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>> it's obviously preferable to get paid for the entire tour on the day it's announced > it's only obvious to "private equity" type people. No, it's obvious.

>> it's obviously preferable to get paid for the entire tour on the day it's announced > it's only obvious to "private equity" type people. No, it's obvious. Anyone that has to choose between getting $100 right now or $100 trickled in over months would opt for it right now for many reasons (inflation, the ability it invest it, the ability to use if it needed for unexpected situation, etc). Wanting events to be populated by people that are primed for an experience and part of that priming bing they don't feel like it was too expensive to go might be another thing the artist or venue wants to encourage. You can combine these things and make specific trade offs, but that doesn't mean all other things being equal that it's not entirely obvious that you should prefer money now to later. > So giving up (or even worse, cooperating) to scalpers is like selling your business to private equity - you get some money, they get some money, and your customers/fans are fd. It depends, probably a whole lot more than you think. Sometimes fans like to know they can go to an event if they care enough. In a world without resale markets that would be entirely dependent on the artist deciding to play more shows, because once tickets are sold they're gone. Secondary markets provide liquidity. Also, sometimes tickets are available for cheaper* on secondary markets than they were on the initial sale (and this was true even before Ticketmaster started changing prices as the sales went on). That's because brokers take on risk buy buying for an event when it's not entirely sure it will still have demand when it's the event date. For example, I just went to Stubhub (because I'm not sure Ticketmaster's own exchange will allow you to list for less than sale price) and looked for events starting soon. I found a rock concert in Napa where the Orchestra tickets are cheaper on Stubhub ($94 for two) than on Ticketmaster ($115.40 for two). There are plenty of tickets still on Ticketmaster, and some brokers just want to but their losses.[1][2] There are plenty of ways to look at reselling to make it seem horrible or to make it seem beneficial. It's neither, it's just a normal function of markets, and the more people try to prevent it the more weird problems we'll have. Want to fix ticket prices? Convince artists to take on risk by playing larger venues (which they might not sell out) or add dates (meanind some days might not sell out). Artists don't want to take on that risk, so we have resellers and higher ticket prices. 1: https://www.stubhub.com/zepparella-napa-tickets-5-31-2025/event/157256627/ https://www.stubhub.com/zepparella-napa-tickets-5-31-2025/ev... 2: https://www.ticketmaster.com/zepparella-the-led-zeppelin-powerhouse-napa-california-05-31-2025/event/1C006247BE0C4F24 https://www.ticketmaster.com/zepparella-the-led-zeppelin-pow...

mathgeek 1y ago
> No, it's obvious. Anyone that has to choose between getting $100 right now or $100 trickled in over months would opt for it right now... As usual, there are real life edge cases where folks don’t choose just on what makes the most sense financially. Many teachers work less than 52 weeks a year but choose to have their pay distributed over 52 weeks.
- kbenson 1y ago
  Yes, I'll admit I was a bit strong in my "anyone would" wording. I'm fairly confident in saying that while some people might opt for delayed payment when pressed and discussed with most if not all would admit to doing so because of their own inability to follow through on what they would acknowledge as the financially smarter option. In that case, it's still obvious what the better option is, even if you feel you can't take advantage of it because of other factors.
dcow 1y ago
If it’s a normal function then we sure go through a whole lot of effort to make sure a human and not a python script is buying tickets. If it’s normal, why doesn't the industry embrace it wholesale?
- kbenson 1y ago
  They have, as much as they will try to convince you they haven't, because they've spend so long trying to shift any blame or negative feelings towards resellers. Here's some supporting information to that point: - Ticketmaster is known to add additional fees to tickets which are actually given in part or in whole to the artist or venue, allowing customers to blame Ticketmaster for high ticket prices so Artists can claim they wanted cheaper tickets that were only $25 (but are actually $40 when you get to the final check out). This has been covered by the major news outlets a few different times and discussed here, so shouldn't be hard to find information on. - Ticketmaster runs their own secondary exchange now, which verified re-issuing of digital tickets out of their own back-end and guaranteed entry. Can't embrace it much more than that. They get a cut of the sale price on the secondary exchange like all the exchanges do. - Ticketmaster also reserves a portion of their tickets for dynamic pricing and their price will adjust on the fly during the initial sale period based on demand and what they see them showing up on the resale market as (some tickets show up on the resale market almost immediately). - Artists want to side with their fans, or at a minimum appear to side with them. That means releasing tickets for "cheap" or at least in a way they can claim they did. Some artists care, some pay lip service. Kid Rock actually seemed to care, as he would play Detroit for seven consecutive days or more to make sure his cheap tickets stayed cheap by providing enough supply that demand was never too high, at least for most seats. I'm sure he would rather not do such a grueling schedule though, which is why he's always been very active trying to get legislature passed targeting resellers. To me, having worked in this industry in the past, it's always been very clear that the industry does embrace the secondary market, to a degree, while also using it as a convenient scapegoat. If the secondary markets were to be shut down tomorrow, everyone would find at least some aspect of that worse than the current status quo. Some might ultimately find is better, some worse, but it's not nearly as simple as secondary markets just being a problem (for example, they're not just rent-seeking, they're offloading risk and providing liquidity).

mathgeek 1y ago

> No, it's obvious. Anyone that has to choose between getting $100 right now or $100 trickled in over months would opt for it right now... As usual, there are real life edge cases where folks don’t choose just on what makes the most sense financially. Many teachers work less than 52 weeks a year but choose to have their pay distributed over 52 weeks.

kbenson 1y ago
Yes, I'll admit I was a bit strong in my "anyone would" wording. I'm fairly confident in saying that while some people might opt for delayed payment when pressed and discussed with most if not all would admit to doing so because of their own inability to follow through on what they would acknowledge as the financially smarter option. In that case, it's still obvious what the better option is, even if you feel you can't take advantage of it because of other factors.

dcow 1y ago

If it’s a normal function then we sure go through a whole lot of effort to make sure a human and not a python script is buying tickets. If it’s normal, why doesn't the industry embrace it wholesale?

kbenson 1y ago
They have, as much as they will try to convince you they haven't, because they've spend so long trying to shift any blame or negative feelings towards resellers. Here's some supporting information to that point: - Ticketmaster is known to add additional fees to tickets which are actually given in part or in whole to the artist or venue, allowing customers to blame Ticketmaster for high ticket prices so Artists can claim they wanted cheaper tickets that were only $25 (but are actually $40 when you get to the final check out). This has been covered by the major news outlets a few different times and discussed here, so shouldn't be hard to find information on. - Ticketmaster runs their own secondary exchange now, which verified re-issuing of digital tickets out of their own back-end and guaranteed entry. Can't embrace it much more than that. They get a cut of the sale price on the secondary exchange like all the exchanges do. - Ticketmaster also reserves a portion of their tickets for dynamic pricing and their price will adjust on the fly during the initial sale period based on demand and what they see them showing up on the resale market as (some tickets show up on the resale market almost immediately). - Artists want to side with their fans, or at a minimum appear to side with them. That means releasing tickets for "cheap" or at least in a way they can claim they did. Some artists care, some pay lip service. Kid Rock actually seemed to care, as he would play Detroit for seven consecutive days or more to make sure his cheap tickets stayed cheap by providing enough supply that demand was never too high, at least for most seats. I'm sure he would rather not do such a grueling schedule though, which is why he's always been very active trying to get legislature passed targeting resellers. To me, having worked in this industry in the past, it's always been very clear that the industry does embrace the secondary market, to a degree, while also using it as a convenient scapegoat. If the secondary markets were to be shut down tomorrow, everyone would find at least some aspect of that worse than the current status quo. Some might ultimately find is better, some worse, but it's not nearly as simple as secondary markets just being a problem (for example, they're not just rent-seeking, they're offloading risk and providing liquidity).