reputation. They find ways to milk the show for more money than fans think is fair and keep a chunk of that extra cash as their fee, which from the artists' perspective is well-earned. Ticketmaster gets the blame for the scalpers and fees, the artist stays clean, and everyone makes more money than they would have if there was no one willing to be the bad guy. You blame Ticketmaster for the double-dipping because that's what the artists are paying them for: to take the blame.
johnnyanmac 3y ago
>if one of the platforms “cracks down” and makes it harder to buy and sell people will prefer another platform. 1) what other platform? I'm not too intimate with this, but part of the revolt over the Taylor Swift contrversy came from how Ticketmaster as exclusive use to most of the big venues. That seems to be the other half of the issue not talked about in this article. 2) I thought this issue would be as simple as banning resales, but after reading the kind of tech (and money they pay) to invest in the scalping... idk. It'd kill off the casual scalping of someone who buys maybe a half dozen tickets. people paying hundreds for fake numbers and specialized browsers won't be deterred. And the demand for the tickets comes from the celebrities, so it's a pretty safe market as long as the concert industry stays up (so, no more COVID. Even then, it's not like it's hard to pull out).
- arcticbull 3y ago
  Yup, TicketMaster/Live Nation is fully vertically integrated. They own venues, they manage artists, they sell merch - and yes they run the ticket platforms. The contracts basically require everything to stay in the family.
  - WhyNotHugo 3y ago
    Sounds like theres a lot of missing legislation. The situation creates a huge conflict of interests. Then again, scalping itself out to be illegal; it’s just a form of exploiting someone else’s work to extract money from average folk without creating any value or meaningful work.
    - TeMPOraL 3y ago
      I'm honestly not sure anymore if scalping should be delegalized. I'm increasingly convinced that it's only the problem because everyone is in on it, with artists using scalpers as "heat sinks", to get more money while pretending they're the victim, and everyone is well compensated for the role they play in the scheme. If that's the case, then the entire structure is the problem, and it starts with artists exploiting the audience looking for moral/spiritual role models.
wdr1 3y ago
> If a reseller buys the ticket, and then sells it again to the end user, Ticketmaster gets paid twice. Yeah, but Ticketmaster doesn't own the tickets. Nor do they decide the fees. Or even keep most of the revenue from the fees. All of that is decided by the promoter, possibly with the artist (if a big enough name) and to some extent the venue.
- Marazan 3y ago
  Ticketmaster (Live Nation) own the venue.
sharts 3y ago
That's a similar argument to maximizing GDP. If all we care about is that number rather than the quality of transactions happening, then we can't really make useful or accurate conclusions or predictions about the health of an economy.
amelius 3y ago
> Now, if one of the platforms “cracks down” and makes it harder to buy and sell people will prefer another platform. Huh, they only have to ensure that the price of the resold ticket is reasonable ...
hypercube33 3y ago
Yep. Ticketmaster makes profit from selling out to scalpers and then double dips on their StubHub and whatever other sites they own too. They also own the venues and dip out of that pool as well.
vintermann 3y ago
> If a reseller buys the ticket, and then sells it again to the end user, Ticketmaster gets paid twice. Definitively not if it happens like this article describes, with what the scalper selling being a ticketmaster account.

rs999gti 3y ago

Simple fix then, ban reselling. The artist and TM still get the revenue, but the scalper gets inventory they can't move. What about the fans? Similar to airlines, let people buy standby tickets, at the event, check attendance, if there is space let the stand bys in. TM still gets paid twice, scalper has garbage, and fans get in. What about fans who can't go? Buy the insurance at checkout, if you can't go the insurance comps for the cost of the ticket.

emodendroket 3y ago
That would just return them to the status quo ante where scalpers sell through third parties.
- Analemma_ 3y ago
  If you tied tickets to names and required ID at the venue (allowing refunds in case you couldn't make it), this wouldn't work and scalping would basically end overnight. The fact that neither Ticketmaster nor the performers nor the venues has ever taken this simple step is the proof that it's not in their interest to do so. Note that events where the promoters are actually interested in having people show up instead of in scraping for every dollar (e.g. PAX) do this, and it works fine.
  - musicale 3y ago
    Doesn't PAX just the badges out? They are readily and frequently resold, online and at the venue. More effective would be having to show your ID at the venue with no reentry. "Scalpy McScalper. Looks good to me. Enjoy the show!"
  - emodendroket 3y ago
    Or proof that getting in would take much longer if they did that. Anyway, there are legitimate reasons someone might want to resell, like no longer being free on the event date, so I’m not sure even legitimate buyers would prefer such a strict system.
    - musicale 3y ago
      I've been to a few events that required ID check for entry and it was pretty streamlined. It seems to work OK as long as there is enough capacity to get everyone in quickly. Refund with a small charge seems fine to me.
    - krisoft 3y ago
      > there are legitimate reasons someone might want to resell, like no longer being free on the event date Which can also happen with airplane tickets. What makes it ok for an airplane ticket to be strictly tied to an ID, but not for a show?
      - emodendroket 3y ago
        The airline is allowed (in fact, required by law) to use security as a reason to pursue a policy that’s favorable to them. Do you like the experience of going to the airport and wish more things you did were similar?
  - sundvor 3y ago
    Yup if you applied for a refund, your ticket(s) could go back in the pool for someone wanting to get one/some last minute. If it/they are picked up, you get your money back minus transaction fees and perhaps a small penalty, and if it doesn't, you don't - but at least you tried and someone else had a chance to get it. Ticketmaster obviously doesn't GAF / care. (The above was for a last few hours or days cancellation type scenario; there could be variations to this where if the event is months out, you could get an instant almost full refund etc - benefits could very well be linked to a premium subscription service perhaps. Lots of ways here to play.)
patrickscoleman 3y ago
Also actual fans sometimes can’t make a show and need to resell their tickets
- maven29 3y ago
  What is stopping the existence of a refund mechanism there?
  - xzel 3y ago
    Everyone in the entire chain. From artist to venue to promoter/booker to ticket platform. None of them want to refund. Not just for the obvious, but they make a killing selling ticket insurance.
  - d1sxeyes 3y ago
    Then scalpers have zero risk if they overbuy, encouraging scalpers even more.
    - maven29 3y ago
      If you restrict refunds to be permissible only until a certain point before the event, that will create a window in which unsuccessfully scalped tickets are released back into the pool for general public, bypassing scalpers. If scalpers choose to hold onto the tickets beyond the point, they wouldn't really be able to liquidate. I'd say that we shouldn't let perfect be the enemy of good, with regards to refunds.
- oehpr 3y ago
  you have to make tradeoffs. If you want to ban reselling, you ban reselling. Scalpers locking out fans is a universal concern. How often do you hear the success story of "I can't make the concert so I sold the ticket online". Come on. An industry has propped up. This is small potatoes.
- dazc 3y ago
  But people buy stuff everyday that they never actually use. Why should tickets be sacred?
bko 3y ago
This is only a problem because concert venues want to charge below market price and have the scalpers take the heat while they get their cut both ways. You can’t magically get around the market price. If you price too low you’ll have scalpers. If you beat the scalpers you’ll just have not enough tickets and a few people get tickets at below market value. Maybe that’s more fair but if you’re a fan that doesn’t feel comfortable buying tickets to a concert a year in advance, it’s likely you’re not going to be able to go at any price. People just don’t want to deal with the reality that the Taylor swift tickets that start at $40 or whatever were never real to begin with
- mpixel 3y ago
  > People just don’t want to deal with the reality that the Taylor swift tickets that start at $40 or whatever were never real to begin with This. Here's a much more optimal semi-auction style solution. Tickets go on sale for 20 days, each day, all the seats and spots are worth the same price, you can buy anything, the price is always the same. Day 1, the price is $2000. Day 20, the price is $10. So you'd only pay $60 at most for a ticket? Sure, just check in on day 16. Since we start the price at the higher-than-scalp price, there's no scalping opportunity if you are paying the 'real market price'.
  - chongli 3y ago
    For someone like Taylor Swift, the tickets would sell out at $2000 on day 1. Then what? Her fans burn down her private jet on the tarmac for being greedy. The entire reason performers want their tickets sold below market value is so that non-rich "real fans" can actually afford them. All of the other shenanigans going on are there to get around this issue (and the performers definitely get a cut) while protecting the performer's shield of plausible deniability.
    - hamandcheese 3y ago
      If image is such a concern, sell (1/x) of tickets at the max possible price, give away the other (1 - 1/x) the day before the show for free. Ban transfers on the free tickets.
mym1990 3y ago
Instead of banning resale, why not just allow resale at face value? The French open(tennis) does this and makes it possible to still get tickets at a reasonable price up until the day of the event.
- kazinator 3y ago
  Because you don't handle the money. If A shows up to the concert with tickets originally purchased by B, you have no idea how much A paid. Banning resale is not about selling per se but banning the changing of ownership. The person who paid is verified to be the one attending.
  - mym1990 3y ago
    What? In my example, Person B buys the change of ownership from person A at face value...its pretty clear how much they each paid. Absolutely no resale is just shifting the risk to the consumer, and affecting the 99% of people who want to see a good show. If the agency takes away the profit of resale, while still collecting a small fee on change of ownership, and allows customers to have flexibility in changing circumstances...its a win win win.
    - kazinator 3y ago
      > its pretty clear how much they each paid By what surveillance method is this? Or you mean there is a locked down trading platform, and only there can tickets be traded? What prevents additional money from changing hands via an off-platform backchannel? A law could discourage that, like the one in Norway your sibling comment pointed out.
  - matsemann 3y ago
    In Norway it's by law not legal to resell tickets at a higher price. That means that all listings on reputable buy/sell sites will immediately be taken down if you try. It of course still happens, but in a smaller scale. You can't base a business around it, exactly.
- chpatrick 3y ago
magicalhippo 3y ago
> Simple fix then, ban reselling. In Norway they introduced a law[1] that forbids reselling for a higher price than that printed on the ticket. I do recall there was a lot of talk about scalping in the years before this law, and I haven't heard much since. I also noticed a drastic decrease of scalpers trying to sell tickets outside the venue. [1]: https://lovdata.no/dokument/NL/lov/2007-06-29-86 https://lovdata.no/dokument/NL/lov/2007-06-29-86
- firebat45 3y ago
  >In Norway they introduced a law[1] that forbids reselling for a higher price than that printed on the ticket. For sale, desirable ticket at face value and $500 peanut. Only willing to sell as a bundle.

jallen_dot_dev 3y ago

> If a reseller buys the ticket, and then sells it again to the end user, Ticketmaster gets paid twice. So basically scalpers are being paid to be the scapegoat so Ticketmaster can make more money, at the expense of artists and fans.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
DrammBA 3y ago
That's right, there's no incentive from TM to "fix" this.
- zone411 3y ago
  No, Ticketmaster is the scapegoat for artists.
  - Retric 3y ago
    Extra transactions mean extra credit card fees, the artists would strictly be better off with demand based pricing. Ticketmaster however gets to double dip and play contract shenanigans. As a general rule more complex contracts favor the side with more experience. For example many people get hosed when leasing a car, there’s simply more levers a dealership can adjust to favor themselves.
    - lolinder 3y ago
      You're looking at this from a strictly monetary lens, but the entertainment industry lives and dies on reputation. It's worth a lot of money to have someone else take the fall for the inevitable results of high demand. Ticketmaster's one job is to launder the artist's reputation. They find ways to milk the show for more money than fans think is fair and keep a chunk of that extra cash as their fee, which from the artists' perspective is well-earned. Ticketmaster gets the blame for the scalpers and fees, the artist stays clean, and everyone makes more money than they would have if there was no one willing to be the bad guy. You blame Ticketmaster for the double-dipping because that's what the artists are paying them for: to take the blame.

johnnyanmac 3y ago

>if one of the platforms “cracks down” and makes it harder to buy and sell people will prefer another platform. 1) what other platform? I'm not too intimate with this, but part of the revolt over the Taylor Swift contrversy came from how Ticketmaster as exclusive use to most of the big venues. That seems to be the other half of the issue not talked about in this article. 2) I thought this issue would be as simple as banning resales, but after reading the kind of tech (and money they pay) to invest in the scalping... idk. It'd kill off the casual scalping of someone who buys maybe a half dozen tickets. people paying hundreds for fake numbers and specialized browsers won't be deterred. And the demand for the tickets comes from the celebrities, so it's a pretty safe market as long as the concert industry stays up (so, no more COVID. Even then, it's not like it's hard to pull out).

arcticbull 3y ago
Yup, TicketMaster/Live Nation is fully vertically integrated. They own venues, they manage artists, they sell merch - and yes they run the ticket platforms. The contracts basically require everything to stay in the family.
- WhyNotHugo 3y ago
  Sounds like theres a lot of missing legislation. The situation creates a huge conflict of interests. Then again, scalping itself out to be illegal; it’s just a form of exploiting someone else’s work to extract money from average folk without creating any value or meaningful work.
  - TeMPOraL 3y ago
    I'm honestly not sure anymore if scalping should be delegalized. I'm increasingly convinced that it's only the problem because everyone is in on it, with artists using scalpers as "heat sinks", to get more money while pretending they're the victim, and everyone is well compensated for the role they play in the scheme. If that's the case, then the entire structure is the problem, and it starts with artists exploiting the audience looking for moral/spiritual role models.

wdr1 3y ago

> If a reseller buys the ticket, and then sells it again to the end user, Ticketmaster gets paid twice. Yeah, but Ticketmaster doesn't own the tickets. Nor do they decide the fees. Or even keep most of the revenue from the fees. All of that is decided by the promoter, possibly with the artist (if a big enough name) and to some extent the venue.

Marazan 3y ago
Ticketmaster (Live Nation) own the venue.

sharts 3y ago

That's a similar argument to maximizing GDP. If all we care about is that number rather than the quality of transactions happening, then we can't really make useful or accurate conclusions or predictions about the health of an economy.

amelius 3y ago

> Now, if one of the platforms “cracks down” and makes it harder to buy and sell people will prefer another platform. Huh, they only have to ensure that the price of the resold ticket is reasonable ...

hypercube33 3y ago

Yep. Ticketmaster makes profit from selling out to scalpers and then double dips on their StubHub and whatever other sites they own too. They also own the venues and dip out of that pool as well.

vintermann 3y ago

> If a reseller buys the ticket, and then sells it again to the end user, Ticketmaster gets paid twice. Definitively not if it happens like this article describes, with what the scalper selling being a ticketmaster account.