[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.