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I can’t claim I’m the first one to think about this, but every time Ticketmaster shows up on HN I keep coming back to this idea: Sell the tickets with regressi

I can’t claim I’m the first one to think about this, but every time Ticketmaster shows up on HN I keep coming back to this idea: Sell the tickets with regressive price based on time. Sales starts say 2 months before event, initial price is truly exorbitant, say one million dollars. Price decreases linearly down to zero (or true cost price). At any point, people can see current price and the seats left. Now every potential spectator is playing a game of chicken: the more you wait, the lower the price, but also lower are the chances that you’ll have a ticket. That would capture precisely the maximum amount of dollars that each person is willing to pay for it. This idea sounds extremely greedy, because it is, so I can’t fathom that no one ever pitched this in a Ticketmaster board meeting. My idea, however, was a bit less greedy. Once you sold the last ticket, that would be your actual (and fair) price-per-ticket for the concert, and everyone would be refunded the difference. You’ll never know how low it will go, so you shouldn’t overpay and hope it will lower later. I’m pretty sure Ticketmaster will skip this last part if they decide to implement this. There are multiple issues with my idea, it’s elitist, promotes financial risks on cohorts poorly capable to bear them, etc etc, but it will definitely fix the scalpers problem. Pick your poison.

jmalicki 1y ago
This is a similar idea to a second price auction, but in reverse. Everyone puts in their maximum price they're willing to pay, and the lowest price that fills the seats is what people pay. The advantage to this model is that there is no financial risk to overpaying. Of course with an open bid continuous auction there are problems with bid shading (manipulating the auction by posting prices mostly meant to influence other bidders), but it's overall economically very close to your idea.
- immibis 1y ago
  People don't know the maximum price they're willing to pay. There's actually a probability distribution, not a hard cutoff, and certainly not one known in advance. The higher the price is, the less likely I am to buy it. Auctions work for two classses of people: spherical humans in a vacuum, and economists.
edschofield 1y ago
That's a Dutch auction: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_auction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_auction. I agree that reverse auctions would be a simple solution the current scalper problem. If demand outweighs supply, scalpers drive up the prices toward their economic equilibrium anyway, making ticket prices just as "unfair" to the poor, but with additional problems of trust...
- Hobadee 1y ago
  That's not actually a Dutch Auction. Sounds more like the "eBay ascending uniform-price mechanism". (From the same Wikipedia article)
stavros 1y ago
The scalper problem is a mispricing problem: Scalpers are just arbitrageurs because ticket prices are artificially very low. If you want to fix that, you need to ask yourself "why are ticket prices artificially very low?" first. The answer probably isn't "artists/venues like leaving money on the table".
- cr125rider 1y ago
  What is it then?
  - chmod775 1y ago
    My guess: Empty seats look bad and and pricing fans out of concerts may hurt fan relations, even losing them completely. Also concerts are mainly for the artist to make money. Traditionally they're getting fucked by record labels, making very little on sales of media. Concerts is when you're actually getting paid. It thus being a somewhat less corporate process to decide ticket prices can mean that they just charge as much as they need and want, not as much as they can. Artists are generally considered to be a polar opposite to the "short-term-profit-maximizing" crowd.
- adgjlsfhk1 1y ago
  I think a significant portion is that artists like leaving money on the table. being perceived as greedy can cause reputational harm significantly greater than the increased ticket revenues that the market will bear.
  - dbspin 1y ago
    It's hilarious to read this discussion on HN, because the mentalities of artists and corporate business folks are so different. Artists aren't making a rational decision to reduce reputational damage by keeping ticket prices low. They're employing empathy to imagine themselves in the position of their audience - as music fans themselves first and foremost. Why do people create at all? It's certainly not the most effective route to maximum income. It's a form of connection. Performing is sharing the joy of music and creativity with a group of people who've formed a connection to you through your art. Now while the industry certainly selects for people who do not think this way (i.e.: performers rather than artists), despite itself it's full of artists whose values are not aligned with whatever kind of homo econominicus maximal self interest, war of all against all that pervades here. Source - I'm not a musician, but I am a writer and I've directed music videos for numerous artists over the years. The idea that they're all motivated by the same mechanics as faceless entities like ticket master is silly.
bsder 1y ago
> but it will definitely fix the scalpers problem Nobody wants to fix the scalpers problem because, to the Ticketmaster monopoly, scalpers aren't a problem. The Ticketmaster monopoly values known, consistent, derisked revenue over possible lottery ticket windfalls with the possibility of complete wipeout. Scalpers do exactly that. Scalpers are only a problem to fans. And scalpers are only a problem online because they can wipe out the entire ticket base. The "solution" is to introduce offline friction to the problem--anything which requires a person to show up and buy only a limited number of tickets. Unfortunately, that introduces a lot of uncertainty into the system instead of guaranteed cash flow and the business side finds that to be anathema. However, the real solution is to bust up the Ticketmaster monopoly. If each of the individual actors (ticket sales, venue owner, performers) have to operate independently and have to de-risk at each point, scalpers become an enemy to be neutralized. I also have a completely unjustified suspicion that scalping is hiding a lot of money laundering so lots of people have vested interest in it continuing.
- EGreg 1y ago
  Let’s put busting the ticketmaster monopoly to the side for a second, and look at the issue regardless of players If you want to remove scalpers, just make sure tickets are non-transferrable and run an auction for price discovery. I built it on the blockchain years ago.
  - bsder 1y ago
    You can't put Ticketmaster aside precisely because Ticketmaster likes scalpers. They don't want to shut down scalpers. Hell, for all I know, Ticketmaster might actually BE the scalpers (talk about paranoia ... but, hey, vertical integration for the win). Consequently, even if there are "technical" solutions to scalpers, the socio-political aspects prevent the solution from being deployed.
    - mixmastamyk 1y ago
      TM solved this already, five years ago with their digital tix platform. They got rid of physical tickets, implemented auction pricing for the best seats, and took over the reseller market as well. They became the scalpers and took their revenue.
EGreg 1y ago
Auctions work great for price discovery. Check this out: https://community.intercoin.app/t/intercoin-applications-auctions-and-price-discovery/2897 https://community.intercoin.app/t/intercoin-applications-auc... also: https://community.intercoin.app/t/applications-of-intercoin-making-crypto-mainstream/87 https://community.intercoin.app/t/applications-of-intercoin-...
Spooky23 1y ago
Don’t worry, there’s no greedy, rent-seeking rock that hasn’t been overturned. Your idea would cost them way too much money. Since we’ve embraced scalping as a legal business model, Ticketmaster makes money on all sides of most transactions. It’s in their interest to for you to have maximum anxiety and buy as early as possible to increase the odds that you’ll resell. The bots and scrapers aren’t black hat, Ticketmaster makes some nominal effort to “stop them”, but somehow those pesky hackers manage to figure out how to make Ticketmaster more money. Ticketmaster is adept at making the purchase experience high friction and difficult, so those bots must be really clever. (Lol)
- bugtodiffer 1y ago
  Ticketmaster is reselling themselves, so they only prevent other peoples bots lol
- section_me 1y ago
  Sounds like Valve/Steam and the CS:GO gambling.
bugtodiffer 1y ago
Or maybe stop all the bullshit and sell the tickets at their real value. Ticketmaster should be destroyed!
- IgorPartola 1y ago
  You mean at like $3k/ticket for Taylor Swift nose bleeds?
sorz 1y ago
The time at which scalpers buy tickets becomes irrelevant. They can resell tickets at arbitrary-high-price + margin because buyer know they will receive refund for the exceed amount, thus pay only (final price + scalper margin) for the ticket eventually. Bonus: buy ticket from scalpers after price settled, you will get a determined price, no more guessing and find inner peace. The problem for scalpers is that if they buy too many tickets, the final price may become too high to be attractive for real buyers.

jmalicki 1y ago

This is a similar idea to a second price auction, but in reverse. Everyone puts in their maximum price they're willing to pay, and the lowest price that fills the seats is what people pay. The advantage to this model is that there is no financial risk to overpaying. Of course with an open bid continuous auction there are problems with bid shading (manipulating the auction by posting prices mostly meant to influence other bidders), but it's overall economically very close to your idea.

immibis 1y ago
People don't know the maximum price they're willing to pay. There's actually a probability distribution, not a hard cutoff, and certainly not one known in advance. The higher the price is, the less likely I am to buy it. Auctions work for two classses of people: spherical humans in a vacuum, and economists.

edschofield 1y ago

That's a Dutch auction: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_auction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_auction. I agree that reverse auctions would be a simple solution the current scalper problem. If demand outweighs supply, scalpers drive up the prices toward their economic equilibrium anyway, making ticket prices just as "unfair" to the poor, but with additional problems of trust...

Hobadee 1y ago
That's not actually a Dutch Auction. Sounds more like the "eBay ascending uniform-price mechanism". (From the same Wikipedia article)

stavros 1y ago

The scalper problem is a mispricing problem: Scalpers are just arbitrageurs because ticket prices are artificially very low. If you want to fix that, you need to ask yourself "why are ticket prices artificially very low?" first. The answer probably isn't "artists/venues like leaving money on the table".

cr125rider 1y ago
What is it then?
- chmod775 1y ago
  My guess: Empty seats look bad and and pricing fans out of concerts may hurt fan relations, even losing them completely. Also concerts are mainly for the artist to make money. Traditionally they're getting fucked by record labels, making very little on sales of media. Concerts is when you're actually getting paid. It thus being a somewhat less corporate process to decide ticket prices can mean that they just charge as much as they need and want, not as much as they can. Artists are generally considered to be a polar opposite to the "short-term-profit-maximizing" crowd.
adgjlsfhk1 1y ago
I think a significant portion is that artists like leaving money on the table. being perceived as greedy can cause reputational harm significantly greater than the increased ticket revenues that the market will bear.
- dbspin 1y ago
  It's hilarious to read this discussion on HN, because the mentalities of artists and corporate business folks are so different. Artists aren't making a rational decision to reduce reputational damage by keeping ticket prices low. They're employing empathy to imagine themselves in the position of their audience - as music fans themselves first and foremost. Why do people create at all? It's certainly not the most effective route to maximum income. It's a form of connection. Performing is sharing the joy of music and creativity with a group of people who've formed a connection to you through your art. Now while the industry certainly selects for people who do not think this way (i.e.: performers rather than artists), despite itself it's full of artists whose values are not aligned with whatever kind of homo econominicus maximal self interest, war of all against all that pervades here. Source - I'm not a musician, but I am a writer and I've directed music videos for numerous artists over the years. The idea that they're all motivated by the same mechanics as faceless entities like ticket master is silly.

bsder 1y ago

> but it will definitely fix the scalpers problem Nobody wants to fix the scalpers problem because, to the Ticketmaster monopoly, scalpers aren't a problem. The Ticketmaster monopoly values known, consistent, derisked revenue over possible lottery ticket windfalls with the possibility of complete wipeout. Scalpers do exactly that. Scalpers are only a problem to fans. And scalpers are only a problem online because they can wipe out the entire ticket base. The "solution" is to introduce offline friction to the problem--anything which requires a person to show up and buy only a limited number of tickets. Unfortunately, that introduces a lot of uncertainty into the system instead of guaranteed cash flow and the business side finds that to be anathema. However, the real solution is to bust up the Ticketmaster monopoly. If each of the individual actors (ticket sales, venue owner, performers) have to operate independently and have to de-risk at each point, scalpers become an enemy to be neutralized. I also have a completely unjustified suspicion that scalping is hiding a lot of money laundering so lots of people have vested interest in it continuing.

EGreg 1y ago
Let’s put busting the ticketmaster monopoly to the side for a second, and look at the issue regardless of players If you want to remove scalpers, just make sure tickets are non-transferrable and run an auction for price discovery. I built it on the blockchain years ago.
- bsder 1y ago
  You can't put Ticketmaster aside precisely because Ticketmaster likes scalpers. They don't want to shut down scalpers. Hell, for all I know, Ticketmaster might actually BE the scalpers (talk about paranoia ... but, hey, vertical integration for the win). Consequently, even if there are "technical" solutions to scalpers, the socio-political aspects prevent the solution from being deployed.
  - mixmastamyk 1y ago
    TM solved this already, five years ago with their digital tix platform. They got rid of physical tickets, implemented auction pricing for the best seats, and took over the reseller market as well. They became the scalpers and took their revenue.

EGreg 1y ago

Auctions work great for price discovery. Check this out: https://community.intercoin.app/t/intercoin-applications-auctions-and-price-discovery/2897 https://community.intercoin.app/t/intercoin-applications-auc... also: https://community.intercoin.app/t/applications-of-intercoin-making-crypto-mainstream/87 https://community.intercoin.app/t/applications-of-intercoin-...

Spooky23 1y ago

Don’t worry, there’s no greedy, rent-seeking rock that hasn’t been overturned. Your idea would cost them way too much money. Since we’ve embraced scalping as a legal business model, Ticketmaster makes money on all sides of most transactions. It’s in their interest to for you to have maximum anxiety and buy as early as possible to increase the odds that you’ll resell. The bots and scrapers aren’t black hat, Ticketmaster makes some nominal effort to “stop them”, but somehow those pesky hackers manage to figure out how to make Ticketmaster more money. Ticketmaster is adept at making the purchase experience high friction and difficult, so those bots must be really clever. (Lol)

bugtodiffer 1y ago
Ticketmaster is reselling themselves, so they only prevent other peoples bots lol
section_me 1y ago
Sounds like Valve/Steam and the CS:GO gambling.

bugtodiffer 1y ago

Or maybe stop all the bullshit and sell the tickets at their real value. Ticketmaster should be destroyed!

IgorPartola 1y ago
You mean at like $3k/ticket for Taylor Swift nose bleeds?

sorz 1y ago

The time at which scalpers buy tickets becomes irrelevant. They can resell tickets at arbitrary-high-price + margin because buyer know they will receive refund for the exceed amount, thus pay only (final price + scalper margin) for the ticket eventually. Bonus: buy ticket from scalpers after price settled, you will get a determined price, no more guessing and find inner peace. The problem for scalpers is that if they buy too many tickets, the final price may become too high to be attractive for real buyers.