[blhack]

The bmorg completely disenfranchised large parts of the community with a "ticket lottery".

Earlier this year, we were seeing theme camps with something like 10% "success" rate in the lottery, and a lot of the major camps weren't going to be able to go.

It was only through a last-ditch effort, cancelling a second lottery and giving the tickets to "established" camps that they were able to get some of the major theme camps to go.

The lottery played heavily in the favor of scalpers, who very obviously exploited it to their own gain, and this was something that the community had been screaming up and down about since the lottery was announced last year.

[mhartl]

It's not the scalpers who are to blame. It's bmorg (and the broader Burner community) that's at fault for ignoring basic economics and human behavior. Everyone with a rudimentary understanding of game theory saw the whole mess coming a mile away.

[blhack]

The broader burner community (hi!) were the ones screaming at the borg that this was a terrible idea. They didn't care.

[mhartl]

Some screamed about the lottery, but capping secondary sales at face value is a deeply entrenched (and, in my view, terribly misguided) part of Burner culture.

[blhack]

Please explain why capping secondary sales is a terribly misguided thing...

[btilly]

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_ceiling for a basic overview.

This stuff is literally economics 101 supply-demand curve material. When you artificially cap the price too low, you create shortages and a black market.

Economic theory says that what you should do is set up an auction where everyone says how many tickets they want to buy and the maximum price you're willing to pay. The bids are sealed so nobody knows what the price will be until the auction is finished. Sort the bids by price (breaking ties by how fast you put your order in). Everyone actually pays the highest price that anyone not getting a ticket was willing to pay.

Economics and game theory says that the stable equilibrium for this type of auction is for everyone to honestly report the maximum price they are willing to pay. If everyone does then everyone who got a ticket is either indifferent or happy about getting the ticket at that price, and everyone who did not want a ticket would indifferent to happy about not buying a ticket at that price.

Theory assumes that people's opinions about how much they would pay don't change as the event comes closer. This assumption is, of course, wrong. But I do not know of a more fair strategy than this one.

[blhack]

Everything you just said assumes that there is never a secondary market.

There is. That is the problem. Nobody cares about spending $400 for a ticket. To burners, that's a very tiny price to pay to get "home" for a week, and is a tiny fraction of the overall cost of the trip.

If we can figure out a way (like, hello, names on tickets) to make the tickets non-transferable, then figuring our a reasonable price isn't an issue at all.

--

The burning man ticket problem is logistical, not economic.

[jes5199]

It's easy to blame scalpers, but I'm not convinced they're a major component of the shortage.

Lots of large events sold out this year much quicker than usual: the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, Penny Arcade Expo, and others.

I think that the recession is less of a concern for many of us this year, so there's pent up demand being used. Add a lottery to increase the sense of urgency, and you get a lot more people registering for tickets. Not scalpers, just people who haven't been going every year.

[batiudrami]

I had no idea how bad the scalping situation was in the US until I tried to get tickets to a Lollapalooza aftershow (I live in Australia, and am going to Lolla as a part of a holiday).

I waited up late to get tickets, was on at exactly 10am Chicago time, suffered a website crashing hard and, within 15 minutes, the gig had sold out. Defeated, I went to bed (it was pretty late in my time zone).

Next morning, I got up, and there were 400+ tickets for sale on StubHub. For a 1300-person venue. Even if 100% of scalped tickets went on sale, on one website, within 10 hours of the event going on sale, that's still 30% scalping rate. If anyone is wondering, it was Childish Gambino at the Vic Theatre.

Now, I agree that part of the solution is to charge more for tickets (and I'm used to it - a lineup like Lollapalooza's would be impossible in Australia - tickets to a RHCP gig alone go for $150+). However, by allowing scalping to this extreme, Scalpers can buy 10x$30 tickets and sell only 2-3 of them at a ridiculous price to superfans and still turn a profit, leaving the rest unused. Everyone loses except the scalpers.

Big festivals in Australia print your name and date of birth on the ticket, and either only allow you to resell the ticket back to the festival (at cost), who then on sell it under a different name, or charge a fee to change the name on the ticket so that resellers are at a disadvantage. Both have their disadvantages, but both are better than the current situation in the US.