An Update to Our Event Ticket Reseller Policy

Re:An Update to Our Event Ticket Reseller Policy by donarb on Wednesday February 07, 2018 @09:29PM (#16329734)

It would be nice if resellers were required to prove that they actually have tickets in hand before advertising. Many times these resellers work as brokers trying to match buyers and sellers and buy tickets after getting offers, leaving some buyers out in the cold when tickets don't materialize. Also maybe require proof of actual rows and seats on the tickets, if they don't match, when buying allow the buyer to back out of the deal.

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Re:An Update to Our Event Ticket Reseller Policy by xenadu02 on Wednesday February 07, 2018 @09:50PM (#16329811)

A large number of resellers are directly connected to the venue and artist management. Artists don’t want to be seen as too greedy, yet their contract has guaranteed payouts that simply aren’t possible given the venue size times # of seats. By directly routing most tickets to resellers they can charge way more than the face price of the ticket while shifting the blame to the resellers. In some cases the artists are aware, in others their manager doesn’t discuss it with them (but presents bigger paychecks as proof of how great their management skills are).

There is zero desire on the part of anyone involved to stop the practice, other than a few artists that really do care about fans and are willing to take a pay cut (eg Bruce Springsteen).

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Re:An Update to Our Event Ticket Reseller Policy by kinkrtyavimoodh on Wednesday February 07, 2018 @10:15PM (#16329898)

There is a lot of human psychology at play here which I find interesting. The fact that people are willing to pay above-face-value for these tickets implies that there IS a market for them, and so it means the face value is underpriced.

However, if the original pricing was indeed the high price at which the market cleared, people would consider it as greed on the artist's part. So we end up in this bizarre scenario where people are happy to overpay a faceless middleman for watching an artist rather than pay the artist themselves.

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Re:An Update to Our Event Ticket Reseller Policy by stephenhuey on Wednesday February 07, 2018 @10:25PM (#16329938)

This was covered very well in the December 6, 2017 Freakonomics podcast. I was very surprised!

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Re:An Update to Our Event Ticket Reseller Policy by michaelt on Thursday February 08, 2018 @05:08AM (#16331240)

  A large number of resellers are directly connected
  to the venue and artist management.

Interesting, I didn't know that.

Where can I learn more?

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Re:An Update to Our Event Ticket Reseller Policy by aiCeivi9 on Thursday February 08, 2018 @07:04AM (#16331607)

http://freakonomics.com/podcast/live-event-ticket-market-scr...

If anyone actually wanted to stop ticket scalping they would put buyers name on tickets and only allow reselling on primary site, for face value. No hi-tech required. This is what train service I use did after people tried to buy all and resell reduced price tickets.

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