My simple solution to stop scalping

The Sandbox General
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If vendors charge market price there will be no incentive to scalp

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We should check out the prices at Happy Hour sometime to ensure fair pricing, :beers:

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You would probably end up pricing out masses of people out that way. Thats usually not what the performer wants per se (they want a wider audience).

Best bet is to simply tie the ticket to the ID of the person who bought it.

And then price it based on “price that reaches a wider audience” for standard tickets.

There will always be VIP tickets, so if you want luxury just pay for it.

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I thought this was going to involve getting rid of razor blades or knives or increasing usage of head protection.

Worst new thread today ever.

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A problem that has already been solved. Ticket vendors (e.g., TM) use dynamic pricing (aided by AI, I believe) to determine demand for seats based on location, then offer to sell at those prices, so they are now competing with “scalpers” like Damone. He’ll be working at 7-11 soon enough.

And, if I wanted to go see a Jimmy Buffett tribute at the Hollywood Bowl (Paul McCartney, The Eagles, etc.) last night, the tickets were less than $100 each yesterday afternoon. I was still not interested, as was apparently a lot of other people. I wasn’t all that enamored of his music when he was alive.

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I thought there was going to be a wide assortment of food.

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Tying tickets to IDs is certainly an idea I can get behind

I’m curious what percentage of tickets are resold/scalped vs used by the original buyer

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Newer artists think this way.
Older artists just want the money they earn by being in demand, and that means scalping the scalpers at their own game.

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For shows I’m not dying to see, I’m a huge fan of buying last minute tickets. We go see KU basketball games using this method.

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And, I think the market should be two-way: have buyers offer prices. I mean, the dynamic pricing works great for the first hour or so of sales (for the artist, that is). But if I’ll buy a ticket for $100, on the conditions of where the seat is, I should be able to put that out there to the market. But I do not believe there is a way to do that (besides on the street, in the 1980’s). It is currently “take it or leave it” from the holder.

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Neil Young’s deal with Ticketmaster on his current tour set up mechanisms to make it impossible to profit by reselling the tickets. They were also very affordable but Neil doesn’t need the money at this stage of his career. My ticket was only about US$60 for his upcoming Vancouver date.

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So does that mean if you buy the tickets, they’re only usable under your TM account? So if you got sick the day of the concert, you couldn’t transfer them to anyone else? I like the safeguards, but that also kind of sucks for people transferring for legitimate reasons.

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Sounds complicated as there are legit reasons why they won’t match… such as gifts.

Or reselling not for a profit. That should be allowed. When my office mate & her wife were on their honeymoon I bought their Portland Timbers tickets at face value. Nothing wrong with that IMO. They went to most of the matches themselves and obviously didn’t buy the tickets with the goal of reselling for a profit. They should be allowed to sell for that one time that they legit can’t go.

I’ve won tickets in charity raffles that were donated by a season ticket holder too. I dunno how you cope with that. I’d also call that a legit use of tickets by someone other than the purchaser.

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I have edited my earlier post to show the details of the TM policy for the Neil Young concerts. In the situation you describe one could still use the ticket by accessing them on the buyer’s TM account. That is actually what I will need to do as my daughter bought the tickets for me.

You could also resell them but only at their face value

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Huge bust up over here in the UK over the use of dynamic pricing in buying Oasis tickets.

Effectively, the prices quadrupled while people were in the virtual queue to buy standard tickets.

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Too bad this is actually (to voters) too important to ignore.

I mean, the people know that Oasis is getting some percentage of this and thus approve of the program, right? (If they’re not then shame on them for being stupid.)

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Dynamic pricing is not illegal in the UK. But the way it was applied (while people waited in the queue) is likely illegal.

They are definitely going to get sued (Ticketmaster) in the UK because they have breached consumer laws.

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Everyone blames everyone else for this but Neil Young worked a solution with TM, etc., on his last tour to prevent it. It can be done but too many folks profit from it.

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I hate that I’m potentially defending Ticketmaster by asking this, but… did Ticketmaster inform people of the price prior to joining the queue, or did people obtain an impression of the price from other sources?

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Price was X when they joined the queue.

Price was 4X when they got through the queue.

And you then had seconds to decide to buy.

Thats not really allowed in the UK.