Funny but I find concerns about scalping to be baffling. I'm concerned only with 1) what I pay or get paid and 2) what I get or offer for it. No subsequent transactions are any of my concern.
Fair point! I think it’s driven by the market dynamics of concerts. Outside of adding more tour dates, supply is fixed and substitutes are imperfect.
With that setup, it’s possible to create artificial scarcity by buying up supply and marking up tickets. It’s hard for the artist to fully capture that value themselves, because they have reasons to avoid price maximization (avoid bad press, secondary reputation benefits from selling out, fan loyalty, etc).
15 years ago a scalper had to sit outside of the venue and sell you a paper ticket, adding friction and limiting the scale of resale. Today it’s digital and instant, which allows scalpers to capture more of the consumer surplus that used to go to fans buying underpriced tickets (The big idea: bring back paper tickets).
People generally hate having their consumer surplus captured, especially by some random intermediary. Gotta deveop the slap machine to fix it.
LOL. I gotta say this is great- they way scalpers quadruple the price of broadway tickets makes it hard for the public to enjoy art, and really rips off the artists.
If anyone is being ripped off it's the fans. The artists chose deliberately to underprice the tickets to fill up the venue, fill it up with non-rich folks, and to avoid looking greedy. They would get the same amount of money with or without scalpers.
Why not just tie a person’s name to a ticket at the point of sale? If the name doesn’t match, then the ticket is invalid.
Or, make the punishment for purchasing a scalped ticket especially high, if enforcement can’t be placed on the person scalping. Some countries have made it illegal to pay a kidnapper’s ransom, not just the act of kidnapping. It’s of course completely reasonable for someone to pay money to save a family member who’s being held hostage, but if it becomes impossible for them to make that payment, it severely disincentivizes the act of kidnapping in the first place.
If we did that then we couldn't build the slap machine?
But actually, I do think that there's probably a benefit to having some resale market - people do get sick, have emergencies, etc. The problem is bigger when it becomes institutionalized by organized actors.
I love the comparison of ticket scalpers and kidnappers - you're right that this is totally a collective action problem. Banning payments is actually sort of a similar solution to the slap; you're targeting the easier to access person (the buyer/kidnapee) to try and change the behavior of a hard to reach supplier (scalpers, kidnappers).
Funny but I find concerns about scalping to be baffling. I'm concerned only with 1) what I pay or get paid and 2) what I get or offer for it. No subsequent transactions are any of my concern.
Fair point! I think it’s driven by the market dynamics of concerts. Outside of adding more tour dates, supply is fixed and substitutes are imperfect.
With that setup, it’s possible to create artificial scarcity by buying up supply and marking up tickets. It’s hard for the artist to fully capture that value themselves, because they have reasons to avoid price maximization (avoid bad press, secondary reputation benefits from selling out, fan loyalty, etc).
15 years ago a scalper had to sit outside of the venue and sell you a paper ticket, adding friction and limiting the scale of resale. Today it’s digital and instant, which allows scalpers to capture more of the consumer surplus that used to go to fans buying underpriced tickets (The big idea: bring back paper tickets).
People generally hate having their consumer surplus captured, especially by some random intermediary. Gotta deveop the slap machine to fix it.
Hahah. This is the content we need
LOL. I gotta say this is great- they way scalpers quadruple the price of broadway tickets makes it hard for the public to enjoy art, and really rips off the artists.
If anyone is being ripped off it's the fans. The artists chose deliberately to underprice the tickets to fill up the venue, fill it up with non-rich folks, and to avoid looking greedy. They would get the same amount of money with or without scalpers.
Why not just tie a person’s name to a ticket at the point of sale? If the name doesn’t match, then the ticket is invalid.
Or, make the punishment for purchasing a scalped ticket especially high, if enforcement can’t be placed on the person scalping. Some countries have made it illegal to pay a kidnapper’s ransom, not just the act of kidnapping. It’s of course completely reasonable for someone to pay money to save a family member who’s being held hostage, but if it becomes impossible for them to make that payment, it severely disincentivizes the act of kidnapping in the first place.
If we did that then we couldn't build the slap machine?
But actually, I do think that there's probably a benefit to having some resale market - people do get sick, have emergencies, etc. The problem is bigger when it becomes institutionalized by organized actors.
I love the comparison of ticket scalpers and kidnappers - you're right that this is totally a collective action problem. Banning payments is actually sort of a similar solution to the slap; you're targeting the easier to access person (the buyer/kidnapee) to try and change the behavior of a hard to reach supplier (scalpers, kidnappers).