The Wall Street Journal had a story on Friday about a lawsuit by Ticketmaster against a ticket scalper.
IAC/InterActiveCorp’s Ticketmaster earlier this year filed a federal lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles against RMG Technologies Inc., a small Pittsburgh-based company that runs TicketBrokerTools.com. According to papers filed with the lawsuit, RMG rents to scalpers software that can inundate Ticketmaster’s computers with thousands of requests for seats, “in effect allowing them to cut in line,” according to Joe Freeman, a Ticketmaster vice president.
Last month, Ticketmaster filed a motion for a preliminary injunction that would prohibit RMG from selling such software; Judge Audrey B. Collins is expected to rule on the motion this month.
[…]
The Internet era has brought speed and convenience to all sorts of consumer transactions. For concertgoers, however, it has also led to ever-faster sellouts for hot events. Ticketmaster deploys technology that is supposed to stop brokers from gaining access to large numbers of seats via online sales. But it says brokers’ software circumvents the company’s protections.
That has placed large numbers of seats in the hands of brokers who use eBay Inc.’s StubHub, Craigslist and other online venues to resell the tickets at a big mark up.
One situation roiling consumers involves the 54-concert “Best of Both Worlds” tour in which singer-actress Miley Cyrus is performing sets as herself and as her fictional alter ego, Hannah Montana. Parents and children have found finding tickets for the shows difficult and expensive. The issue is drawing the attention of government officials. On Thursday — in a rare Internet-age example of authorities enforcing antiscalping laws — the attorneys general of Missouri and Arkansas filed lawsuits against people accused of illegally reselling Hannah Montana tickets.
According to StubHub, tickets for “Best of Both Worlds” are currently selling for an average $237, making them pricier than seats for the Police ($209), Justin Timberlake ($182) and Beyoncé ($212). The highest face value for a ticket on the Hannah Montana tour: $63.
Salon’s Farhad Manjoo has a suggestion for how to deal with this:
There is a simple way Ticketmaster and entertainers could address this problem — they could just raise prices. As Silicon Alley points out, if people are willing to pay $200 to watch Miley Cyrus, “Hannah Montana”‘s 14-year-old star, why are her concert promoters selling tickets for just $60?
But that solution defeats the scalpers only by adopting their ways — and the fans would still be stuck with expensive tickets. I propose a better way: Make people take a quiz to get tickets to their favorite acts. I’m serious.
Here’s what I mean. When you select “Hannah Montana” on the Ticketmaster site, the system would ask you three or four multiple-choice questions about the show. Only if you get them right will it let you in to buy tickets. It’s like a CAPTCHA, but instead of separating robots from humans, it separates true fans from scalpers and occasional enthusiasts.
Ticketmaster could draw its questions from a long list in order to keep the scalpers from learning all of them. To be sure, the scalpers might still find ways to get around the measure — they could, for instance, hire a “Hannah Montana” expert. Still, it would trip them up, especially if Ticketmaster imposes the plan across all acts. Are the scalpers going to hire Bruce Springsteen expert, a Justin Timberlake expert, and a Genesis expert, too?
One commenter thinks Google and Wikipedia would defeat that scheme. I think the point is that a rotating set of questions would slow down the scalpers, which in turn would give more real customers a chance to buy. The auction idea proposed here has promise, but I think there’s an easier way to go. Why not set prices on a sliding scale, where the first (say) 10% of tickets sold go at some multiple of “face value”, the next 10% go for a smaller multiple, and on down to actual face value? This defeats the advantage for being first in line, which is what the scalpers use to leverage their market. And clearly, there are plenty of people willing to pay those prices for hot acts like Hannah Montana, so there shouldn’t be any danger of those tickets going unsold; you can also build in a time factor for each price drop if need be. The main disadvantage to this is that people won’t like it at first, but if it means greater availability, it’ll eventually get accepted. At the very least, you’d think TicketMaster and the performers themselves would love the idea since the extra revenue would go to them instead of to third parties.
That’s my suggestion, anyway. Feel free to tell me why it’s as stupid or defeatable as all the other failed approaches have been so far.
I have a better suggestion.
Garth Brooks announced he was going to perform at a location in Kansas City. He continued to add shows until the furry settled down, selling out NINE performances.
The second control in place was that online buyers had to live in Kansas or Missouri, based on their credit card billing address. This locked out many of the mega-powered East and West coast based online scalpers from getting involved.
With that many shows, the scalpers that did get tickets are going to have to re-sell them at near face value to find buyers.
Link to Reuters Article
EconTalk had a nice “man-on-the-street” podcast this summer on scalping at the All-Star Game:
http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2007/07/ticket_prices_a.html
This is a basic problem of supply and demand. There are simply more Hannah Montana fans (and their parents) in a particular locale willing to pay the asking price than there are seats in the venue. Your sliding-scale solution is kind of what scalpers are doing already, except the profits are going to the scalpers and not to the acts or Ticketmaster.
“[B]ut if it means greater availability, it’ll eventually get accepted.”
Sliding-scale prices does not increase availability: that is dictated by the size of the venue and the number of performances. The same number of tickets are available under the current system, just from scalpers instead of from Ticketmaster. And if the event is not as popular as forecasted, then the scalpers do something that Ticketmaster never does: sell the tickets for less than face value, a fact that has gotten me into shows in London that I would otherwise not have seen (and whose quizzes I surely would have failed).
One solution that could significantly help out is just to get rid of the online ticket purchasing all together and make fans stand in line like in the good old days.
One solution that could significantly help out is just to get rid of the online ticket purchasing all together and make fans stand in line like in the good old days.
One solution that could significantly help out is just to get rid of the online ticket purchasing all together and make fans stand in line like in the good old days.
One solution that could significantly help out is just to get rid of the online ticket purchasing all together and make fans stand in line like in the good old days.
One solution that could significantly help out is just to get rid of the online ticket purchasing all together and make fans stand in line like in the good old days.
One solution that could significantly help out is just to get rid of the online ticket purchasing all together and make fans stand in line like in the good old days.
Make all tickets will-call, with the proviso that you have to show the credit card you used when you bought the tickets to pick them up.
There are a tremendous amount of opportunities for true fans to secure their tickets and for much less than face value. I believe so much in the secondary market when it comes to the acquisition of tickets that I wrote a book on the subject. Ticket Scalpers are not going anywhere but you can learn how to deal with them at http://www.thepoormansticket.com
Take a look at all the high fees that TicketBastard charges, and you’ll see that they ARE scalpers, just ones with a high advertising budget and lawyers at their beck and call.
sell tickets like airline tickets. non tranferable, non refundable, and show ID.
Cant scalp what you cant sell.
Get rid of ticketmaster all together. Go back to having fans stand in box office lines to get tickets. Most scalpers aren’t going to be there at 3 am to stand in line for tickets. They only do what they do because of their multiple computer access. I think that would solve everything.
The other solution not yet mentioned to the high price of concerts: Just don’t go. (A ticket for The Police is $209? One could buy all five of their studio albums for less than half of that.) Take the time instead to find local musicians who still believe that music is art and not “product”, and support them with that money! Your $200+ will make a much greater difference to them. Let’s not forget that the music labels too (not just the scalpers) are profiting obscenely by this irrational exuberance over the cost of one evening’s entertainment.