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Ticketmaster to Start Online Ticket Auction
Jason1729 writes "According to the NY Times, ticketmaster is going to begin auctioning off the best tickets to events online. They claim it's to eliminate scalping, but in truth it guarantees every seat will be scalped for the highest price with all the money going to ticketmaster. It also eliminates the possibility of getting a decent seat by waiting in line or being lucky."
At first I read this article, and felt bad about the near monopoly that ticketmaster holds on the industry, but then I saw this article is from September 2003, and we haven't seen this yet. Maybe they thought better of the idea?
this article is from 2003
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RTFA. Most of the "extra" money goes to the performers, promoter, venue, etc. TicketMaster gets a percentage or a flat fee. As someone who has purchased tickets from scalpers, I'd be happier paying the (inflated) price on a ticket that was guaranteed to be legitimate, rather than have to carry lots of cash to pay for a questionable one. On the other hand, TFA doesn't explain how the auction process will work. Will they auction a few seats each hour, or a few dozen once a day, or some other scheme? Or do you just bid on some number of seats within a specific area, and they dole them out to the high bidders? If I am willing to spend, say, $200 on the "best available at the price" seat, will I be guaranteed to get some seat somewhere (assuming that not all the seats in the house went for more)? What if I'm flexible on the exact date? What about groups of 5 that want to sit together? And how long do I have to wait to find out if I got a seat or not? It seems like it would be tricky to come up with a scheme that even just keeps all the rich people happy. There's also an existing "TicketExchange" feature, where customers can re-sell their tickets for more or less than they paid for them. TicketMaster is getting close to establishing a REAL market here, where you could even sell a ticket short! Now that's exciting -- "I think this upcoming mega-show with the big stars is going to be a flop, so I'll sell a ticket I don't own yet, wait for the bad reviews to come out, and then cover my short sale by buying a ticket that's now really cheap". How about a Broadway Futures market? Or Mutual Funds (an unmanaged portfolio of dramas; or a basket of musicals with no more than 20% revivals; etc.)?
There is no simple way of releasing tickets for big events. If you go 'first-come first-served' online, then many of the first in line will be scalpers selling on the tickets at very high prices to those who couldn't press refresh quick enough, or were at work. If you allow everyone who wants a ticket to apply and then draw the winners out of a hat (a lottery, used by Wimbledon and other events), many of those in the hat will be scalpers (or touts) and once again those who actually want to be there, have to pay through the nose, because they lost in the ballot.
Ticketmaster's new scheme, seems to be to legitimize touting and pricing tickets out of the reach of those who want to attend the event, instead of preventing touting.
Some might say that this is just the free market at work, but normal people (more important normal families) wont be able to make it to any major events, under the two schemes above they at least have the chance to be there.
It seems to me that the most obvious way of making sure that there is a minimum of black market activity (you will never eliminate it) is to sell the tickets with the intended recipients name and check ID on entry to ensure the name of the person taking the seat is the one on the ticket.
If this were really happening, what would you think?
The ticket agents (scalpers) have networks of people (smurfs) who buy tickets for them to the desriable shows. When ticketmaster limits sales to 2 tickets per address, they don't really affect the ticket agents because the agents each have dozens of smurfs buying tickets. That's why popular shows sell out within 5 minutes of going online on ticketmaster.com. I can see what the idea is here. If the ticket agents had to compete with the fans on the same level, then the advantage would go to the fans. Currently, the ticket agents are gaming the system to get the best tickets for themselves and then mark them up at a high price to the fans. If fans could buy tickets at the price the ticket agents would pay, it would put the ticket agents out of business.
Of course, I'd rather see a real competitor to TicketMaster.
My other first post is car post.
Maybe this is not a big deal, it's just "Ticketmaster", but everything has a beginning.
:P )... the tickets will have the "same" minimal prices (maybe somebody save some bucks some day), but they catch that people who buy tickets at EBay (at least a big part).
I think that the "new" system, only generates more profit (everybody knows this
If Ticketmaster have the infrastructure is a really good move.
Some ppl pay more than 5 times (even MORE) the "original price".
Take a look at Madonna:
On Ticketmaster
and
On eBay
Rock and Roll
Strange. I saw the story on local TV news today and I did a quick search to find a web based article to submit.
Ticketmaster's day is over. They are greedy bastards. Check out http://www.thundertix.com/ for an alternative. (ok, I actually know these guys so admit to making a shameless plug for them, however it is nice to know there are other options)
i hate to say it, but this is good for the consumer. when was the last time any of you tried to get good tickets for a REALLY high-demand show? it is impossible. I recently tried to get tickets for the Tool concert. At 10am when tickets went on sale, I was on 3 different computers, with an IE and Firefox open on each. At 9:59 I was hitting refresh on every screen. Guess what? I didn't get through once- not even for crappy seats. I ended up paying a broker $300 each for tickets.
But here's the most annoying part: at 9am- long before tickets went on sale to the public, there were at least 30 tickets for sale on ebay. They were all brokers, and the all said "seats will be revealed at 10am." The brokers are not working hard for their $.
This has happened to me for several other high-demand events- White Sox playoffs, Seinfeld stand-up. I either get no tickets, or nose-bleed seats, yet every broker in town has tons of front-and-center seats. I always end up paying the brokers. At least with the auction system I still over-pay, but it will be some sort of "fair market" price- and the brokers can't scam the auction by running up the price because they don't make a dime.
Personally I think brokers are total scam artists, and as much as I don't like ticketmaster, I still prefer to remove the brokers.
As long as Ticketmaster has contracts with the venues, their day isn't anywhere near over.
Best of luck to your friends and thundertix. The reason Ticketmaster gets to be so evil is that they've been a monopoly. If thundertix can make a better offer to the venue when Ticketmaster's contract is up, they'll be doing a great public service.
"How did Perl Jam try to fight them?"
look here. Scroll down to 1994.
Both the Grateful Dead and Phish did just that, they sold tickets themselves through mail order from their own ticket agencies. Of course, they couldn't sell all the tickets this way and were forced to allow Ticketmaster to sell a certain percentage of the tickets in each venue.