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by 317070 27 days ago
Named tickets, like airplane seats?

Sorry, I only thought about this for 5 seconds, but there are markets where scalping doesn't cause issues. We could look at those.

6 comments

This is the answer, Ive seen it in practice. You just have to show id at the door when your ticket/QR gets scanned as normal, and the names have to match. Obviously only works for over 18 events though, unless you purposely sell under and over 18 tickets seperately.
On the other hand, airplane ticketing is also notorious for stuff like overbooking flights with the assumption people won't show up and then in the rare circumstances where too many do show up, forcing people to give up their seats (in some cases even by force). I don't disagree with your thinking, but I'm hesitant to consider "what airplane tickets do" a good model for just about anything.
Concertgoer Bill of Rights - get bumped? Massive stipend, hotel room, free VIP ticket in future, & transportation+entry to a partner venue in the city with other music.

They haven’t all universally built in overbooking as a critical part of their competitive price structure or whatever, and we can stop it before it starts.

EU version for flights: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Passengers_Rights_Regulati...

Fair enough, I might just be extrapolating from a few of the larger American players in the industry.
Oh could’ve mentioned we’d have to fight so hard for that hypothetical legislation… your point was totally right
I still appreciate your point here too though; when I'm concerned about a hypothetical change in a system ending up negative in the long run, failing to account for existing precedents for mitigation is something I want to be corrected on
Still have the issue of transferring tickets to friends or such if you can't make it. Axios and some providers handle this.
Anything requiring transferring "to friends" will be attempted to be used for scalping of course.

I suppose if we're requiring showing ID to attend anyway, it's not a lot worse to add an online ID verification step in order to be allowed to be a "sender" in the transfer system, and an identity is only allowed to have like 5 distinct "friends" in a rolling 12-month window.

Part of me thinks that Ticketmaster/Live Nation probably makes so much money from their own in-house scalping operation that they don't want to fix any kind of scalping problems for fear they would be somehow obligated to not participate themselves.

> Part of me thinks that Ticketmaster/Live Nation probably makes so much money from their own in-house scalping operation that they don't want to fix any kind of scalping problems for fear they would be somehow obligated to not participate themselves.

My dad used to joke about how many signs he'd say at baseball games saying scalping is against the rules but somehow hearing loads of StubHub ads whenever he would listen to a game on the radio.

Transferring tickets to friends is functionally indistinguishable from scalping
The problem with scalping is scale. A single person reselling a single ticket is completely fine, because that is not a viable business model for enough people to distort the market. Just limit the number of tickets someone can buy to 3-5.
A scalper just pretends to be 200 different people. With 200 different emails and 200 different credit cards.

Limiting the number of tickets someone can buy doesn't protect against scalping.

Or they just hire other people to move tickets around.

It works at a small scale: 5 people, 5 tickets each, and $100 profit on each seat after everyone else gets paid? That's not so hard to keep track of, and it brings in $2,500.

It also works at a larger scale: 50 people. 5 tickets each, and $100 profit on each seat? Keeping that all in-line is definitely sounding like Real Work, but it also sounds like a tax-free $25,000.

isn’t scalping selling at profit? if i sell to a friend at the same i paid it’s not really scalping …
Yes, but you can't know if the transfer happens at a profit. You can always ask the person to pay you extra on top of a "monitored" transfer.

UEFA limits this for football games by allowing you to purchase only two tickets and changing only one name, and the two tickets must go together. Or you sell back the ticket to the organization and they sell it back to random fans.

Would need to provide a decent refund system alongside named tickets, offering quick and easy refunds for maybe 10% cancellation fee.
Handle it the same way airlines do. If you think you might not be able to go, then pay extra for a refundable ticket.
If you "can't make it", you just have to eat the loss. True fans will make it.
True fans don't have any loved ones fall ill? Or get called to work against their will?
If something happens to your family, maybe the last thing you should think about is grieving that you lost some juicy, juicy money on tickets which you couldn't use?
I've missed concerts due to delayed/cancelled plane flights or other booked transportation.

Darn, guess I'm not a true fan or I would've booked a private jet.

It's not your fault. But it's not their fault either. It's the same for events as for most other reservations: You don't get your money back if you miss it.
My first thought is a bunch of 12 year old girls that want to see Taylor Swift. They won't have national IDs. On the other hand, how does it work for children's airline tickets? Again, they won't have national IDs, but we know that children fly all the time -- with and without their parents.
This is how all the big video game conventions do things to prevent it, it’s very effective.
Some festivals work just like that, you upload some ID when buying your ticket which they see when you enter the venue. Feels really nice and stress free.