Which fans without a lot of money? How do they get picked? Lottery? Who can click the fastest? Who has no job and can stand in line for days?
If you have more fans than seats, some people will be unable to attend. That's unavoidable. But the constraint you're replying to says "ensure that fans without a lot of money can see me", not "ensure that all fans get to see me". So your criticism is a little off target. Yes, those fans willing to show the most dedication might have an advantage.
But we can solve the majority of the "disproportionate power to the wealthy" by the simple expedient of only allowing one or two tickets per person, and matching ID to purchasers of the ticket at the door.
In this app, allow the user to collect a free sweepstakes entry, with a 60 minute cooldown timer, to a maximum of 8 entries per calendar day. Whenever concert tickets go on sale, reserve a block on the floor from the Nth row to the back of the floor. (We all know that the spots all the way up front are for the groupies, superfans, and rich people.)
Allow users to allocate their entries to specific shows/venues on your tour. Hold a lottery for each show, and allow the users that are drawn to buy 2 tickets for $2, and an exclusive concert tee for $21. Allow a few winners to get gratis superfan passes, to meet the band, collect autographs, get the gratis ultra-exclusive VIP concert tee, scream and collapse on the fainting couch, or whatever it is your hardcore fans would most like to do. Close to concert time, if the venue is not actually sold out, do another lottery and make a second-chance offering to get any previously unsold tickets for $1 each. Any user that does not or cannot buy tickets can then spend their entries to get gratis/discounted merch or media files, or just get their remaining sweepstakes entries back, perhaps to try again on the next show.
The user arrives at the venue, and presents a certain screen of the app on their phone to be permitted entry.
This rewards dedication to the band (and its licensed merch). In order to maximize your chances, you have to check in every hour that you are awake and not at work or in school. You can't get those tickets any other way, and if you don't make the effort, someone who is more into the band will.
Also, the app itself can recruit and assimilate new people into your fanbase. And you can make sure that the band's own holding company controls the IP and app-based revenue, not the record label, promoter, or distributor.
You can realistically expect your real fans to buy one tee per tour. Farmer accounts will likely show maximum sweepstakes entry activity and no game-play activity until winning a lottery, then will refuse all the merch upsells and never be active again. You can just dump those user ids into the "ignore" bucket and rescale your reserved bloc so that there are still enough seats for the real fans.
In any case, why would anyone buy a transferred fan club burner phone instead of a transferable dollar-priced ticket from a scalper? Why crack the proof-of-fandom test for a single artist, when you could break the CAPTCHA for all of Ticketmaster? The hypothetical attack you imagined requires greater effort and produces less profit than if you were just a regular ticket scalper.
Either run background checks on fans and only allow people without a lot of money to take those seats, or throw large enough events such that there's enough supply to meet the demand at your preferred price.
Seriously - either background checks, or rent out yankee stadium? No solutions in between?
As long as there's more demand than supply, some mechanism will allocate the scarce supply to the buyers who want it most in the sense of being willing to pay the most for it. Any other system cannot be pareto-optimal.
Allowing poor fans the opportunity to get in to a show.
> I gave several possible answers
No, you gave two. And the background check one was so ludicrous that you probably should have kept it to yourself. And you missed the most obvious, don't allow ticket resale. No need for hundreds of expensive financial investigations, and you don't have to rent out a stadium. Dedicated fans can still get a ticket, regardless of their wealth. Mission accomplished.
Banning ticket resale is also expensive at scale.
For a variety of reasons. If Sting reunites with The Police and goes on tour- sure, rent a football stadium. Some bands prefer smaller, more intimate venues. Some may have a hard time competing for the limited spaces at larger venues. Some may choose to avoid that level of fame. Who knows? It's none of my business.
Bands are always free to chase as much fame as they want, and to make their own policies about pricing or resale or whatever. I just think it's a little dystopian to say they're required to zealously follow some sort of capitalist ideal.
> Banning ticket resale is also expensive at scale.
Checking tickets at the door doesn't get much more expensive if you also require showing an ID with a name that matches the name on the ticket. You can even use the barcodes on most IDs, no fiddly reading required! Remember, you're trying to keep out the people who capitalize on scale, so if somebody sneaks in with a resold ticket and a corresponding fake ID, who cares? A 99% solution is fine.
Then scalpers would just pre-sell tickets and buy it in the given name. There's an arms race and it's not easy to fight the market.
TBH I imagine (as implied in the article) scalping is "tolerated" a bit by venues because some of the risk of a dud event is offloaded to the scalpers. The main problem with high priced concerts is probably more in artist image. It's harder to have a "mass market" friendly image if your concert tickets are not really accessible to the "mass market". Branding is critical for artists; if chasing the short term dollar is bad for the brand, it may not be the best thing to do long term.
Allocating a section of low cost tickets via ID based lottery (ala Hamilton) is a great solution for this in my opinion.
But I think a better question is, how many artists should be free to value their fans over money?
And if I'm an artist who wants to ensure that fans without a lot of money can see me? Should I be allowed to offer a concert where tickets cost 20% of market value, or should "the market" step in and say "no. I'm the one in charge, and I say that once you reach a certain level of fame, only rich people are allowed to see you live. sorry, but you've outgrown your original fanbase."
That feels like kind of a sick attitude.
The solution here is either the invisible hand of the market, OR tight controls exercised at the artist's discretion.