Taylor Swift/Ticketmaster controversy

Dont know that I’ve ever heard a song of hers.

 

Yep. That wasn’t great either. As I said, if it was a “big” event and the location was a big city the pro scalpers (scumbags) would actually pay bumbs to wait in line to scoop up as many tickets as they could. I remember facing that several times. But at last that system bought you a certain time, maybe 15 minutes, before things sold out. Back then you had to know of a “good”, or off the beaten path location that would maybe have a shorter line. Now they don’t even have to to do that, online bots buy up all the tickets in about 3 seconds. Seems like for those really in-demand tours their system just crashes, yet somehow scalpers end up with the tickets.

There is no perfect system for selling a concert/event that’s going to sell out instantly. To be a true market, you’d literally have to sell every seat as an individual auction with no hold back. If the govt is to “investigate” anything it’s how many tickets successfully made it to market end users, vs. how many were held back. The thing to be investigated is the market manipulation and the monopoly position. How many resales are originated by brokers, or worse yet, Ticketmaster themselves.

 

She should go old school and only sell tickets in line to people who wait. At least you know the majority of buyers are fans and not bots.

 

I miss the old days when you would camp out outside a record store for days to score the big tickets.

 

What is “greed”?

 

Profiting off artificial scarcity created by middlemen who produce nothing is capitalism, correct. Finally a capitalist willing to admit it!

 

Taylor Swift for president.

 

if you, as the sole distributor, manipulate the market to create artificial scarcity to drive up the price that isn't capitalism.

 

Just buy secondary if you really want to go. If you can’t afford it via secondary then tough luck. Really isn’t that big of a deal.

 

swifties need to stay home to send a message. Let the scalpers and TM eat the losses and TS play to half empty stadiums. Vote with your wallet if your convictions are sincere.

 

My niece was going completely crazy over this, had the whole family register to try and help get them. My sister, my other niece, their friends all were desperate to go…it’s hard for any make over 30 to comprehend how popular she is. But to put it one way, she had the top 10 songs on the billboard pop chart as of last week, the Beatles only ever had the top 6 songs. She’s that big.
And yes, in the end they all got their tickets, but lord only knows how much they paid. Not that they probably even care.

 

Game Theory would suggest that's not a feasible option with any realistic chance of success. It's really a pretty classic prisoner's dilemma scenario on an enormous scale.

 

I see a LOT of live music and I kinda find it hilarious that it took the TS fangirls getting locked out to being serious awareness to this. I’m happy it’s happening but still just kinda funny to me.

 

There is no artificial scarcity. The demand is what it is. And if some are willing to take the risk. So be it. Now the system may stink.

Shoot I remember sitting on the phone all night for Florida/georgia tickets as a student when one side of their system went down. You’ll would get in. Listen to Mick Hubert and then immediately get kicked off when it went to the system if you were in the wrong side. Only a couple in our group ended up in the correct side and got tickets that night.

The other interesting one from my days as a student was the Final Four in 2000. We got to Indy early to stand in line and get our student tickets. Got row 6 but was kind of row one in the corner behind the basket. Our group was offered $2000 each. Said no.

For the new age of stuff. If you ever go to Fenway. Always wait to the day of the game. Twice now I bought tickets to a Friday night game early since we were flying up. Both times we decided to go to the Saturday game and tickets were easily 50% less.

I don’t get the Taylor Swift madness. But those tickets are worth what people will pay for them. It is not artificial scarcity. It is real scarcity.

 

The 'demand' of people looking to buy tickets only to resell them for profit isnt 'artificial?' They dont represent people wanting to attend the show, they represent people looking to profit simply by temporarily owning a commodity that they add no value to. I doubt you would say it was what it is if I bought something you wanted just to resell it to you at a higher price than what it would normally retail for, or that me doing that priced you out of buying it all together.

 

It is part of it. They could lose their money.

It is clear Taylor Swift could sell these tickets for more. They chose not to. But just because one person will spend $300 for a particular seat does not mean another will not spend $1000 for the same seat.

I paid $250 to get row 4 behind the Red Sox dugout. Young couple next to me paid $125 the night before. Both of us were happy. I was willing to pay a premium to guarantee a particular seat early. Of course I would have preferred to pay $125. But there was no guarantee that seat would have opened up for that price.

It is real scarcity. TS could easily sell these face value tickets for far more than they are. And even if they did…there would still be the secondary market…

 

Ticketmaster plays all sides of the game. They sign exclusive deals with music halls. Then they sell the tickets and buy the tickets from themselves and then scalps them. It’s a bad monopoly.

 

If they could lose their speculative money because no one buys their ticket, that would kind of mean the demand was artificial, no?

 

Ticketmaster is the secondary market. That is the issue here, they control the primary and secondary markets for shows like this.