This is Hacker News. The poors don't matter here; only profit.

What good is that when the scalpers and not your fans are the ones to benefit? All you're doing is screwing your fans even more because now they have to risk getting ripped off by a scam since tickets are only available from shady third party jerks.

If demand is so high that people can't afford tickets and you want to do something for the fans, put the game in a bigger stadium.

Because it is the scalpers charging that price and not the artist so people get angry at the scalpers and not the artist.

So hire some designated middleman to wear a villain mustache and claim to be taking a huge cut on paper while actually giving all of the money back to the artist under NDA.

This has to be what TicketMaster is doing, right?

The theory seems to be that they give the money to the venue instead of the artist, which causes the artist to not have to pay for the venue. Which is totally different, as you can imagine.

Indeed. And don't let the discontent and trouble-makers confuse you with smart-sounding phrases, like "money is fungible".

> It has been long known among industry figures that artists regularly move tickets through backdoor channels to directly profit from resale marketplaces while shunting blame to “scalpers” when fans are unable to get tickets at face value. Ed Sheeran’s management admitted the practice itself just last year, while rumors have swirled about other big names doing the same via their own held-back tickets that fans never have a shot at. The same regularly happens with professional sports teams.

> Barry Kahn, of Texas-based dynamic ticket pricing consultancy Qcue, doesn’t believe artists should be judged for using tactics including scalping their own tickets (or it’s newer twin, “Platinum” and dynamic pricing to demand). “The issue is the transparency,” he told Billboard. “If they get caught doing something they have said is wrong, then they are deceiving their fans.”

> In this specific instance, Billboard says that Metallica’s management moved up to 4,400 tickets per show over 20 concerts on the tour through intermediaries, masking the process by packaging the tickets as if they were held back for a sponsor.

- https://www.ticketnews.com/2019/07/live-nation-admits-artist...

Take it worth a grain of salt, I have no idea how true it is but it's at least a plausible explanation as to why artists may not want scalpers eliminated.

As opposed to alienating fans who don't know how to use bots, or fans who don't have the time to buy tickets the moment they drop, or fans who are unlucky.