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Ticket Scalping and How It's a Lose-Lose Situation
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Author:  ben laden [ Sun 03-15-2009 3:35PM ]
Post subject:  Ticket Scalping and How It's a Lose-Lose Situation

Trent Reznor explains his stance on Scalpers/Re-sellers

Really interesting read. It's awesome how Trent is so inside the music business but always gives his fans (and everyone else) a window inside.
You almost never see this amount of willing transparency with celebrities.

Author:  bagvwf [ Sun 03-15-2009 5:03PM ]
Post subject:  Re: Ticket Scalping and How It's a Lose-Lose Situation

Why does it have to be this way? What's so wrong with letting the market decide the price for shows and sporting events, and letting the band or the team owner or whoever retain some/most/all of the added profit? If the hottest seats sold at the prices that the market for those seats would bear, the show takes in more, and "scalpers" have less motivation to sell at what outsiders consider an inflated price.

Here's the thing, though. A company's stock works exactly the same way. The company sells stock exactly one time, for face value, at its Initial Public Offering. It's like Google offering stock at $75/share on its IPO, and one week later the stock price is around $600/share. Google didn't get that extra $525 per share. Investors did. It turned out that the market was willing to bear the price of Google stock all the way up to $600 a share. If Google had offered stock for $150 instead, the company would have doubled its capital value with no extra effort. But how is it somebody else's fault that they didn't take advantage of an opportunity?

So when people do this with stocks, it's capitalism, Americanism and a Good Thing. But when people do this with tickets, it's theft.

How?

Author:  benm [ Sun 03-15-2009 5:38PM ]
Post subject:  Re: Ticket Scalping and How It's a Lose-Lose Situation

bagvwf wrote:
Why does it have to be this way? What's so wrong with letting the market decide the price for shows and sporting events, and letting the band or the team owner or whoever retain some/most/all of the added profit? If the hottest seats sold at the prices that the market for those seats would bear, the show takes in more, and "scalpers" have less motivation to sell at what outsiders consider an inflated price.

Here's the thing, though. A company's stock works exactly the same way. The company sells stock exactly one time, for face value, at its Initial Public Offering. It's like Google offering stock at $75/share on its IPO, and one week later the stock price is around $600/share. Google didn't get that extra $525 per share. Investors did. It turned out that the market was willing to bear the price of Google stock all the way up to $600 a share. If Google had offered stock for $150 instead, the company would have doubled its capital value with no extra effort. But how is it somebody else's fault that they didn't take advantage of an opportunity?

So when people do this with stocks, it's capitalism, Americanism and a Good Thing. But when people do this with tickets, it's theft.

How?


Stocks are heavily regulated. There is a very liquid market for stocks.

Author:  ben laden [ Sun 03-15-2009 7:42PM ]
Post subject:  Re: Ticket Scalping and How It's a Lose-Lose Situation

bagvwf wrote:
Why does it have to be this way? What's so wrong with letting the market decide the price for shows and sporting events, and letting the band or the team owner or whoever retain some/most/all of the added profit? If the hottest seats sold at the prices that the market for those seats would bear, the show takes in more, and "scalpers" have less motivation to sell at what outsiders consider an inflated price.

Here's the thing, though. A company's stock works exactly the same way. The company sells stock exactly one time, for face value, at its Initial Public Offering. It's like Google offering stock at $75/share on its IPO, and one week later the stock price is around $600/share. Google didn't get that extra $525 per share. Investors did. It turned out that the market was willing to bear the price of Google stock all the way up to $600 a share. If Google had offered stock for $150 instead, the company would have doubled its capital value with no extra effort. But how is it somebody else's fault that they didn't take advantage of an opportunity?

So when people do this with stocks, it's capitalism, Americanism and a Good Thing. But when people do this with tickets, it's theft.

How?


It's not theft at all, it's just bullshit is what it is.

Fine, I'll play along. So we let capitalism take over and let the price be set by equilibrium supply and demand.
There's going to be a smaller supply of tickets at a very high price and larger supply of tickets at a very low price.

However, these expensive tickets are going to be the very close tickets and most likely pit area, whereas the cheap tickets are going to be far away and, in Reznor's words, you'll need binoculars to even see the band.

However, we need to remember that these equilibrium price points aren't the whole story. We'll have some people that have the money that will pay it. Fine. But many people who can't afford to pay the higher price point for great seats just won't bother because they don't even feel like paying a low price for an unsatisfactory experience. I know this first hand: I've seen Nine Inch Nails 3 times in the past and the time that I was at the other end of the arena wasn't exactly fulfilling. Why does seeing the band matter? Because the energy you feed on from a concert is both audio and visual (and for some people involves flailing around and bumping into each other; to each their own).

So the point here? The lower priced seats will sell, sure--at least assuming economics doesn't fail us. But the band will alienate a lot of fans with their greed (again, as Reznor mentions). And that's why it's not about it being theft--it's about it being bullshit. If the band actually cares about having fans and thanking those fans for supporting the band, they'll try to do what Reznor does and ensure that true fans can get great seats without breaking the bank.

Author:  LostBoyz [ Sun 03-15-2009 7:51PM ]
Post subject:  Re: Ticket Scalping and How It's a Lose-Lose Situation

its why 311 day are all general admission, the people who want good seats get there 24 hours in advance

Author:  dannyboyfx [ Sun 03-15-2009 8:59PM ]
Post subject:  Re: Ticket Scalping and How It's a Lose-Lose Situation

Or why real fans stand in line to see the midnight showing of a movie. And cocks hire a man at 15 bucks an hour to say they were there. you reward the people willing to go through hell because they love you, and you punish the people that just want to brag. Seems american enough for me.

Author:  bagvwf [ Fri 03-20-2009 4:10PM ]
Post subject:  Re: Ticket Scalping and How It's a Lose-Lose Situation

I can live with that. Good points.

Author:  ben laden [ Fri 03-20-2009 4:37PM ]
Post subject:  Re: Ticket Scalping and How It's a Lose-Lose Situation

Wait, what? Someone conceded a good point and left it at that on an internet forum? What the fuck is going on here?

:wink:

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