10 ms·
How to sell tickets fairly
- ripe 4y agoYes, I think this kind of price-reducing auction would work and would be fair and not user hostile. For Taylor Swift’s tickets, I wonder what the starting price would need to be at a typical Northeast venue like Gillette Stadium…
- hluska 4y agoPearl Jam tried to beat Ticketmaster. At the risk of sounding like the big fan I am, if Eddie Vedder and co. (at their commercial peak) can’t beat Ticketmaster, I’m not convinced that software can. I’ve been pasting this Rolling Stone link since I was in my teens. I can’t believe how old I am… https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/pearl-jam-taking-on-ticketmaster-67440/amp/ https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/pearl-jam-taki...
- pbreit 4y ago"beating" ticketmaster is pretty easy: play at venues that are not locked up by TM. But TM really isn't that bad. There's always going to be a problem when demand far exceeds supply. If you went with pure supply/demand sales rich people would buy all.
- libraryatnight 4y agoDo you go to a lot of shows? Ticketmaster is very bad. Abusive even. Regardless of demand.
- fivre 4y agoTicketMaster has used their market dominance to be display incompetence in customer service with no consequences. Emailed me a "make sure to have your tickets at the show, we mailed them" the day of, sending me into a panic because I hadn't received them. Support was something like an hour-long queue to maybe chat with someone in the Philippines with no info, so I said fuck it and bought another ticket will-call in a nicer section--the show in question wasn't something I'd likely have the opportunity to see again for at least a decade. Got to the venue to discover that I now had two will-call tickets, since that's how I'd originally purchased the first one, but TicketMaster somehow broke that record on their end. Never encountered that level of bullshit from any of the smaller providers. TicketWeb was great when I lived in a market where they were the majority and Eventbrite is fine AFAIK. But now I live in a major market and TicketMaster is the only option for all but the smallest venues. What are you gonna do if you don't like them, anyway? Buy out the venue yourself?
- ssttoo 4y agoRecently I went to see PJ with a friend. I had the tickets but I was going to be late so tried to transfer one ticket. Nope, not allowed. Both of us had to be there with my app. If I wanted to sell it I can but not to a person. I can just release it back at the original price and no fees. So PJ are still fighting the good fight and TM plays along. Unfortunately most artists don’t have PJ’s influence, so probably not an option for everyone to set the rules.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- musicale 4y agoI think I can live with the approach of banning transfers but still offering refunds. Seems like it would make deter scalpers since they'd have to show up at the concert or provide you with a fake ID which might not work.
- pythonaut_16 4y agoWhat about a system where only some fraction of the ticket sale has to present matching ID? Example 1: Limit of 6 tickets per purchase. I buy 6 tickets, I invite 5 friends. I show ID at the door and it doesn't matter which 5 friends I bring with me. Example 2: Same deal, but instead we're allowed 1 "flex" ticket in case someone backs out. Or some proportion allowed as flex. Obviously this still allows scalping, but it seems less attractive for a scalper to have to attend with the people they're scalping to. Especially if you make 50% of the group show ID.
- yehSooBit 4y agoTicketmaster is a logo that represents decades of deal making with venues to achieve the status quo. The only way to defeat it is a RICO case brought by the Federal government, as venues, artists (not all, but many), are collaborating behind closed doors to enable it. I gave up on big acts long ago because of TM and stick to local bars and local bands. Relativity and all that; I’m in a major metro with many cover bands that nail the vibe of the original and novel acts; not lacking options here. YMMV
- neilfrndes 4y agoI too feel that cover bands nail the vibe of the original. I live in a metro, but I've had a hard time figuring out when and where cover bands play. Some bands don't even have a website. How do you find out when a cover band of your favorite artist is playing in your city?
- pas 4y agoask around in the relevant communities (underground clubs, other relevant venues, zines, pubs) usually you end up with a few Facebook links not ideal, but eventually you will know which cover bands are even worth looking out for, and where they would play, so you can monitor sites of the venues
- hiccuphippo 4y agoWhy can't they beat them? Advertise your website, people go to your website and click the buy button, a form shows up to fill their card data. What does Ticketmaster do that is better? Don't they have the same workflow?
- gnopgnip 4y agoMost artists don’t want to charge $20, they want to charge $200 and blame it on someone else. That is a big part of the value proposition for ticket master. And they can allow ticket resale so the artist/promoter gets another cut, so shows sell out faster.
- cortesoft 4y ago> What does Ticketmaster do that is better? A large war chest with which to pay venues for the exclusive right to sell tickets there.
- mason55 4y agoMost major and minor venues have exclusive ticketing contracts. You can sell tickets to a high school gym but if you want to play anywhere that can handle a real crowd you’re stuck with the monopoly.
- larsiusprime 4y agoSo it’s essentially a real estate monopoly at heart?
- pas 4y agomore like monopoly on the venue service. (a place where you have the permit to organize large group events, so proper exits, toilets, accessibility (if required); bag/clothes storage, waiting area, permit to sell alcohol, staff for all this, sufficient electricity connection, HVAC, ability to assemble a stage and the frame for lights and the soundsystem) for example rave organizers in LA can do it in a lot of potential warehouses, because they have the staff & process to get the permits, setup the tech, cleanup, etc. but as the gig grows fewer and fewer venues can host it, and that's how LiveNation managed to consolidate most of the high-capacity venue market and there is efficiency in vertical integration, for everyone involved. what people find atrocious is the lack of cost breakdown transparency. bands and ticketmaster/LiveNation could simply hide everything, display just the actual final price and then distribute the cash according to their actual contracts (which they do anyway) why they anger the masses with this is completely beyond me, but ... after spending a few years on the outskirts of this industry, I think they just have bigger problems, never really understood UX anyways, nothing forces them to do so, aaand it absolutely keeps the conversation on them and not on bands/venues, etc.
- glitcher 4y agoFugazi is a great example, although not as popular they refused to charge more than $5 for their shows. I saw one in a small venue and it was raw and in your face and just awesome. They also didn't want anything to do with merchandising, insisting that if you wanted a Fugazi shirt then go make your own!
- paxys 4y agoYou underestimate Taylor Swift fans.
- etothepii 4y agoWhile this might maximise the amount of money the organisers get for an event it doesn't handle variable fixed costs. That is I might need no capital at all to run my tour if I sell tickets at a highish (but sub-optimal) price early on.
- smachiz 4y agoWhat are the variable "fixed" costs? And when are they incurred? This is about revenue maximization, not user enjoyment maximization or fairness maximization. Ultimately I don't think most artists actually want revenue maximization - they're probably far more interested in fairness maximization in ensuring their fan base of all economic strata get to see them live.
- etothepii 4y agoAs in if I know I will make $1m in sales I might choose to use better audio equipment.
- smachiz 4y agoI don't think anyone would make that decision; the bar for good enough is pretty low, and if you won't get any incremental revenue (no one is selling or advertising on the various parameters of audio quality), why would you spend that money?
- 8note 4y agoIf you're selling out shows at double the price, wouldn't the next step be to reduce the sound quality so you can play cheaper shows with a higher profit?
- etothepii 4y agoThis is a really interesting question. I feel like I see it with airlines all the time. The question that comes eventually though is do people notice and does a culture of penny-pinching trickle down into an inferior product that makes people resent the high price enough that sometimes they won't pay it.
- fparlane 4y agoI wonder if you'd see "bank runs" happen spontaneously as nervous fans see the number of available tickets start to drop, causing a spontaneous feedback loop.
- the_mungler 4y agoHmm, that actually seems quite likely to me.
- projektfu 4y agoCongratulations, you've found the market-clearing price.
- pclmulqdq 4y agoThat's not a bank run or a feedback loop, that's price discovery. Exactly the behavior you want.
- adam_arthur 4y agoI don’t understand at all why prices aren’t raised in these severe demand/supply imbalance situations. Same applies to PS5 etc There wouldn’t be a shortage at all if it were priced appropriately. And scalpers just end up capturing that value anyway
- lotsofpulp 4y agoBecause sports teams and singers need broad audience interest to maintain their brand’s popularity, which can drive things like merchandise sales, future concerts, music streaming, etc. If they simply sold to the highest bidders, the populace at large will stop being fans and they will move onto the next entertainer. In the short term, you might make a little extra from richer people, but longer term you will fall out of popular culture, and the rich will move on or not be sufficient in quantity to maintain as profitable of a following.
- adam_arthur 4y agoThe scalpers grab most of the tickets at open anyway. And I doubt that a very large number of fans are concertgoers at all. How many football fans actually go to the superbowl? I looked it up and it's ~80k, while 100M watch on TV. The cheapest tickets are ~$5000 dollars
- HWR_14 4y agoThere's a difference between "the odds are against you" and "nope, sorry". Even if those odds are extreme.
- s3000 4y agoThere is always the option to change the odds for fans. E.g. offer cheap tickets for members of the fan club and last minute tickets to fans who post the most convincing appeals on social media.
- duped 4y agoThe largest NFL stadium seats about 85,000 people. So you can't sell more than that for the single game. Two years ago they actually set the record lowest attendance due to Covid restrictions - only about 21k were allowed in the building. I believe it's the first SB to ever sell below capacity, and you'd have to go back to the second world war to find an NFL championship that did the same. Also, music is fundamentally better live. Football is not. I say this as an avid fan of both who attends both live.
- allanrbo 4y agoOr how about a lottery system. You get an email if you win the privilege of buying a tickets. Tickets are named and require ID check, to prevent scalpers. If you are unable to go, your ticket just goes back to the lottery pool.
- judge2020 4y agoThey had a Verified Fan system to limit how many could purchase during a presale, but all that really required was being signed up for Taylor's email list and having purchased a Midnights CD from her online store. I think they messed up here by only running one fan presale, since it made them predict how many tickets each person with a code would actually purchase. They probably underestimated this number (eg. from people tagging along with their friend who got into the presale), so they ended up selling way more than they thought they would. I suspect this because, at one point, I had 16k people in front of me for 1 night at Mercedes-Benz[0], which is a lot given concert capacity is probably around 50k. With a two-wave presale (or even "verified fan presale only"), you can put out tickets in even smaller waves and continuously evaluate how many you're giving out based on demand and order ticket quantities. 0: while the queue-it frontend was set up to hide any number above 2,000, the API faithfully showed the actual amount of clients ahead of you in line.
- judge2020 4y ago> If you are unable to go, your ticket just goes back to the lottery pool. This is tough to enforce unless you have a "1/10th extra fee if you don't show up" policy or allow refunds.
- allanrbo 4y agoOh yea I meant they go back to the pool and a refund is issued. This is of course utopic. Just a dreaming about what the most customer friendly and fair system might look like. Will probably never be aligned with what maximizes the profit of TicketMaster.
- patmcc 4y agoThe obvious fix to bots and scalpers is just to not allow ticket transfers - you give your name when you buy the ticket and show your ID at the door. Why this isn't the current process is left as an exercise to the reader.
- justinlkarr 4y agoIn New York State, it is illegal to prohibit the transfer of tickets, which complicates most obvious approaches to stopping scalpers. https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/ACA/25.30 https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/ACA/25.30
- bombcar 4y agoThis appears to mainly apply to season tickets and subscription-based tickets, at least at first glance.
- justinlkarr 4y agoLook at paragraph (c), a little pro-reseller nugget buried in an otherwise very consumer friendly law. That paragraph is the reason obvious anti-scalping practices can't work in one of the US's largest live event markets.
- judge2020 4y agoIf I'm not mistaken, this[0] seems to be a commentary on the law. As I understand it after having read that article, the law seems to be in an effort to encourage reselling by the regular person in case of travel/event plans changing, while introducing fines to prohibit egregious scalpers. However, it seems it's just some fines for these activities, and I can't find any case where scalpers were convicted and fined under this statute (but maybe my Google-fu is weak). 0: https://brooklynworks.brooklaw.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1429&context=jlp https://brooklynworks.brooklaw.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?artic...
- justinlkarr 4y ago
- woeirua 4y agoOr you could just be like Garth Brooks and keep adding shows until they no longer sell out. Boom, problem solved.
- duped 4y agoThere are not enough stadiums in America for Taylor Swift to do this
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- musicale 4y agoAdding shows seems like the best response if it's possible. More work for the artist though, and for the mega-popular (Taylor Swift atm) it might be hard to schedule enough shows.
- mertd 4y agoIt can be less work if they have to travel to less towns in total.
- judge2020 4y agoThey/she added more shows after the initial announcement[0], but they're still in insanely high demand. 0: 11/1 email with 27 show dates, then 11/4 additional 8 show dates, then 11/11 an additional 17 dates.
- Waterluvian 4y agoIt’s a trivially solvable problem to engineers because it’s not an engineering problem. They want all the hype and rush. It’s become a piece of culture to “wait in line.” I once had a company put me in an async queue for months to wait for my brand new gadget. I wish Sony had done the same with the PS5.
- judge2020 4y ago> I once had a company put me in an async queue for months to wait for my brand new gadget. I wish Sony had done the same with the PS5. https://www.theverge.com/2022/4/21/23020823/sony-direct-playstation-ps5-digital-edition-restock-order-queue-sale https://www.theverge.com/2022/4/21/23020823/sony-direct-play...
- Waterluvian 4y ago90 mins after the article was posted it was updated with “sold out”. Was this not a real long-term queue?
- judge2020 4y agoThere was initially a queue to get in the queue. I personally entered the PS Direct queue around October 2021 and was able to purchase one in January 2022.
- conductr 4y agoThe psychology of people waiting and wanting to give relatively large sums of money away is absolutely what's being optimized. The proposal from author is quite the opposite as it encourages waiting or leaves you wondering if you overpaid as a consumer. Probably not the psychology that's best for business.
- bo1024 4y agoI think this is great if your goal is to clear the market at a competitive price. But a lot of artists want to sell tickets below market price. That makes the problem a lot harder. The obvious thing to do is have a lottery, but it's hard to stop people from using multiple identities (especially scalpers).
- danuker 4y agoThese are called Sybil attacks.
- judahmeek 4y agoIf they want to sell tickets below market price, there's not a good solution. If they want some people to be able to buy tickets below market price, then they could use some form of scholarships.
- Ferret7446 4y ago> But a lot of artists want to sell tickets below market price And I want to experience being a dragon, unicorn, billionaire, etc. We can want impossible things, but ignore reality at our own peril. You can't "beat" the market, you just force the market underground (black market, scalpers). The market ALWAYS pays what it can afford. If demand is greater than supply, and someone is willing to pay more for it, refer to Economics 101.
- blowski 4y agoThe market! The market! The market! This invisible beast which controls everything for all eternity! There are always ways of influencing the market. Taxes, subsidies, regulations, advertising. It requires imagination, but let's not feel ourselves enslaved completely to the invisible hand of the new leviathan.
- listenallyall 4y ago"Influencing the market" is just a way of introducing unenforcable or ineffective rules, or unintended consequences. You want to tax resale of tickets at above face value at 100%? Sure. Now enforce it. I mean, it's been illegal in many states for a while now anyway. Back in the day, before the web, anyone who wanted a ticket at face value could get one. You just had to wait in line. For a long time. And back then, people said that system was unfair, because wealthy people could afford to take the day off of work, while poor people couldn't. Or wealthy people could simply pay other people to wait in line for them. And the wealthy people realized, hey, the limit is 8 tickets but I'm going with just a group of 4... I can buy all 8 and sell 4 to people at the end of the line for a profit. And they did! And so waiting in line became fruitless, unless you were really, really, really early, because all the wealthy people (scalpers) would buy the max number of tickets and the show would sell out fast. Now we have the internet and nobody has to wait on a line, everyone can log in at the exact moment, but people once again say this is unfair. The idea that you can somehow ignore, heavily influence, or override the free market in concert tickets is nonsensical.
- the_mungler 4y agoWhy not have a big closed auction? Everyone has a week or so to submit how much they are willing to pay for a ticket. Once the auction closes, sort by price and take the number of seats available. Everyone pays the minimum price that still fits in the seats available. I'm imagining a large scale Vickery auction, sorry if I'm not explaining super well. Everyone pays the same, but people get a price they think is fair.
- elil17 4y agoThe system proposed in this post has the advantage of correctly pricing every seat individually without anyone having to put in multiple bids. The people buying earlier are paying the highest price and get to choose the best seats. Those buying later would pay less but the good seats would already be taken. A Vickery auction would not, I think, lend itself to that kind of price discovery.
- the_mungler 4y agoGood point, but you could address that by splitting up the seats into multiple auctions depending on the quality of the seats. People could even bid "conditionally" for multiple sections, and once bidding closes you resolve the separate auctions in order from best to worst. If a person with multiple bids gets a good seat, their bids in the other sections get cancelled. Seems to me that this could have very similar results as the dutch auction method, but each ticket is more fairly priced. Your ticket costs the same as the next guy, assuming they have a seat in the same section as you. Edit: also, as mentioned somewhere else here, you're likely to have a threshold where everyone wants to buy once they see available seats start to disappear, causing a kind of "bank runoff" where everyone rushes to buy tickets all at once, putting us back where we started.
- elil17 4y agoPeople don't want to do complex bidding schemes. Even Vickery auctions confuse people - look at how eBay has to call their Vickery auction "automatic bidding" to alleviate that confusion. A threshold effect could certainly exist, that would be one issue with that scheme.
- etchalon 4y agoThere is no such thing as a "fair" way to sell anything where demand vastly outstrips supply. There are just choices about what resource you want to prejudice for: money, time or luck.
- barnabask 4y agoThis really made me reconsider my phrasing, and then the basis for my assumption about “fairness”. Thank you for your thought provoking comment.
- elefantastisch 4y agoRight, this is a values problem, not a technical problem. Who should get to see Taylor Swift? How much should they pay? How should profits be distributed? These are philosophical questions. If you assume a particular set of answers to these questions, designing the correct sales process is not difficult. But everyone has a different set of answers.
- jonas21 4y agoIt seems like this would produce the same outcome as Ticketmaster's dynamic pricing. According to this article, fans hate it [1]. [1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7gx34/blink-182-tickets-are-so-expensive-because-ticketmaster-is-a-disastrous-monopoly-and-now-everyone-pays-ticket-broker-prices https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7gx34/blink-182-tickets-are...
- barnabask 4y agoInteresting, thanks for the link. Similar outcomes perhaps. I guess the difference is that the auction clock is public so it may feel a little less arbitrary than an opaque algorithm.
- whartung 4y agoBack in the day, The Who was presenting "Tommy". First time they were doing it live again. The "cheap" tickets were $75. This was a smaller venue. $75 was a bit of money to be sure. Back then you waited outside record stores to buy tickets. You'd line up, and sometime before the sale, they'd come out and hand out numbers, say 1 to 100. Then you'd sort by the number. Then they'd come out and say "We're starting the line at 37". 37 would be the front of the line, everyone else would sort behind that, wrapping around at the back. #36 would be the last in line. When I went to buy Tommy tickets, they were also selling another acts tickets. Since the tickets were so expensive, I went out of my way to go to a lower income neighborhood with the hope that there would be less folks in line to buy tickets, simply due to the price. In the end, I got my ticket and the lady behind me did not. If they weren't selling the other act, maybe she would have made it. When the Rolling Stones with Guns and Roses in LA went on sale, they gave out wristbands days in advance. My spot in line was around the building, the first show was sold out before I got there. The seats I did get were basically lousy when I did get them. That took an afternoon. When I went to buy tickets at the venue, they handed out numbers, but they didn't scramble them. The numbers were random, but #1 was first in line. As soon as I got my number, there was a guy offering to buy low numbers. I had not doubt he was going to buy the 8 ticket limit. He wasn't a fan, he was a professional scalper. U2 tried to sell tickets over the phone in LA, trying to route around TicketMaster. It literally disabled the Los Angeles telephone system for several hours. You'd pick up the phone and not be able to hear a dial tone (I was listening to the modem trying to dial in to a client site). It would take up to 30 seconds to get a dial tone, and good luck getting your call through anyway. Total disaster. Taylor Swift sold out 2M tickets. I don't care what the time frame that was in, that's a boat load of traffic. Think not of the 2M they sold, think of how many were not sold. I think there are few companies that could handle that load, especially something as specific as selling seats A29, A30, A31, and A40 to Bob Jones. Let's see a paper on that locking problem. The production company sets the ticket prices, TM sets the service fees, if you want to save on service fees, go to the venue. I'm not defending TM, they certainly don't need me, but it's been an intractable problem for a long, long time, at all sorts of levels. If you think TMs fees are bad, try StubHub.
- zetsurin 4y ago>Taylor Swift sold out 2M tickets. I don't care what the time frame that was in, that's a boat load of traffic. Think not of the 2M they sold, think of how many were not sold. Shopify did 3.1M sales per min last year during peek season https://www.shopify.com/ca/blog/bfcm-data https://www.shopify.com/ca/blog/bfcm-data. There's more contention for this use case, but I don't think this is as an intractable problem. I do think an alternate model like the post proposes would greatly help.
- musicale 4y agoI think one reason why artists don't take the Dutch Auction approach is that they want to recruit new fans, including kids who might not have much money. They also probably don't want to be seen as greedy. In the absence of some system that prevents resale, scalpers will likely still buy up all of the Taylor Swift tickets before they drop to a price that is affordable for these less-affluent fans. The bots will likely still win if they can determine how many tickets are left and how fast they are selling.
- mhb 4y agoI don't see why the Dutch auction doesn't address your concerns. The starting price can be higher, the price drop can be non-linear and third party software using the concert's API can serve customers by providing them with the same information scalpers would have.
- SeanLuke 4y agoDid you see the part about selling to kids who don't have much money?
- bombcar 4y agoThe solution there is to play at more venues, or play at more crappier venues.
- conradludgate 4y agoIf the kids didn't buy at the time, that means they didn't buy them before when the tickets were more expensive. Which means that also wouldn't be interested in buying the more expensive scalped tickets either. Put into context: Tickets are $30 - kid doesn't buy them next day Tickets are $29 - scaler buys them before the kid The kid has already decided that $30 is too much. For the resale to be worth it, it would need to be more than $1 gains, but that is more than the kid has already associated the value to be
- Cederfjard 4y ago
- underyx 4y ago> Two buyers might try for the same exact seats at the same moment, but that is much less likely in a slow single-bid auction like this Well except that everyone would try to grab the very last ticket, which would be the cheapest.
- alar44 4y agoIt's straight up supply and demand. I have no idea why anyone is surprised why scarce goods are expensive. Their is no solution. Idk unless you want to socialize entertainment or something. Give out entertainment credits.
- dsalzman 4y agoMake it a lottery. A toy example, instead of selling 10,000 tickets that sell for $1000 sell 500k “lottery” tickets for $20 each. A lucky 10,000 get to the concert. The artist/venue makes the same amount. Everyone gets a chance at seeing the artist for a reasonable price. Would work for very popular artists with young fans like T Swift. Lottery tickets would need to be non-transferable as well.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- function_seven 4y agoNon-starter. Fans would hate the uncertainty, and most of them would end up spending $20 and getting nothing for it. Also you have to navigate gambling laws in all the different states, provinces, and countries you're selling in. And you also lose the freedom to bring a different friend if your original date drops out. The Dutch Auction idea in the article is actually really simple and cuts out the complexity that comes with transfer limits, ID-must-match rules, etc.
- mosseater 4y agoAn NFT solution to ticketing seems like it would be trivial given how NFTs operate already. One ticket could be verifiably owned by one person. If that person wanted to resell the ticket, there could be restrictions on how much they could sell it for. If bots can't make a profit there's no use in buying out all the tickets. It would also decentralize the space. Sure you need a marketplace for the NFT tickets, but that could easily be a open source software suite that the venues themselves host. Gas price will probably be a lot less than ticketmaster fees. Honestly it seems like the biggest problems here are that Ticketmaster in particular has a huge sway in the current venue and artist market, having contracts that require an artist or venue to exclusively use their ticketing system.
- pclmulqdq 4y agoNFTs actually can't algorithmically restrict transfer prices or algorithmically take fees. The fee taking that happens today is done by an exchange as a courtesy to the "artist." This is one of the limitations of the NFT model.
- thrtythreeforty 4y agoI was under the impression you can run arbitrary code in the blockchain?
- pclmulqdq 4y agoNot even close. You are very much limited by what each chain's VM allows. The bitcoin VM is extremely limited. The EVM lifts most of those limitations. All of the VMs have a fee you pay based on the complexity of your program, too. You are also limited in what cryptography you can do because all of the data involved has to be public - so no private keys can be involved in that computation if you want them to stay private. Take the example of transaction fees on sale of NFTs. A lot of NFT creators wanted to be able to take X% of the sale price of NFTs as an ongoing royalty. Here's how that might have to happen if you did it algorithmically: 1. You initiate an NFT transfer that requires the creator's signature to be processed 2. You pay a fee to the creator and provide proof of the purchase price to get them to sign the transaction 3. The creator signs your transaction, completing it This step involves trusting the creator to do (3). You cannot automatically do (3) without the creator's private key being on-chain. Note that if it were a flat fee, there would be no problem - the transfer transaction would be able to auto-deduct the ETH from your account and move it to the creator's, but the variable fee creates problems.
- iopq 4y agoOr, you release tickets for auction starting from 6 months prior slowly. Whatever the auction price is, that's what they are sold for. Start with the best seats, then the auction results might inform buyers how to bid on the next seat.
- wskish 4y agoHere is the system that the Grateful Dead developed to bypass Ticketmaster BITD: https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~mleone/gdead/faq/tickets.html https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~mleone/gdead/faq/tickets.html
- wombat-man 4y ago- Digital only tickets - By default, the tickets are not transferrable. Use your app on your phone to get in. - You can pay a fee to make tickets transferrable/scalpable. - The fee increases as more tickets are sold with this option (set ceiling on max number of tickets with this option sold) So okay, you want to scalp tickets, you have to pay more and people who don't want to transfer pay less.
- StingyJelly 4y agoI don't like that idea. First, personally, I'll rather pass than install that app. Second, it would need to heavily rely on device fingerprinting and obfuscation to give scalpers hard time trying to modify the app. Software protection will likely fail anyway when both scalpers and people buying from them have aligned interests. Even if the software protection holds, the price of second-hand phones may be too low compared to price of the tickets, so the "transferability fee" has a practical ceiling, especially since the phone can be sold again afterwards.
- wombat-man 4y agoreally? I already use axs and ticketmaster apps for tickets. Are you using pdfs or something? The app is nice because it rotates the barcode every minute, and idk how else you'd achieve that. I guess a webapp could work. I don't think you need to rely on device fingerprinting, just make sure they're logged into their ticketing account. You might see people start to sell accounts with single/pair tickets but that just sounds like a pain, and we could mitigate it if it becomes a problem.
- Marsymars 4y agoThat works in one sense, in that it reduces demand overall. I used to go to lots of shows; any time there was a show I was interested in, I’d check the online used goods marketplace 2-72 hours in advance and see if I could get tickets below face value. Often I could. Sometimes I couldn’t, and I wouldn’t go to those shows. As the result of the move of big shows to digital-only tickets, I’ve just stopped going to big shows. I just go to local venues where I can pay in cash on entry.
- somehnacct3757 4y agoI don't get what this has to do with combating scalping. This is just a new auction game to play. It levels the playing field for a time, as all new games do, but the scalpers will eventually win it. In this case the game is to find X where X is the percent of concert goers willing to pay scalpers. Then you buy the bottom X% of tickets for the current price and list them for more money. This is easy to do because the auction site tells you the number of remaining tickets. Since there's no supply of auction tickets left, scalpers can now set the price. And since they paid the lowest price out of any of the ticket holders, they hold all the power.
- mabbo 4y agoThe idea is that everyone willing to pay more than $X for tickets bought their tickets before the scalpers can buy it for $X.
- somehnacct3757 4y agoX isn't the price in my solution it's the percent of concert hopefuls who will hold their nose and pay a scalper. Once there's exactly that many tickets left, there's no point running the auction anymore. Scalpers should use their bots to completely buy up all remaining tickets, as they do now, and then set them for a higher price on the secondary market. Buying the first 1-X% tickets nearly guarantees you will pay more than the scalp price except for a thin band right before X where the prices are within the scalper's margin. Basically this system only beats scalpers if everyone is richer than scalpers, which most concertgoers are not. If you're rich you might like the sound of this new system on paper but it's actually cheaper for you to stay with the current system and buy all your tickets on the secondary market.
- pclmulqdq 4y agoWait, they didn't choose to buy a ticket at the price the scalpers got (plus epsilon), so why would they pay more when the scalpers come around with a ticket?
- whall6 4y agoAs an artist, connect with your top listeners on Spotify / Apple Music and give them a onetime use link to buy $20 tickets and allocate the rest of the tickets by auction.
- Apreche 4y agoTalk about fair distribution all you want, it doesn't matter. People who buy tickets are not the customers of Ticketmaster. Ticketmaster does not have any incentive to implement any system that better serves the people who actually attend ticketed events. The customers for Ticketmaster are venues. That's the only party that Ticketmaster cares to please. Of course Ticketmaster wields their monopoly power such that venues have little choice but to go with them. But even if they did not do that, Ticketmaster serves the interests of the venues very very well. If you want to defeat Ticketmaster with a market solution, you can't do it by creating a Ticketmaster competitor. No matter how good it is, venues can't be swayed. You will have no customers. The only market solution is to own venues. As a venue owner you could refuse to renew with Ticketmaster and use any other system you wanted. Of course, if you do that, good luck booking anyone to perform in your venue. It better be a big famous one that they can't ignore.
- langsoul-com 4y agoThis isn't fair to those who can only afford standard priced tickets. It will maximise profits, but is not fair. Other platforms do waves, split across time zones. That would distribute the load to prevent crashes.
- pclmulqdq 4y agoThe current system isn't very fair to those people either. Professional scalpers act like high frequency trading firms (some HFTs are ticket scalpers), and employ tens of thousands of dollars worth of computer equipment to get those seats before the poor rubes who hoped for standard priced tickets. By contrast, an auction system actually levels the playing field by removing the technological advantage. They don't have to run a Dutch auction specifically, other kinds of auctions exist too.
- 8note 4y agoThe technological advantage is meaningless though. Anyone wealthy enough can set up the same tech solution, so it's just as fair. The wealthiest get the tickets in both cases The unfairness remains, in that who gets to go to the concert is decided by who can spend the most in going to it. If fairness is what you care about, any auction system is irrelevant
- jwithington 4y agoWorked in the sneaker resales world. Artists, sneaker companies, etc., are all aware that the Dutch auction could solve the problem. But they choose not to pursue because of reputational/brand damage. It’s a shame!
- justinlkarr 4y agoNorthwestern University uses (or used) a version of this for their basketball team, which they call "Purple Pricing". https://blogs.cornell.edu/info2040/2022/10/25/sports-ticket-pricing-dutch-auction-method/ https://blogs.cornell.edu/info2040/2022/10/25/sports-ticket-... https://hbr.org/2013/05/any-business-trying-to-sell https://hbr.org/2013/05/any-business-trying-to-sell
- ljw1004 4y agoIn what sense is this solution "fair"? What definition of fairness is being used? This seems like a solution where rich people get the good things and poor people don't. I wouldn't call that fair. In a democracy, everyone has an equal weight, an equal say, in the governance of the country. We often call that fair, or sometimes just. In capitalism, every dollar has an equal weight, an equal say in what gets produced or built or done.
- dojomouse 4y agoIn the case of transferable concert tickets that’s already the ‘solution’. Even if someone ‘poor’ is lucky enough to beat the odds and buy a ticket under the current system at the initial offer price, they still have the same opportunity cost to weigh up - it’s just they’re deciding whether to resell their ticket and realise a gain, or go to the concert and forfeit the gain. This proposed system would be fairer in that it would at least deliver whatever the maximum amount a rich person is prepared to pay to the artist, rather that some scalper intermediary. Those at the lower end of the willingness-to-pay spectrum are no worse off, except to the extent that you think they’re disproportionately lucky, disproportionality motivated (which I accept is possible), or are themselves looking-to/willing-to scalp tickets. It also seems however that it’d be pretty trivial to just prohibit resale of tickets and require ID at the venue. Artists/promoters might make less money but it’d preserve equality of access and largely eliminate scalping.
- 8note 4y agoWhat it doesn't include is the maximum an artist is willing to accept for a ticket
- iambateman 4y agoI like the idea of demand pricing as a way of increasing access but I don’t think it would work in practice. Too many people would be thrown off by the falling price, and want to wait. Friends who bought earlier than other friends feel like suckers for spending more money on the same thing. Lastly, what we call scalping _is_ a service to the ticket-buyer. The scalper is providing a market for the ticket at a price which is agreeable to the buyer. Dads love to complain about the “high” price of a ticket while they stand in line for $15 popcorn. Meanwhile, scalpers effectively do the work described in the article by adjusting prices very quickly based on actual demand. As an event gets close to starting, unsold inventory drops precipitously in price until it’s sold. The reason scalping has a bad reputation is that most entertainment pricing is set well below the actual value of the event.
- billyt555 4y agoTicketmaster could have done everyone a huge favor by simply staggering the sales for separate dates a bit and not trying to sell tix for every show all at once.
- timpetri 4y agoI feel like Dice.fm already solved this. You can buy an untransferable ticket and if you cant go, you simply return it to a wait-list of people who have signed up. You get your money back, and they pay the same price. Maybe there are some transaction fees involved but overall this eliminates the ability for someone to buy just to sell?
- romdev 4y agoJohn Oliver had an expose of all the things I already knew about how corrupt Ticketmaster is. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_Y7uqqEFnY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_Y7uqqEFnY
- littleJeck 4y agoI could imagine the Dutch auction would only change the strategy of scalpers, besides being a massive money grab for artists, venues and ticket master. The strategy for scalpers now appears to be get in as fast as possible and buy as many tickets as they can. But if we can assume the event will sellout completely and there is sufficient demand (e.g. Taylor Swift which I think I read would need to do 900 concerts to meet the initial demand) then scalpers could still win. Scalpers would just need to set a desired amount of tickets to buy and attempt to buy them at the last possible moment. They will get the tickets for the cheapest price for the event and could then sell them for a markup. I think people would buy the scalpers tickets since they may have been waiting to see how low the prices can get, or they are able to obsess over remaining ticket numbers like a bot could and just missed out. The only benefit I could see to the Dutch auction is it increases risk to scalpers by making them pay larger prices and get the last pick of seats, but only for events with allocated seats. So maybe instead of half the tickets for an event being scalped, they may only have the risk appetite for 10% of the tickets.
- fredophile 4y agoSome artists and promoters are already doing a money grab and hiding behind scalpers to do it. For big shows, a portion of the tickets may be removed from retail sales entirely and go straight to websites that are used for scalping tickets [0]. This let's artists be seen as offering tickets at reasonable rates while getting closer to market rates. [0] https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vox.com/platform/amp/the-goods/2019/7/22/20703858/live-nation-ticket-resale-scheme-metallica-billboard-report https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vox.com/platform/amp/the-go...
- matai_kolila 4y ago> Shameless plug: I understand how to make and launch exactly this kind of system, at least technically. If you want it built, please contact me. I cannot roll my eyes hard enough - if you can, then do it already. Why the hell do you need the encouragement?
- TaylorAlexander 4y agoI think they mean "if you want to pay for it".
- matai_kolila 4y agoIt costs nothing but time to build the service. His hesitancy is a red flag for potential partners.
- barnabask 4y agoApparently not. Some have already reached out.
- matai_kolila 4y agoI seriously doubt that.
- TaylorAlexander 4y ago“nothing but time” Time is expensive though…
- matai_kolila 4y agoIt is not, not if you can build this system on your own. Demanding you be paid for your time to build this demonstrates you aren't convinced it's a profitable idea, which is a huge red flag to potential investors.
- 4y ago
- Nursie 4y agoYeah this doesn't feel "Fair" to me. It would likely reduce the scalping problem, sure, but it also introduces a whole lot of "Well this is the price I want to pay, but what if it sells out? Should I stretch and pay more?" type feelings. Maybe scalpers get in around this "stretch" point and then when there are no tickets left at all, people realise they really want to go and stretch a bit further to buy from the scalper. As others have pointed out too - this really selects for wealth. As someone with a decent income, I might get to go and see all my favourite bands, but lower income folks might be priced out of the market entirely (which they already are by scalpers to a greater or lesser extent).
- duped 4y agoSomething not talked about here is that there's a finite number of seats that can be sold for all the tours in the year. At a smaller scale, look at Broadway productions. There are 41 "broadway" theaters in New York, each with between 500-2000 seats performing 8 shows each week. Ballparking because I don't have the exact numbers, that's a total number of tickets you can sell of under about 350,000 tickets for all broadway shows that can be sold each year. Even if you include all the touring and local productions of shows in cities, there are not enough theaters to meet the demand for live musicals and plays (and while locally, shows will underperform and not sell out, and there are periods of downtime between shows changing, it's still capped). Now these massive tours are limited in a similar way. There are only a few dozen arenas that can seat tens of thousands of people year round, and only so many nights they can operate. But unlike those shows, a single production team can't "own" a venue for months at a time. So they need to tour, which is about the most expensive way to get a production of that scale off the ground. Moving a production and staffing it throughout a tour is so expensive that guaranteeing the endeavor is profitable is still difficult - many of the "biggest" tours with sellout crowds across the country have been financial disasters. Basically my point is that the issue isn't just in fairness in ticket sales. It's lack of venues. Which makes sense. If we had cities operate like Las Vegas, and have venues that put on high profile shows for months at a time with residencies, the access to the shows might be (paradoxically) improved despite being hyper local. If you can guarantee a low risk/profitable production and rely on people traveling to the show (which many do! look at broadway - people can and do see shows affordably with the highest cost being the plane ticket) then the problem might be better mitigated. Or maybe not. I'm not an economist, but the point is that the supply problem goes a lot deeper than people trying to buy tickets at the same time.
- buro9 4y agoThe proposed idea is a technical one that doesn't work for the promoters or artists or venues. The promoters want to know very early whether the venue is the right one for the number attending and whether to upsize, add dates, or even to go the other way to a smaller venue. The time to book a venue is very long... So they need as complete data as they can about sales as early as possible (they would love if 80% of the tickets that will sell can be sold in the first week - as then they can quickly make a decision about whether this is the right venue and if more dates are needed). The artists want to enable as many fans to get in as possible, including young and poorer fans... Who tend to be more evangelical about an artist and drive their growth more and ultimately are more loyal and spend more over the lifetime of being a fan. They are poorer but more sticky. The artists also want to play to as full a venue as possible as that is the best atmosphere. The venues want to have surety in their bookings (see the promoter dilemma as to whether to change venue) and for the capacity to be as close to full as possible as they will make more revenue from bar and food sales than from pure ticket sales. All of these... All of them... Are not solved by the technical solution proposed except when it doesn't matter... When you're absolutely sure you're going to sell out. In which case you also don't need to change anything or invest in anything new because you're going to sell out anyway. There are solutions that can threaten the current model... But this blog is not one of them. In fact, the idea that "I have more money and deserve more to have a ticket over someone that doesn't have as much money" is antithetical to the thinking of every artist I've ever worked with.
- kjrose 4y agoFor music or artist based shows I agree. However this could work really well for sporting events. The Leafs usually sell out all of their tickets and a good number to scalpers, having at least a more legit way to buy tickets for a game would be helpful
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- mahkeiro 4y agoIf you are sure to sell out you want to invest in such a system as this is the best way to extract maximum money from your fans. You still have a chance to sell out in the first days for multiple time the usual price. This system is not used as it will be seen very negatively by fans.
- poopsmithe 4y agoYES! I love this concept. The big clock featured in the post was described in a Tom Scott video[1] earlier this year. It's the Royal FloraHolland's flower auction in Aalsmeer. Fascinating to see how it worked then and how it works now. Same concept, just computerized and accessible remotely by bidders. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAdmzyKagvE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAdmzyKagvE
- GrumpyNl 4y agoThe biggest problem is ticket scalper. We have developed a ticket system with personalized encrypted tickets. When you are not able to go the event, you to give your tickets back at us and we will refund the money. Because the tickets are personalized and encrypted, you can not swap them.
- kqr 4y agoHere's an even simpler method, that's actually more fair because it doesn't bias toward those with big pockets or much time or technical skill: Open up for registration. Keep registration open until the date of the show. Registration costs the price of the ticket. As the show comes close, for as long as there are tickets not sold, randomly select some people every day who receive a ticket. On the day of the show, refund -- with interest -- the money of the people who were never offered a ticket. I've never understood this obsession with first come, first served for extremely limited resources. Due to technical limitations it pretty much always turns out to be a lottery anyway, and we would save both customers and sysadmins trouble by explicitly turning it into one instead. (Back in the days when it required camping outside the ticket office, it instead unfairly favoured those with lots of time on their hands, and/or lots of money.) (I'm assuming "fair" here means that everyone has an equal chance, uncorrelated with any other aspect of their life. A random selection is the only method that can guarantee this property.)
- blowski 4y agoI need to buy non-refundable hotels, train tickets, childcare, plus book time off work. Finding out whether all that's necessary with a few hours notice doesn't work. If you could do something like this for some large proportion of the tickets, and give a month's notice, it might work.
- FateOfNations 4y agoPrepayment isn't required. You'd could give folks a few days after winning tickets to make good on their payment. Many people would put down a credit card, and it would only be an issue for them if it was declined, etc.). Tickets that aren't paid for would be added back to the next batch of tickets to be distributed (or if close to the date of the show, sold at the door).
- punnerud 4y agoIn Norway you are not allowed to sell the tickets to a higher price, than the listing price. You can actually go through with the buying from a third party, and demand a refund for the additional price afterward (and keep the ticket)
- onion2k 4y agoStarting at $2000 for a concert where demand outstrips supply to the point where people will pay $4000 to a ticket scalper just means the minimum ticket price will be $2000. All the tickets will still sell out immediately. The audience will be entirely made up of wealthy people, or people who are willing to break the bank to see Taylor sing. The only "fair" way to sell a good that's in high demand and you want everyone to have the same level of access regardless of their background is a lottery. Tell people what the price is, let them apply for tickets, and sell to people at random. Scalping can be stopped by not allowing people to transfer tickets to other people - people should get a refund in full and their tickets get resold to other people in the lottery if someone changes their mind. The obvious problem with the lottery approach is that it entirely fails to maximize profit. Personally, if I was selling tickets, I'd just not sell them "fairly". Accept that tickets are a luxury item, like Ferraris.
- aetherson 4y agoI think the point is, you start at the maximum price you think any significant number of people will pay. If that's $4000, it's $4000.
- detaro 4y agoIf you want your marketing signaling to be "this artist is for rich people, normal people have no chance to see them anyways", sure. Many probably don't want to do that - indeed the strength of the lottery system is that it does signal the opposite.
- MichaelZuo 4y agoNo, they would also advertise the descending nature of it, so if they book a big enough venue, there won't be that much demand at $4000 to sell it out. So the price will descend down to more affordable levels. Of course if the biggest venue isn't big enough to do that, then that's more of a problem of the local facilities, or the artist's decision to play in an area with inadequately sized venues.
- tromp 4y agoHow about an auction of lottery tickets where the price is fixed but the probability of winning increases over time? Still identity verified so that each person can buy only one ticket and if they win they must attend themselves.
- wanderingbort 4y agoI will start to sound like a broken record soon but blockchain has provided a wealth of information about “fair” distribution games and their downfalls. The NFT summer of 2021 saw first come first serve distros gamed by parties with superior network positioning. Dutch auctions (from the article) strongly favored the wealthy buyers not fans or parties who “pay” with other things of value like their time. Lotteries were easily games by sock puppets. Lotteries with “strong” identity verification created grey markets for identities. Think about mechanical Turk but peoples task is to get a lottery ticket and remit the winnings. People tried social credit systems where participating in community activities like discords earned you the spot in line. Again, services arose to farm these spots. Fascinating microcosm of human behavior. I agree with commenters that suggest refundable non-transferable tickets however, for goods this scarce where a secondary market is valuable, I don’t think we have a simple good solution.
- 8note 4y agoThe block chain imposes limits that ticket sales don't have. The cost of meat space sock puppets is much higher than coming up with a billion secret keys
- bluelightning2k 4y agoHard not to read this as "I have a lot of money. I shouldn't have to wait in line with commoners!" Sorry for the almost political comment but that's how it hit me
- barnabask 4y agoThat was not my intention, sorry. Thanks for your perspective.
- e12e 4y agoMeh. I like the Fusion Festival raffle system better. Allow people to sign up to buy, optionally as a group (all/none "win") - then randomly assign "purchase rights". The main downside might be the need for ID checks to verify no scalping. https://tickets.fusion-festival.de/faq/#faq-12 https://tickets.fusion-festival.de/faq/#faq-12
- mrozbarry 4y agoThis isn't to be argumentative, but life isn't fair. This article discusses how to make buying a Taylor Swift ticket fair, meanwhile there are much larger social issues, like homelessness. I'm not a concert guy, and all the more power to those who do enjoy it, but it's absolutely a luxury to those that want to go.
- alexchamberlain 4y agoIs the algorithm proposed fair in that sense? I'd argue it isn't anyway.
- e-clinton 4y agoThis model assumes that everyone is just sitting around paying attention to your concern tickets. If I see your prices are $2000/seat, I will just find somewhere else go spend my $300.
- tamaharbor 4y agoIs Taylor Swift that good? I must be very old.
- jethkl 4y agoYes. "As of 2022, Swift has broken 84 Guinness World Records, of which 13 times she broke her own record or regained it, and 74 remain unbroken." [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_awards_and_nominations_received_by_Taylor_Swift https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_awards_and_nominations...
- jethkl 4y agoWeird that this got downvoted. In response to "Is ${artist} that good?", I link to an objective list of awards and accolades showing that ${artist} is very good at their job. Compare Swift's success against the Beatles, Dolly Parton [1,2] or anybody else, and it's a very strong showing. If you don't like the art, that's a completely different matter. But in the sense of whether Swift is good in the way that matters here, the answer is clearly, "Yes." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_awards_and_nominations_received_by_the_Beatles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_awards_and_nominations... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_awards_and_nominations_received_by_Dolly_Parton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_awards_and_nominations...
- Euphorbium 4y agoInteresting how there is absolutely none of this problem in Europe, as tickets are tied to an ID and there is no reselling or scalping.
- dottedmag 4y agoIn Estonia, Germany, Malta or Iceland? I have never had a ticket tied to ID anywhere in Europe.
- leejo 4y agoWe attended a few gigs in Italy this summer. Two of them we bought tickets first hand, they were indeed tied to a name with ID required. Was ID checked? Nope, of course not. One was a medium sized venue (3000), one a stadium, and one small (c. 300). Tying to an ID is a nice idea in principal... Another gig we bought tickets second hand, the seller had to go through the original site to return their tickets and then we could purchase them (I wrote a script to poll the site to find available tickets as they had sold out quickly). Did they check our IDs? Nope, of course not. Requiring ID and having to return the tickets to the original site for resale is probably the optimal solution. But in reality if IDs are not checked it pretty much falls apart.
- throwawaaarrgh 4y agoBurning Man-style ticket sale systems require a lot of extra workflow features, like a waiting room, ticket claim, raffle selection, identity confirmation. They have multiple phases of sales where the price increases. They have hardship tickets, if you can prove you simply can't afford the normal price. Resale for above original value is not allowed, and if you're reported the ticket may be forfeit and original seller banned. You can transfer a ticket to another person using their ticket management system, and I imagine you could also "sell back" your ticket to be given away at the box office as hardship tickets. Most people do buy as many as they can and sell or give away the extras to their friends or people on forums looking for tickets. While controversial, it is nice to go to an event with your friends, and it does feel like you're helping strangers who are interested enough that they hunt around on forums for a ticket.
- Spooky23 4y agoI have an idea. Hire a bunch of lobbyists to advocate legalizing scalping, then allow the biggest monopolist ticketing middleman to setup the largest resale marketplace. Then, we act surprised when “hackers” somehow are able to defeat the anti-bot systems and resell (with another set of fees) bulk quantities of tickets on said resale marketplace.
- TarasBob 4y agoThe process needs to be modified slightly. Everyone should end up paying the same amount for the ticket in the end. Those who bought early should not be penalized. When the the last ticket is sold, everyone should pay the same price as the last ticket. So when you buy early, you are just indicating the Maximum price you are willing to pay. There should also be an option to automatically place a bid once the price reaches a certain level. That’s the most fair way to auction off a bunch of identical things. Another modification I would add to this is that let’s say 20% of the tickets should be sold for very cheap using a lottery system. So that not only the richest people could go to the concert.
- TarasBob 4y agoAlso, if the artist doesn’t want to maximize their profits through this auction mechanism, the extra money received should be donated to charity.
- TarasBob 4y agoThe mechanism should also include the possibility of figuring out the optimal venue size in advance. I’m not sure what’s the right way to modify it in order to accomplish this goal.
- fedeb95 4y agoDepends of the definition of "fair". To me, giving away infinite free tickets to interested people and then extract with a uniform distribution would be fair. Of course you need to provide some kind of ID and go at the concert with that. Comes the problem of fake ID, but that seems negligible.
- SergeAx 4y agoI have a very valid question: if this method was used to sell tulips in XVII, how it can be patented in 2020?
- FateOfNations 4y agoProbably something specific about applying it to concert tickets and/or over the internet. In the US, patents are good for 20 years, so a patent expiring in 2020 would have been issued during the dot-com bubble. Also, although the patent office does review the applications, they aren't perfect: it isn't uncommon for patents to be invalidated if they are challenged or there's a lawsuit.
- zelienople 4y agoIt's not the ticket system that is broken; it's the people. The problem with stadium tours is that 95 percent or more of the seats are awful. They provide an extremely poor concert experience. The sound is very bad for most of the audience. Many technological innovations in stadium sound have tried to address this, but the underlying physics has been resistant to an acceptable solution. The visuals are even worse. An enormous fraction of the audience cannot resolve the headliner on stage as a result of the size of the performer and the distance to the viewer. The visuals then devolve to the viewers ability to see an enormous television screen. So why would anyone want to go to a stadium show, if not for the visuals and the audio? It comes down to human competitiveness. Bragging rights. Ingesting mass media nonsense about how a product or experience will make one feel, and then disgorging it to a peer group as a method of creating an artificial distinction between the "haves" and the "have-nots". Taylor Swift, in particular, has been a genius at creating hysteria among her fans. They have ingested the idea that, if Taylor is in town, and you are not there, then you are a resident of the outer, miserable, darkness. The truth, however, is that if you attend a stadium show, the only positive aspect is that you "were there". You will not see, hear, or in any meaningful way, experience the object of your hysteria. You will be packed into a seat with a group of strangers also experiencing a mass-media induced mental derangement. The foregoing may lead you to believe that I am not a fan, but you would be wrong. My opinion was formed by the experience of going to all the Taylor Swift stadium tours, up to a certain point. What changed was that I stopped fighting Ticketmaster at one point. I opted out and did not buy a ticket. However, I still wanted to go to the show. All seats were prohibitively expensive on the secondary market; good seats, even more so. There were two shows in my city on subsequent nights. The first night, I watched prices on the scalper sites and I discovered that, in the last few minutes before the start time of the show, prices for even the best seats tumbled dramatically. This was simple economics; unsold seats are a cost that subtracts from overall profit. It makes sense to dump them for any amount, even at a loss. The second night, I waited until the price for a single front-row seat fell below the original price of the least expensive seat anywhere. I bought it, printed my ticket, and went to the show. This was a transformative experience because I was literally a few metres from the stage. I could get out of my seat and stand by the barricades and see and hear as if the show was at at my neighbourhood folk club or an open mic night. I then turned around, with Taylor directly behind me, and I could see the view of a packed stadium waving lights and singing along, just like what those on stage would see. I learned the difference between what the few who had the money or influence to obtain the best seats experience, and what the great majority of stadium show concert-goers endure. I was cured. I have never, since that day, had any desire to attend a stadium show or buy a ticket for a standard seat in any large venue. Unfortunately, it isn't really practical to educate a significant fraction of fans by demonstrating this. Maybe there is a technological solution, though. If we could arrange for people to have a feed from a front row observer in fully immersive VR, we could perhaps recreate enough of the experience that the rush to purchase a grossly substandard product would diminish. There are probably significant economic forces that would oppose this (Ticketmaster, obviously) because education is often the enemy of mass-market driven capitalism. The longer-term solution is probably to recognize that the innate social behaviour of humans has been exploited to our total destruction by those who would hoard all wealth for themselves, and to begin another great eugenics experiment: breeding selfishness, conflict and the tendency to self-destructive herd behaviour out of the human genome, But that is beyond the scope of this discussion.
- stevage 4y agoInterestingly a major band I saw last night, Crowded House, just came out against any kind of demand driven pricing, and forced TicketMaster to refund all premium ticket charges.
- milderworkacc 4y agoWhat a lot of the comments in here are bumping up against with regards to “fairness” is the fact that willingness to pay is a function of both preference intensity and ability to pay. The way to make sure TS tickets go to the biggest TS fans is to remove the influence of ability to pay and sort only by preference intensity. Solving wealth inequality fixes this problem entirely - among others! Edit: like all good economists, I leave solving that particular bit of the problem as an exercise to the reader.
- wkdneidbwf 4y agoa dutch auction seems neither fair nor in line with how artists would want their tickets sold. sure, some artists may want as much money as they can make but surely the majority want their fans to be able to see them affordably? at least, i hope.
- asurty 4y agoI think ticket master attempted to do something similar to what you were saying as mentioned in this freakonimics podcast - https://freakonomics.com/podcast/why-is-the-live-event-ticket-market-so-screwed-up/ https://freakonomics.com/podcast/why-is-the-live-event-ticke... I believe the problem they cited with this approach is it provides a poor UX where someone would have to keep checking the site to see if the ticket price has hit their desired target. It would also still leave room for bots front running although still a better solution since the effects are dampened. Still, it's a lot easier for a bot to watch for a 'good price' to come up than a 'true fan'. Perhaps to get around that there could also be an ability to make automatic purchases for a user once the ticket price reaches desired target? Something like a batch auction that randomizes winners in a cohort might work. There are also people working in this area that would like to simply prevent resales. The problem there is it also might discourage purchases since people might be more reluctant to make such a big purchase if there is no way to recoup their money in case something happens that prevents them from going. Perhaps another alternative to discourage scalping is if there was an identity system that requires each ticket holder to prove their identity. That, however, would also decrease the UX dramatically and would be a tough sell. But maybe the time is right to make such a hard sell?
- type-r 4y agoSetting aside the issues that revenue maximization is not typically the only (or even the main) concern for those selling tickets, I still think this system isn't very good. One key issue is that it assumes that the underlying value of the tickets themselves does not change over time (in the article's specific case, 6 months). But an artist's popularity can be extremely unpredictable, and over the course of 6 months could change drastically. This would likely mean leaving money on the table, especially if that rise in popularity comes close to the actual event date. I think a better approach that could deal with this would be to avoid trying to come up with the 'max' and 'min' amounts and instead simply let people submit bids for how much they are willing to pay for tickets. You would pre-authorize that amount at order time, but it wouldn't yet be deducted. At the end of every day, the top n bids would 'win' and actually actually purchase the ticket. In the simple case where the artist's popularity stays the same over time, this would probably result in a similar outcome to OP's suggestion. But if the artist undergoes a big increase in popularity, the ticket price would rise again to a much higher value later.