Consumerist: When you go to buy tickets for a popular concert or sporting event, you likely know that you’ll ultimately have to make your purchase from a ticket reseller who will mark up the price to try maximize their profit. But the New York state attorney general is calling on the state legislature to put new rules into place that would protect consumers from scalpers who swoop in and buy up every ticket before they are available to actual fans.
“Ticketing is a fixed game,” said NY Attorney General Eric Schneiderman today, as his office released the results of a three-year investigation [PDF] into the event ticketing industry.
7 comments:
As someone who enjoys live music and sporting events, the ticket-purchasing dilemma is something I've encountered more than a few times. Should I go with the most legitimate ticket platforms, with reasonable ticket prices and mediocre seating, or schlep to a distinctly more shady corner of the internet, which happens to have the last 12 center-ice seats for at least $30 less than the competition.
This article helped me understand the repercussions of my behavior, and why exactly my method of ticket purchasing works so well for me. According to the article, predatory purchasing practices on the part of middle-man brokers enables me to have my "cheaper" tickets, which aren't actually that cheap, as they've been marked up by the same brokers that I thought I was getting deals from. However, in my naivete, I failed to recognize the relative lawlessness of this resale market, or indeed, any resale market.
That's why, after reading this I will stand with New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman in his call to regulate second-hand ticketing platforms.
Ticket sales and the ticket prices make up what is definitely one of live performance’s biggest problems. Many events have expensive tickets to start, but these are often hard to get because events somehow “sell out” within minutes. People then have to buy tickets through a middle-man service or refresh the legitimate service into more tickets appear. Overall, purchasing tickets is currently a very flawed process that hurts those producing events and potential audience members. The ticket system has basically been commandeered by a third party entity which clearly doesn’t have our best interests in mind! As the article points out, some ticket-reselling is good, especially if you buy tickets and then realize you can’t go to an event. But when all of the tickets disappear the moment they go on sale, that’s simply an unfair game for the consumer. What these ticket brokers are doing with ticket bots and multiple credit cards is clearly against the rules, so I do hope that NY is able to do something to curb those actions, and create an example for other states to follow.
High ticket prices are one of the daggers in the heart of live performance. They're the reason only big stars seem to put on shows anymore, and it really bums me out. I'm not big for concerts in the first place, but whenever a band I want to see comes to town, I feel like I can't justify the money to go listen to music I could just listen to on my phone. I don't attend sporting events very often, but I also know that to be true - with the advancement of technology, it's so much easier to sit at home than to go out and pay a bunch of money to be sweaty and too close to strangers.
But these laws might help, I am particularly intrigued by capping the prices at which scalpers can resell tickets. But at that point, what's the point of scalping? For an extra thirty bucks?
I didn't understand the point about price floors, why would it be illegal to sell tickets for less than what you bought them? I mean, it's pretty stupid, but if you just want to get them off your hands, I can't imagine why that's such an issue.
So, here’s the thing. After being in a Principles of Economics class for the past three weeks, this situation actually makes a lot of sense. And unfortunately, if you do not believe in capitalist ideals and are a dedicated fan to musicians, this isn’t going to appeal to you. This market is epitome of sellers abusing the concept of supply and demand, and I actually recently had a homework problem like this. There is a limited supply of available tickets for each event, however does not affect the demand of the product, that being the ticket to the event. This means that the quantity of available tickets will not change even if the price increases. So, yes scalpers are a problem for consumers, however they prove something interesting about consumers of events. Buyers will do whatever it takes to get their hands on tickets to a event that they really want to go to. If they would refuse to buy tickets, then the supply would adjust. It’s a world we will probably never live in, but one that is interesting to think about.
The system of buying tickets for concerts, sports games, and Broadway shows gets more and more expensive as the years go on. I have not been to a lot of concerts and sports games so I have not been personally affected by those systems, but I have heard about the difficulties of getting tickets for a reasonable price. It is ridiculous how fast some tickets get sold out for certain concerts. Yes I understand that popular artists have a lot of fans that will buy tickets as soon as they go on sale, but there are also a lot of people that buy a lot of tickets just to sell them and make money. I am glad that they are putting a ban on that and limiting the number of tickets you can buy. It is unfair to the people that are huge fans but cannot afford to spend that much money on a concert ticket that is only one night.
Price markups when it comes to special events is an issue that affects everyone who loves music, theatre, or sports. The moment that these events go up for sale the prices immediately get blown up my scalpers, and then it becomes hard for the true fans to be able to attend their favorite shows. I think that the most obvious example of how this has impacted the theatre industry is through the Hamilton tickets sales. Everyone loves the show and the music but right now the only way to get affordable tickets is to go to the lottery, and even that requires you to live close to New York. Putting a limit on price inflation will really help to give people who wouldn't usually be able to afford to see a show fit it into their budget. The reality is that without a limit only those who can afford a $400 ticket will attend Broadway, and that's not the kind of Broadway that I want.
This is a solid idea, however, I wonder about how the company's who have started to make a killing off of this industry will react to this? Will they just simply disband? I'm uncertain of what exactly what their plan is, and it'll certainly be interesting to see what their next move is. It seems like resale is a fine idea, until it gets totally taken advantage of, like it has in this case. I wonder if it would work better if the company verified a person's identity to ensure that they were a single person, that was buying a ticket, or if they are simply reselling that they were a single person. Obviously the ticket sellers are aware of this scheme, but don't care as much because they are getting the tickets out of their hands, but I feel like they have to be partially responsible by turning a blind eye in the first place.
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