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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.