[mdni007]

Rant: Trying to buy tickets for the Knicks game at MSG. Is it really impossible to have a ticketing platform that prevents scalpers from marking up prices to an insane amount?

$10000+ for a ticket that originally costs around 2k should be illegal. Most of these tickets will go unsold I'm sure.

[canucker2016]

It's not impossible - in Ontario, it required a law. Resale ticket prices capped at original ticket face value.

see https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/ontario-ticket-resale-cap-e...

[secabeen]

> $10000+ for a ticket that originally costs around 2k should be illegal. Most of these tickets will go unsold I'm sure.

I'm not so sure. See this article in the Washington Post where multiple season pass holders they talked to sold their seats for $5k+ quite quickly: "His tickets fetched more than $8,000 each within the first few hours of going up."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2026/06/08/knicks-seas...

[drdec]

> Most of these tickets will go unsold I'm sure.

The tickets have already been sold. These postings are for resales.

[emodendroket]

No, they will not go unsold. People aren't buying up $2,000 tickets and then trying to resell them at prices where they will lose their investment.

[SoftTalker]

If there is demand for tickets at $10,000, then people will find a way to sell them for $10,000. Any regulation that would somehow prevent that would only make it even more impossible to buy ticktets due to shortages.

Games and concerts are luxury goods. If you can't afford to go, don't go.

[solumos]

Without regulation, yes. Brokers (i.e. scalpers) will buy up tickets to events and take all of the risk off of TM’s plate, and reprice however they’d like. ~80% of tickets in the U.S. are sold this way. Stubhub has done a great job of lobbying for this since their existence depends on ticket brokers.

[Grombobulous]

In my opinion, the scalping problem isn't really the primary problem with Ticketmaster's monopoly. Scalping is just the result of a gap between sale price and fair market value.

I also think that many of the things Ticketmaster could do to stop scalping would build further walls around their monopoly. To me, a ticket should generally be like a piece of a paper that has right of first sale. I don't want a situation where Ticketmaster has the right to hold my tickets hostage (which they're already doing quite a bit of with digital tickets).

As it relates to the resale market, Ticketmaster's main sins are:

- Making it impossible to engage in a safe secondhand ticket marketplace outside of their own platform. It would be technologically trivial to implement some kind of pre-purchase mechanism for buyers on third-party sites to verify the authenticity of resold tickets and ensure ownership gets transferred upon successful purchase, but the only real mechanism is transferring tickets somewhat blindly via email accounts. E.g., I go to StubHub and pinky promise that I'll transfer my tickets to the buyer via the Ticketmaster account when they pay, and the buyer pinky promises they won't fraudulently report that the ticket wasn't transferred. Ticketmaster could easily implement some kind of technological solution to having a more open escrow market that helps keep third-party transactions secure. There could be a buy/sell/trade API that they open up to providers like Venmo, Cash App, Zelle, PayPal, etc. But they keep it all within Ticketmaster to maintain that monopoly.

- Double-dipping on huge transaction fees on their own second-hand market. The only truly safe place to buy second-hand tickets is Ticketmaster (see above), and they take excessive fees far outside the realm of a fair transaction fee.

It's really the artists, vendors, promoters, teams who control the side that prevents scalpers from leaving seats empty. For example, I recently went to a concert where the artist/promoter simply didn't turn on ticket resale at all. I assume this was done to keep more hardcore fans in the seats rather than giving people temptations to sell.

You saw $10,000+ prices for a ticket, but the Knicks game will be filled all the way. It's just overpriced for now until game time gets closer. Or, perhaps $10,000 is just the fair market value. The building only fits 19,000 people inside. New York City has 350,000 households with over $1 million net worth.

Manhattan Scalpers won't leave unsold seats to a game like this, but they will try to offer prices far above fair market value until they figure out what that fair market value is.

It's also a situation where we either have to accept that New York City has a lot of wealthy people bringing up the fair market value, or the team has to decide to sacrifice revenue to enhance the fan experience (e.g., do a ticket lottery + named tickets that must match your ID).

[drdec]

> Manhattan Scalpers won't leave unsold seats to a game like this

In this situation, it is unlikely that is it scalpers with the really desirable court side seats that fetch the highest value. It is season ticket holders and people with connections. The price you see is essentially, "it's going to cost you this much to make me miss watching my team in the championship".

For the other seats that were available to the general public, sure, it's likely scalpers as with any other event.

[Grombobulous]

Great point, I totally forgot about that angle.

I used to have season tickets to a team with a championship drought. Those priority season tickets were sold pretty close to regular season pricing.

Someone offering me $500 or $1,000 wouldn’t have been enough to stop me from going.

[DANmode]

> Most of these tickets will go unsold I'm sure.

They go to the cousin for $3k two hours before game time, worst case.