the reason ticket scalpers will never go away is that they provide a value added service, allowing people access to an event at a late date when they care more about the event than the money. You may not like that, you may think only true fans of an act who plan ahead should get to see the act, but the people who own the tickets don't feel the same way you feel, and they sell their tickets to people who have the right combination of more money and more desire to see the show.
My sister was coming to visit me in NYC, she's a huge Red Sox fan, I bought her and her friends Red Sox Yankees tickets, they had a blast. I was happy to have done it. The tickets were expensive. I got value for my money.
ticket scalpers are no different than stock brokers, I go to them when I want to buy shares of Tesla, and I have to pay the market price. They are the people who are willing to sit there and wait for my transaction without knowing if I'll ever show up, an activity that I don't want to engage in and I'm happy to pay them for it.
Ticket scalpers used to provide significant value. They provided liquidity in the market. If you wanted to get rid of some tickets you bought because you couldn't go anymore, you could sell them to scalpers. If you wanted last minute tickets to a popular event, you could buy them from scalpers.
But now that the venues manage their own secondary sales, the scalper is just extracting rent.
it is not extracting rent to sell something at the market price. They are engaging in almost riskless arbitrage because the OEM for the music or sports event sees some value in nominally pricing the event below market.
My sister was coming to visit me in NYC, she's a huge Red Sox fan, I bought her and her friends Red Sox Yankees tickets, they had a blast. I was happy to have done it. The tickets were expensive. I got value for my money.
ticket scalpers are no different than stock brokers, I go to them when I want to buy shares of Tesla, and I have to pay the market price. They are the people who are willing to sit there and wait for my transaction without knowing if I'll ever show up, an activity that I don't want to engage in and I'm happy to pay them for it.