[Liquix]

scalping at scale is objectively evil. the scalper's bread and butter is exploiting the buyer's noble desire to support their favorite artist, make memories with friends, meet strangers, or have a transformative experience -- all for the sole purpose of financial profit.

people will never stop wanting these things, so scalpers will never stop making money. it's just a deeply gross thing to do

[toomuchtodo]

If you sell a ticket with no ability to transfer it, this stops scalpers. Certainly, it destroys secondary value of access to the event, but there are always tradeoffs.

Edit: @margalabargala Great idea.

[margalabargala]

There are ways to address that easily.

Imagine, after a show is sold out, the ticket seller creates a waiting list. As long as the waiting list is longer than 0, anyone who purchased a ticket and no longer wants it can get a full refund.

Now you have tickets which are not transferrable but without removing the ability for people to access the event.

[mattmaroon]

Right so the issue then becomes: how do we make sure the person at the concert is the person who purchased it. Are we IDing everyone? (We could, but now you (the promoter) are spending much more on gate agents to support a feature that probably cost you money.)

Do we tie it to your ticketing account? Ok fine, the scalpers just sell whole accounts.

Do we tie it to your phone? If so, scalpers get a really cheap Android to send the e-tix to. That’ll cut out the flippers on the less hot tours, but probably just make Taylor Swiftc resales more expensive. And what about people who get a new phone between ticket purchase time and the show (a lag of often several months).

Also you now just helped the scalpers every time they misfire. No more eating 30% on stubhub and selling below market!

It’s not a bad idea but it’s not as trivial as it sounds.

I personally think a better idea is to just break up live nation. This is a problem that could easily be solved if the venue owner, promoter, and ticket agent aren’t all one company.

[toomuchtodo]

Many years ago, when I purchased tickets to Nine Inch Nails concerts through their fan sales, they tied the ticket to the name on your government ID. And yes, they checked IDs. This was the cost of preventing scalping of premium tickets.

Some venues mandate facial recognition to get in [1]. I am not supportive of such corporate surveillance, but to rebut your comment, identity solutions exist to dissuade scalping, and some are in active use today. Even if you break up Live Nation, scalping will occur for events if profit is to be made.

[1] https://www.marketplace.org/2024/10/23/facial-recognition-th...

[mattmaroon]

Right, it’s a cost, and the people who’d have to pay it are Live Nation, who make money off the current system. So we’d be asking a corporation to pay to reduce its own profits.

That’s the sort of thing that only happens after a settlement with the government. Which, in the case of LN, is 100% what needs to happen.

[hansvm]

I have a blanket policy of rejecting venues adding extra terms and conditions (facial recognition, ids, ...) after I've already paid. If they want to do that, they need to at a bare minimum make it plain and obvious when you're purchasing the thing, or at an even barer minimum mention the egregious terms somewhere in the legalese associated with purchasing.

The corporate surveillance angle is also important, but IME 0% of these companies bother to explain that the thing they advertised when they took your money isn't the thing you actually have access to.

[stevage]

I'm surprised that people think that id'ing is a big deal, considering you get your ID scanned when going to a nightclub these days.

[hughesjj]

Also most large concerts, especially if it's not all ages

[mattmaroon]

Large concerts rarely ID and are almost always all ages in the US. (Source: I go to 30+ a year, don’t think I’ve seen one ID.) Gate agent staff would have to be significantly increased.

It’s not unfeasible by any means, it just would cost money, and promoters like the scalpers. Most of the failures mentioned in this article involve a scalper buying tickets that would otherwise have gone unsold, and even for a show that would sell out eventually, LN gets the cash earlier and then maybe even gets a cut of online resale.

[lmz]

Having better ID verification for concertgoers versus voters sounds very American.

[neilv]

How about partial refund? (For example: 90% refund when the event is a week away, 66% up to 3 days away, 33% up to 24 hours away, 20% up to 3 hours away.)

[taffer]

Yes, otherwise for ticket owners who are not sure if they will make it to the concert, waiting until the last minute to request a refund becomes a dominant strategy.

[EasyMark]

It could be solved as simply as an app that requires verified ID and limited amount of tickets transferred, but that’s probably too simple for the Megabrains at Ticketmaster.

[DrillShopper]

The US airline industry requires you to pay more to transfer a ticket or get a refund. Do the same for concert tickets.

[NeoTar]

I generally go to low cost events (<20 USD) and sometimes buy tickets speculatively (eg at a date/time when I’m not sure I’ll be able to make it).

It’s surprisingly hard to let many venues know you won’t attend and the tickets can be reallocated, even if you don’t expect / want and refund!

[racketracer]

It's much easier to just resell

[grujicd]

It doesn't have to be like that. There are valid reasons you have to resell your ticket. There is a way to make it work without scalpers - ticket provider can provide resell platform and force that tickets are sold at purchase price.

This was the case in David Gilmour's concert in Rome a month ago. TicketOne.it has their own resalle site fansale.it. Good business for Ticketone as they also take a fee for resale, good for sellers because they have a safe way to sell if something comes up and they can't go. Good for buyers because they know these tickets are valid, and price is the original one.

[seb1204]

I believe Ticketmaster or Ticketek do this already and earn now double their fees. When they first sell it and when they handle the secondary resell on behalf of the first buyer. Most of their tickets are digital now.

[hnburnsy]

One issue is that the promoters and artists are getting a cut of the resale.

[qeternity]

It has nothing to do with morality.

Price is one way to allocate scarce resources. History suggests it is the least worst.

But why, morally, should someone who had the free time to sit in a queue, or was lucky enough to win a lottery, be more entitled versus someone willing to pay 10x what someone else is? Scalpers facilitate this. I don't have time to try to get face value tickets. But I work hard in a good job and I have disposable income. So I can, effectively, pay a scalper to do this for me. Am I less deserving of a ticket?

The reality is that the vast majority of secondary market supply comes from artist/venue/promoter related parties. Taylor Swift cannot price tickets at $5,000 because it would be a PR nightmare. So she sells a small amount publicly, which are snapped up by scalpers who know the true price is much higher. And TS quietly sells a ton more at these true prices while saving face.

[stevage]

> Am I less deserving of a ticket?

This is literally a question of morality.

[qeternity]

It's called a leading question.

I am, imho, not less deserving, and therefore it's not a moral issue.

[GrantMoyer]

> But I work hard in a good job and I have disposable income. So I can, effectively, pay a scalper to do this for me. Am I less deserving of a ticket?

No, but you're not more deserving either.

[greenie_beans]

you should read some blake or wordsworth to balance how much you read lesswrong.com

[qeternity]

Nice. Have never read lesswrong once in my life.

[greenie_beans]

sorry for my snark but for real you might find "notes from underground" by dostoevsky a good read

[chrismcb]

Why is it objectively evil? Is it because the consumer pays more? Is it because the artist and venue don't make as much as they could? I didn't like scaling, but I don't consider it evil.

[DrillShopper]

> exploiting the buyer's noble desire to support their favorite artist, make memories with friends, meet strangers, or have a transformative experience -- all for the sole purpose of financial profit

Buddy, what do you think Ticketmaster is doing?

[hughesjj]

Plenty of shade to throw around, Ticketmaster+livenation sucks too.

[racketracer]

If you believe that fans that put in time are more deserving than fans that pay then this is correct.

[EasyMark]

This sounds a lot like Ticketmaster’s goals as well.