6 ms·

Why not just ban the transfer of tickets and allow refunds? You buy a ticket, you show your ID at the door. Early refunded tickets get resold online and late re

Why not just ban the transfer of tickets and allow refunds? You buy a ticket, you show your ID at the door. Early refunded tickets get resold online and late refunds are sold at the venue. All seats, including the best seats, go to actual fans instead of scalpers just hoping to make a profit while providing zero value. First choice in seats goes to the most passionate and attentive fans.

echelon 6mo ago
> Why not just ban the transfer of tickets and allow refunds? You buy a ticket, you show your ID at the door. Because everyone on the seller side - including artists - make money on this. If parties other than fans / buyers cared, it would be a solved problem.
- ceejayoz 6mo ago
  I've seen quite a few artists opposed to it. Quick example: https://www.instagram.com/p/DWWlQS-Dhj7/ https://www.instagram.com/p/DWWlQS-Dhj7/
  - lmm 6mo ago
    Artists will claim to be opposed because fans like it when they do so.
    - ceejayoz 6mo ago
      Artists have canceled swathes of tickets for this reason. https://variety.com/2024/music/news/chappell-roan-cancels-scalper-tickets-tennessee-concert-1236130117/ https://variety.com/2024/music/news/chappell-roan-cancels-sc... I've seen quite a few cases of this. Not everyone's money-only.
      - freejazz 6mo ago
        And they are free to make the tickets non-transferrable. The Cure did that. Last Phish MSG run the tickets were non-transferrable and I had to use CashorTrade to trade my tickets.
zeroonetwothree 6mo ago
It’s kind of annoying in practice. For example you buy four tickets to go with your friends. But you get sick so you offer your ticket to a different friend instead. Oops that’s not allowed so now no one gets to go? Or you buy tickets as a gift for someone. There’s a lot of legit reasons to want transfers, outside of scalping.
- tjwebbnorfolk 6mo ago
  I can't do this with airline tickets, hotel bookings, train tickets, dinner reservations, or any other kind of receipt that allows me to put my butt in a seat at a specified time. Why are concert tickets special?
  - Kirby64 6mo ago
    Airline tickets and train tickets are because they want to identify the person, for tracking/supposed national security purposes. Also, you typically can transfer train tickets. Depends on the country. Dinner reservations: I’ve literally never had an issue “transferring” a reservation. There’s no verification, often, and the reservation tools typically let you change contact details. If I present myself as John Smith, I’ve never once had anyone question that. Concert tickets are almost certainly in the 'dinner reservation' category. They have no need to identify me for national security reasons, so transferring them should not be a problem.
    - deleted 6mo ago
      [deleted]
    - dghlsakjg 6mo ago
      Airline tickets are done for identity at some level (although even that is dubious since until recently you could fly without any id at all), but at another level they charge exorbitant fees to change the name on the ticket or even to just cancel the itinerary.
      - mr_toad 6mo ago
freejazz 6mo ago
The tickets are all electronic now and they can already do it. Most artists don't want them to.
redwall_hp 6mo ago
That's fairly common in Japan: you can't transfer tickets, as they get a name attached at purchase, and many concerts use a lottery system. You register interest in tickets, and if you're selected, you get a window to buy them. No camping out the minute presales open, and the price is the price instead of rent-extracting dynamic bullshit. Square Enix did that for the Final Fantasy conventions in the US as well (where details of the next FFXIV expansion will be announced later this month), but they added an additional requirement. You have to have an active subscription to the game to even have a chance.
- Loughla 6mo ago
  The Savannah bananas do that for their tickets. You enter a free lottery to buy tickets then pay the same price regardless of when you buy them in that window if you're chosen. I don't think there's much scalping that happens with their tickets, so it must work.
  - mardef 6mo ago
    I went through the multi-step process for the bananas last year. It failed to validate me during the purchase window. Their support never responded to me (it's been 9 months now). It was a stupid flow that sent me from email to computer to phone and had one-time links that didn't transfer between devices. I have no interest in going through this much effort to go to an event.
traderj0e 6mo ago
The venue would make less money this way, and preferential seats would be given to whoever managed to get a request in first.
- autoexec 6mo ago
  That's the entire point
switz 6mo ago
Though this would be mildly annoying for the earnest case (selling a ticket to a friend), it would be the actual solve to the problem. The parent's suggestion still creates artificial scarcity, which is the real issue: people buying tickets they have no intention of using. The problem is that the artists, venues, and ticketing companies benefit from this artificial scarcity. So we'll never see it change.
121789 6mo ago
doesn't work. the venue/artist/original seller would have a huge liability for refunded value that they don't want to hold "all seats, including the best seats go to actual fans" is not something solved by your solution
hgoel 6mo ago
Alternatively only allow transfers within a very short period of the event. Anyone with a legitimate reason (giving to a friend etc) can work it out even on the day of the event. But scalpers have to take on a big risk buying up the good seats early, because they have a short window of time within which to secure a sale (buyers won't risk pre-paying, sellers can't risk prospective buyers backing out at the last minute). Another tactic I've seen when there isn't assigned seating - just different tiers of seating - is to hold back some small portion of tickets to release shortly before the event, devaluing the scalpers' listings. Online streaming tickets can also help, especially if the fans have enough of an anti-scalper stance. They'd choose one of the endless live streaming tickets over buying from scalpers just to go in-person. I can only assume that the people flippantly proposing that the solution should be to restrict consumer freedoms don't attend these types of events themselves. Why should we immediately jump to limiting freedoms when we can increase the risk of scalping enough to be beyond the tolerance of most scalpers.
- chadash 6mo ago
  What stops a scalper from buying early and then guaranteeing someone they will transfer the ticket on the day of the event?
  - hgoel 6mo ago
    How is a buyer supposed to trust that the scalper won't just run away with the money? And conversely, how is the scalper supposed to trust that buyers aren't just feigning interest and will back out at the last minute? Even escrow systems don't necessarily bypass this because ultimately the buyer is likely spending on more than just the concert ticket. They're probably taking time off work, maybe traveling in from another city or country. So even if they might get their ticket money back if the seller backs out, by the time that happens, it's too late to get refunds on everything else. And combined with the possibility of getting lower prices closer to the event (extra drops from the event, honest resellers who just can't make it, scalpers trying to cut their losses), even buyers wouldn't commit early to scalper prices.
    - 6mo ago
nradov 6mo ago
Another option is to just go see live shows at local independent venues instead of letting Live Nation jerk you around.
- QuantumFunnel 6mo ago
  None of the big artists people want to see ever play at those venues
  - nradov 6mo ago
    That's exactly my point: boycott the artists who contract with Live Nation. Your life won't be any less rich if you go see a local band instead of Taylor Swift. People have so many options now and yet they're afflicted with this weird FOMO.
    - felbane 6mo ago
      I think you either missed the point or are intentionally sidestepping the point. If I have a favorite band and they're reasonably large and I want to go see them live, it'd be a bonafide miracle if their show wasn't at a LiveNation venue. The local spots are simply too small to be a reasonable stop on tour for any moderately popular artist. I agree that you should definitely go see local artists at local venues, but you can do that and still really want to take your dad to see Steve Hackett play a live show. It's not up to you to decide what enriches my life.
    - troupo 6mo ago
      This essentially boycotts 99% of artists who are big enough to book a venue with more than 500-1000 people
      - DANmode 6mo ago
        It does, and I think they’re aware: > Your life won't be any less rich if you go see a local band instead of Taylor Swift. Do you disagree? If so, why?
benoau 6mo ago
That's too consumer friendly.
sporkland 6mo ago
We can agree scalpers are net negative. And I like your ideas but I don't see why the venues and artists don't want to capture more of what people are willing to pay enabled by what the parent comment suggested. I wonder if in your system it actually attracts fans or just people that have the time to wait for tickets.
- Nursie 6mo ago
  > I don't see why the venues and artists don't want to capture more of what people are willing to pay Because artists don't always want to extract the maximum money possible from their fanbase? Artists are not always rapacious capitalists. Sure, they want to make money from the show, but a lot of them also genuinely want to reach people who may not be able to drop hundreds of bucks on a ticket. Always selling to the highest bidder is a recipe for larger acts to only be accessible to the wealthy. And as surprising as it may seem, some of them have views on that sort of thing.
  - cbsmith 6mo ago
    > Because artists don't always want to extract the maximum money possible from their fanbase? I think that's both true and not. The larger truth is that trying to maximize the extraction during a single ticket sale is incredibly short-sighted of an artist. Having fans attend shows is a very effective way to grow your fan base and your brand, and that brings so much more lifetime value for an artist than you'd ever get from a single ticket sale (except for maybe on your retirement tour --and even then).
    - Nursie 6mo ago
      On the one hand, I want to say that’s cynical. On the other, well, I just bought tickets to Iron Maiden’s “all the best bits” tour (who have to be getting close to retiring, one member already has) supported by Megadeth who are explicitly on their retirement tour. And those were not cheap. No sir or ma’am. There are also artists like the Cure though, and Robert Smith seems to have a genuine interest in keeping prices accessible.
  - 6mo ago
cbsmith 6mo ago
> Why not just ban the transfer of tickets and allow refunds? There are laws against transfer bans. Also, people don't like being required to provide identity information just to buy a ticket to a live event, and venues HATE enforcing identity checks. ...and you'd be surprised how often you can get a refund on tickets just by asking your venue for a refund. > First choice in seats goes to the most passionate and attentive fans. Now you've opened the debate about how to determine which fans are the most passionate and attentive... ;-) Ticketmaster has a service for this that attempts to address this called Verified Fan.
nektro 6mo ago
this is the way
miki123211 6mo ago
Scalping only exists because there's a difference between what the tickets cost and what the fans value them at. For popular shows, there are more people who want to see the show than there are tickets available, so you need to pick a strategy for deciding who's going to go.. Ticket sellers have to balance lost profits from lower prices, prices being too high and the show not selling out, and fans being furious at the artist for making the tickets unaffordable for most of the true fanbase. Dynamic pricing (airline style) and auction-based systems basically ensure that only the rich can attend. Scalping is a way to do price discrimination / progressive pricing. If you're a true fan, you know when the ticket sale will happen ahead of time, and you snatch the tickets quickly. If you're not, but are rich enough not to care, you have to buy from a scalper. Like all discounting and price discrimination strategies, it sometimes backfires; if you're a true fan attending your mother's funeral when the sale opens, you'll have to pay the rich person's price. You can also see scalpers as being awarded by capitalism for taking risks. They make sure the show sells out and the artist is happy, even if fan interest is lower than expected. In such a case, they take on the losses, if all goes well, they take some of the profits from the sales.
- IAmBroom 6mo ago
  The unpleasant truth.
butlike 6mo ago
I think it's because touring as an artist isn't free, so they need some guarantee of income to make the journey to the venue. If there's a risk the concert goers will refund the tickets, then the artist is the one left holding the proverbial bag.

echelon 6mo ago

> Why not just ban the transfer of tickets and allow refunds? You buy a ticket, you show your ID at the door. Because everyone on the seller side - including artists - make money on this. If parties other than fans / buyers cared, it would be a solved problem.

ceejayoz 6mo ago
I've seen quite a few artists opposed to it. Quick example: https://www.instagram.com/p/DWWlQS-Dhj7/ https://www.instagram.com/p/DWWlQS-Dhj7/
- lmm 6mo ago
  Artists will claim to be opposed because fans like it when they do so.
  - ceejayoz 6mo ago
    Artists have canceled swathes of tickets for this reason. https://variety.com/2024/music/news/chappell-roan-cancels-scalper-tickets-tennessee-concert-1236130117/ https://variety.com/2024/music/news/chappell-roan-cancels-sc... I've seen quite a few cases of this. Not everyone's money-only.
    - freejazz 6mo ago
      And they are free to make the tickets non-transferrable. The Cure did that. Last Phish MSG run the tickets were non-transferrable and I had to use CashorTrade to trade my tickets.

zeroonetwothree 6mo ago

It’s kind of annoying in practice. For example you buy four tickets to go with your friends. But you get sick so you offer your ticket to a different friend instead. Oops that’s not allowed so now no one gets to go? Or you buy tickets as a gift for someone. There’s a lot of legit reasons to want transfers, outside of scalping.

tjwebbnorfolk 6mo ago
I can't do this with airline tickets, hotel bookings, train tickets, dinner reservations, or any other kind of receipt that allows me to put my butt in a seat at a specified time. Why are concert tickets special?
- Kirby64 6mo ago
  Airline tickets and train tickets are because they want to identify the person, for tracking/supposed national security purposes. Also, you typically can transfer train tickets. Depends on the country. Dinner reservations: I’ve literally never had an issue “transferring” a reservation. There’s no verification, often, and the reservation tools typically let you change contact details. If I present myself as John Smith, I’ve never once had anyone question that. Concert tickets are almost certainly in the 'dinner reservation' category. They have no need to identify me for national security reasons, so transferring them should not be a problem.
  - deleted 6mo ago
    [deleted]
  - dghlsakjg 6mo ago
    Airline tickets are done for identity at some level (although even that is dubious since until recently you could fly without any id at all), but at another level they charge exorbitant fees to change the name on the ticket or even to just cancel the itinerary.
    - mr_toad 6mo ago

freejazz 6mo ago

The tickets are all electronic now and they can already do it. Most artists don't want them to.

redwall_hp 6mo ago

That's fairly common in Japan: you can't transfer tickets, as they get a name attached at purchase, and many concerts use a lottery system. You register interest in tickets, and if you're selected, you get a window to buy them. No camping out the minute presales open, and the price is the price instead of rent-extracting dynamic bullshit. Square Enix did that for the Final Fantasy conventions in the US as well (where details of the next FFXIV expansion will be announced later this month), but they added an additional requirement. You have to have an active subscription to the game to even have a chance.

Loughla 6mo ago
The Savannah bananas do that for their tickets. You enter a free lottery to buy tickets then pay the same price regardless of when you buy them in that window if you're chosen. I don't think there's much scalping that happens with their tickets, so it must work.
- mardef 6mo ago
  I went through the multi-step process for the bananas last year. It failed to validate me during the purchase window. Their support never responded to me (it's been 9 months now). It was a stupid flow that sent me from email to computer to phone and had one-time links that didn't transfer between devices. I have no interest in going through this much effort to go to an event.

traderj0e 6mo ago

The venue would make less money this way, and preferential seats would be given to whoever managed to get a request in first.

autoexec 6mo ago
That's the entire point

switz 6mo ago

Though this would be mildly annoying for the earnest case (selling a ticket to a friend), it would be the actual solve to the problem. The parent's suggestion still creates artificial scarcity, which is the real issue: people buying tickets they have no intention of using. The problem is that the artists, venues, and ticketing companies benefit from this artificial scarcity. So we'll never see it change.

121789 6mo ago

doesn't work. the venue/artist/original seller would have a huge liability for refunded value that they don't want to hold "all seats, including the best seats go to actual fans" is not something solved by your solution

hgoel 6mo ago

Alternatively only allow transfers within a very short period of the event. Anyone with a legitimate reason (giving to a friend etc) can work it out even on the day of the event. But scalpers have to take on a big risk buying up the good seats early, because they have a short window of time within which to secure a sale (buyers won't risk pre-paying, sellers can't risk prospective buyers backing out at the last minute). Another tactic I've seen when there isn't assigned seating - just different tiers of seating - is to hold back some small portion of tickets to release shortly before the event, devaluing the scalpers' listings. Online streaming tickets can also help, especially if the fans have enough of an anti-scalper stance. They'd choose one of the endless live streaming tickets over buying from scalpers just to go in-person. I can only assume that the people flippantly proposing that the solution should be to restrict consumer freedoms don't attend these types of events themselves. Why should we immediately jump to limiting freedoms when we can increase the risk of scalping enough to be beyond the tolerance of most scalpers.

chadash 6mo ago
What stops a scalper from buying early and then guaranteeing someone they will transfer the ticket on the day of the event?
- hgoel 6mo ago
  How is a buyer supposed to trust that the scalper won't just run away with the money? And conversely, how is the scalper supposed to trust that buyers aren't just feigning interest and will back out at the last minute? Even escrow systems don't necessarily bypass this because ultimately the buyer is likely spending on more than just the concert ticket. They're probably taking time off work, maybe traveling in from another city or country. So even if they might get their ticket money back if the seller backs out, by the time that happens, it's too late to get refunds on everything else. And combined with the possibility of getting lower prices closer to the event (extra drops from the event, honest resellers who just can't make it, scalpers trying to cut their losses), even buyers wouldn't commit early to scalper prices.
  - 6mo ago

nradov 6mo ago

Another option is to just go see live shows at local independent venues instead of letting Live Nation jerk you around.

QuantumFunnel 6mo ago
None of the big artists people want to see ever play at those venues
- nradov 6mo ago
  That's exactly my point: boycott the artists who contract with Live Nation. Your life won't be any less rich if you go see a local band instead of Taylor Swift. People have so many options now and yet they're afflicted with this weird FOMO.
  - felbane 6mo ago
    I think you either missed the point or are intentionally sidestepping the point. If I have a favorite band and they're reasonably large and I want to go see them live, it'd be a bonafide miracle if their show wasn't at a LiveNation venue. The local spots are simply too small to be a reasonable stop on tour for any moderately popular artist. I agree that you should definitely go see local artists at local venues, but you can do that and still really want to take your dad to see Steve Hackett play a live show. It's not up to you to decide what enriches my life.
  - troupo 6mo ago
    This essentially boycotts 99% of artists who are big enough to book a venue with more than 500-1000 people
    - DANmode 6mo ago
      It does, and I think they’re aware: > Your life won't be any less rich if you go see a local band instead of Taylor Swift. Do you disagree? If so, why?

benoau 6mo ago

That's too consumer friendly.

sporkland 6mo ago

We can agree scalpers are net negative. And I like your ideas but I don't see why the venues and artists don't want to capture more of what people are willing to pay enabled by what the parent comment suggested. I wonder if in your system it actually attracts fans or just people that have the time to wait for tickets.

Nursie 6mo ago
> I don't see why the venues and artists don't want to capture more of what people are willing to pay Because artists don't always want to extract the maximum money possible from their fanbase? Artists are not always rapacious capitalists. Sure, they want to make money from the show, but a lot of them also genuinely want to reach people who may not be able to drop hundreds of bucks on a ticket. Always selling to the highest bidder is a recipe for larger acts to only be accessible to the wealthy. And as surprising as it may seem, some of them have views on that sort of thing.
- cbsmith 6mo ago
  > Because artists don't always want to extract the maximum money possible from their fanbase? I think that's both true and not. The larger truth is that trying to maximize the extraction during a single ticket sale is incredibly short-sighted of an artist. Having fans attend shows is a very effective way to grow your fan base and your brand, and that brings so much more lifetime value for an artist than you'd ever get from a single ticket sale (except for maybe on your retirement tour --and even then).
  - Nursie 6mo ago
    On the one hand, I want to say that’s cynical. On the other, well, I just bought tickets to Iron Maiden’s “all the best bits” tour (who have to be getting close to retiring, one member already has) supported by Megadeth who are explicitly on their retirement tour. And those were not cheap. No sir or ma’am. There are also artists like the Cure though, and Robert Smith seems to have a genuine interest in keeping prices accessible.
- 6mo ago

cbsmith 6mo ago

> Why not just ban the transfer of tickets and allow refunds? There are laws against transfer bans. Also, people don't like being required to provide identity information just to buy a ticket to a live event, and venues HATE enforcing identity checks. ...and you'd be surprised how often you can get a refund on tickets just by asking your venue for a refund. > First choice in seats goes to the most passionate and attentive fans. Now you've opened the debate about how to determine which fans are the most passionate and attentive... ;-) Ticketmaster has a service for this that attempts to address this called Verified Fan.

nektro 6mo ago

this is the way

miki123211 6mo ago

Scalping only exists because there's a difference between what the tickets cost and what the fans value them at. For popular shows, there are more people who want to see the show than there are tickets available, so you need to pick a strategy for deciding who's going to go.. Ticket sellers have to balance lost profits from lower prices, prices being too high and the show not selling out, and fans being furious at the artist for making the tickets unaffordable for most of the true fanbase. Dynamic pricing (airline style) and auction-based systems basically ensure that only the rich can attend. Scalping is a way to do price discrimination / progressive pricing. If you're a true fan, you know when the ticket sale will happen ahead of time, and you snatch the tickets quickly. If you're not, but are rich enough not to care, you have to buy from a scalper. Like all discounting and price discrimination strategies, it sometimes backfires; if you're a true fan attending your mother's funeral when the sale opens, you'll have to pay the rich person's price. You can also see scalpers as being awarded by capitalism for taking risks. They make sure the show sells out and the artist is happy, even if fan interest is lower than expected. In such a case, they take on the losses, if all goes well, they take some of the profits from the sales.

IAmBroom 6mo ago
The unpleasant truth.

butlike 6mo ago

I think it's because touring as an artist isn't free, so they need some guarantee of income to make the journey to the venue. If there's a risk the concert goers will refund the tickets, then the artist is the one left holding the proverbial bag.