if a ticket is worth, say, $250 (i.e. that's how much people are willing to pay for it), WHY THE FUCK DOES THE CONCERT ORGANIZER SELL IT FOR $80???
if I sold someone a Lamborghini for $500, what right would I have to complain if that someone then went and sold it to someone else for $30,000?
I hate those fucking cameras that can give you tickets they got at some red lights
not the kind of tickets I meant, but those are annoying too
especially when they set them to trigger at an unreasonably slow speed just to bleed money from drivers
bump to counter the sliding
once again the government legislates a solution to something that's not a problem
To maximize profit. When setting up an event you need to cover costs for the talent, advertising, travel, lodgings (if your talent is staying at Motel 6 chances are they won't be drawing big crowds), food, whatever the talent demands, employees for setting up the venue, cleaning, lugging around equipment, ecta, and most importantly the venue itself, if you own the venue then you're still paying for it via maintenance and taxes. A low cost venue is likely to be smaller (less tickets to sell) and/or in bumfuck nowhere (longer travel distance= less ticket sales). A expensive venue is likely to be larger and in an area with a higher population density.
Now you have all your expenses paid and you want to charge $250 per ticket and there're 50 people willing to pay that price, with that small of number you're losing money by using the nearby expensive venue, however if you were to use the cheaper venue only 20 of those 50 people would be willing to travel to the show. If you use the expensive venue and charge $80 to have 3,000 nearby people willing to pay.
People don't like being jew'd.
but the tickets are selling out even at the higher prices the scalpers charge
That's the 50 for $250 group, it's only larger because the venue isn't in bumfuck nowhere.
no, that's any concert ever by an artist with even a moderate amount of fame
there's a consistent pattern of the original seller selling the tickets at way below the market price
So you consider the $250 market price?
the market price is the price at which supply and demand are in balance, i.e. all tickets are sold and no one is left who wanted to buy at that price but couldn't
I like to meet people off CL who sell a ticket for more than face value….and beat the shit out of them…very rewarding
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ok pal
i bet you think HFT is totally not parasitic behavior too?
depends on your definition of parasitic. I don't think it's a bad thing though
What percentage of tickets would you say are bought by scalpers? I don't even listen to music so I have no idea.
no idea tbh. but definitely a lot. most concerts sell out within minutes of the tickets becoming available
A lot. Depends on who is performing. Artists like Taylor Swift, and other mediocre performers like her that teenage girls love, are the best tickets to resell. Desperate parents throw money away for their bratty ass kids.
That could be explained with ticket sales being online. Scalpers don't need to go to a physical location and pick them up, neither do customers so both buy ASAP to not miss out.
The real problem of scalpers is that by being able to price gouge at a 300% markup they can still double their "investment" if they only sell half their tickets. Which hurts the talents image to not have a filled venue and losses profit from missing concession/merch sales.
Grabblers business class 101 my friend
there wouldn't be scalpers if the tickets were sold at the higher price to begin with
No they still exist they just make more money in that situation.
Scalpers sell to the people willing to pay their rates, normal customers pay the advertised price. Either way whoever is organizing the event gets paid for each ticket at the price they set, if they set it higher they'd get less due to not everyone willing to play scalpers prices.
no. people are only willing to pay a certain amount for a concert ticket. if someone tries selling at a price higher than that, they won't succeed
It's only worth 250 dollars when it's rare.
Theres a certain chart with price situated on the x axis and the amount of people that will buy the product on the y axis. Someone please post this, I forgot the name.
Once you make your product so expensive, people won't buy it.
250 was just an example
my point is that the existence of succesful scalpers proves that the organizers are selling the tickets at too cheap prices
Different people are willing to pay different prices user. There is no set price. I've been selling hatchimals for triple the price this season. I didn't even make it to my car. Parents approached offered me cash upfront. I once sold a 25 dollar comic book for 75 during a auction. People get caught up in the bidding. Hype makes people stupid.
if you sold something at X dollars, then X dollars was its price
of course, maybe you could have sold it at an even higher price. the only way to be sure would be to auction everything
Well, why don't you start a festival, invite big name bands and singers, promise very good profits, because of your ingenius plan of making the tickets 250 dollars, and see how it works out.
protip: it won't
You're manipulating the price by buying off the limited space and holding them back, the price only rises because you're a cunt making people pay that much more.
like I said in the very post you replied to, 250 was just an example
no one is forcing people to buy from scalpers. that they do means they find the scalpers' prices to be acceptable
scalpers use automated purchasing of large blocks of tickets. the price they pay is a fair price, allowing all involved to turn a buck and the public to see the band without getting stuffed. by artificially reducing supply, they create a monopoly position which they use to exploit the public thereby impeding the promoters' intention to have reasonably priced seats for fans. it seems quite likely that the promoters are involved themselves in this scam. it could be stopped quite easily and without govt help by limiting block purchases.
they only create a monopoly position if they buy all the tickets
also, I don't see why someone should see a concer for X dollars if another person is willing to pay 5X dollars for it
By that logic it's a ok to buyout the stock of every grocery store in a 30 mile radius and sell the food at a 400% mark up.
if people don't want to pay that much, they can go somewhere further than 30 miles
Who are you seeing for 80$? I don't listen to normalfag music. Closest thing I'd pay 80$ for is Zappa plays Zappa.
Elvis Presley
It's true, but it's also an oligopoly because there aren't a lot of scalpers at a given event and they depend on people looking to buy/sell tickets not being able to find each other like they would in an efficient market.
Furthermore most scalpers are stupid niggers who might lose hundreds or thousands of dollars on any given night because they bought more tickets than they should have and didn't sell at a price people were willing to pay and had to eat tickets. I've had scalpers walk away and go home without getting some money for a ticket rather than selling it at a loss. Completely irrational.
There was also once (Phish in hampton '13) when thousands of amateur scalpers bought tickets to trade for other shows on the tour, couldn't sell them and there were more tickets than people that showed up. So there were piles with hundreds of tickets outside the front door laying on the ground when they had a face value of like $60.
In a market with hundreds or thousands of transactions that won't be repeated and imperfect information you can't assume that all the econ 101 assumptions hold up.
Elvis would only cost you a bullet to the head.
Here's the deal: if bands/venue owners charge market price for tickets (i.e. the same price scalpers charge) everyone is going to shit on that band for being elitist/whatever. Setting an artifically low price accomplishes a few things:
1) the band et al. garner good will for having such reasonable ticket prices and the ire of fans is directed towards the scalpers
2) poor but dedicated fans can still get cheap tickets by camping out before they go on sale
If venue owners really wanted to get rid of scalpers they could. Making tickets non-transferable and tied to the identity of the purchaser, disallowing block purchases, etc. But the reality is they're probably getting kickbacks from the scalpers/scalping websites, thereby gaining both the PR boon of having low prices and a cut of those sweet, sweet shekels.