New York Criminalizes the Use Of Ticket-Buying Bots (engadget.com)

An anonymous reader writes: If you failed to get tickets for your favorite band, even though your finger was poised on the "buy" link the instant they went on sale, don't worry -- you never stood a chance. They were probably snapped up by bots that, in one case, bought 1,012 Madison Square Garden U2 tickets in less than a minute. The state of New York has declared that scalpers who use them could get fines and even jail time. "New Yorkers have been dealing with this frustrating ticket buying experience for too long," says state assembly member Marcos Crespie. Using such bots was illegal before, but only brought civil, not criminal sanctions. However, a three-year investigation by NY attorney general Eric. T. Schneiderman found that the practice was so widespread that the state had to take harsher measures. Ticketing outlets and credit card companies revealed that bots scoop up the best seats in seconds, which scalpers then resell at prices many times over face value. Scalpers who exploit such software could now face criminal, class A misdemeanor charges.

Comments

Gratuitous Admonishment

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why we can't have nice things, people!

Re:Gratuitous Admonishment

[Z00L00K]

Just make sure that re-sale is not valid, anyone showing up at concert with a ticket need to prove that they purchased it through a valid channel by also presenting the credit card used for the purchase.

Re:Gratuitous Admonishment

[Anonymous Coward]

Right - because no one every buys anyone else tickets as a gift... or forgets which card they used to buy the tickets... No, the solution here is to make penalties so severe that people won't choose to profit-seek by skirting the law.

Re:Gratuitous Admonishment

[Anonymous Coward]

Extracting liquidity from the ticket market is the responsibility of every High Frequency Ticker Trader. The best performing ticker traders should be allowed to base their data centers driving the bots at close proximity to the ticker selling systems, to maximize the competitiveness of the market.

Re:Gratuitous Admonishment

[MightyMartian]

When I went to AC/DC last September, I had to pick up the tickets at the venue, and show the credit card I'd used. When I went to Rush last September I had to bring along a print out of my receipt. The only concert last year that I could just bring my tickets to was King Crimson, but that was a small venue (3,000 seat) concert, with its own ticket sales so it wasn't through Ticketmaster.

But really, even the scalpers are a small part of the problem. It's Ticketmaster, with its "affiliates" (read wholly-owned subsidiaries) which buy up large amounts of tickets. Essentially, face value of the ticket is meaningless, as scalpers who can't get rid of their tickets before the big show find out. At AC/DC I saw scalpers trying to hawk tickets that I know were about $90 for $50 or $60. In other words, they were taking a big hit.

Re:Gratuitous Admonishment

[Anonymous Coward]

You can still make resale illegal; just perform stings. No one cares about someone selling tickets to a friend. But some dude who has 200 tickets for sale? bust 'im.

Re:Gratuitous Admonishment

[SumDog]

> No, the solution here is to make penalties so severe that people won't choose to profit-seek by skirting the law.

I think that's horrible. Why not use technology? I bet most of these ticket buying web sites have their own roll-your-own garbage Captcha. They don't care because they get the same amount of money of their tickets are bought by bots or real people. In fact, it can be their advantage to have bots buy out all the tickets. They get an instant "sold out" show and they no longer have a risk for unsold seats. The scalpers now incur that risk (and mitigate it by jacking up the price enough that it more than covers unsold tickets).

People who use the ticketing agents (and care about their fans) should demand those ticketing agents implement better bot detection.

Re:Gratuitous Admonishment

[I'm New Around Here]

At AC/DC I saw scalpers trying to hawk tickets that I know were about $90 for $50 or $60. In other words, they were taking a big hit.

Well, sure, they lose $40 per ticket. But they make up for it in volume.

Re:Gratuitous Admonishment

[Holi]

Sounds like you used will call at the AC/DC and Rush concerts. If I have had tickets in hand I have never had to show an ID or a receipt. And no it's not Ticketmaster (they act as a box office agent, they don't actually buy the tickets and resell them), it starts with AMEX who gets up to 50% of the available tickets for their concierge program. Sometimes general ticket sales account for less then 10% of the overall ticket sales.

Re:Gratuitous Admonishment

[magarity]

There's no need to do anything to prevent almost all resales other than to simply auction the tickets in the first place. When the highest bidder has bought the ticket there isn't much room left for increasing the price for a scalper's profit.

Re:Gratuitous Admonishment

[TsuruchiBrian]

Works great for littering. I never see trash in public anymore.

Re:Gratuitous Admonishment

[TsuruchiBrian]

I don't even think the credit card thing is necessary. You could probably even allow people to list like 5 names (or even 10 or 100) at the time of purchase (so you can have people as backups in case you can't go for some reason.

And people would need to show some form of ID that matches one of the names on the ticket to use it.

You could even allow refunds for people that need to get their money back if they can't use the ticket. All you need to do is prevent tickets from being transferable to people not named at the time of purchase.

Re:Gratuitous Admonishment

[TsuruchiBrian]

People like certainty, and producers benefit from happy consumers. Auctions might be the most efficient market solution for rational actors, but you will inevitable have a bunch of angry people that get sniped out of their tickets at the last minute. People are not rational, and they are bad at putting money values on experiences.

Re: Gratuitous Admonishment

[thundercattt]

I had to do the same for AC/DC. It was for the first 15 rows. They said at the time of purchase, once you purchase you cannot change the info for pickup. I had to show ID+CC to pick it up. Allowed me to get row 9.

Re:Gratuitous Admonishment

[RoccamOccam]

And people would need to show some form of ID that matches one of the names on the ticket to use it.

According to Democrats, that's racist.

Re:Gratuitous Admonishment

[magarity]

but you will inevitable have a bunch of angry people that get sniped out of their tickets at the last minute

Sniping only happens on eBay and similar where bids are shown and the timer counts down. Bid what you are willing to pay for tickets, not what you are hoping to get away with, and the system should not show what the competing bids are other than some floor price.

Re:Gratuitous Admonishment

[parkinglot777]

I think that's horrible. Why not use technology? I bet most of these ticket buying web sites have their own roll-your-own garbage Captcha. They don't care because they get the same amount of money of their tickets are bought by bots or real people. In fact, it can be their advantage to have bots buy out all the tickets. They get an instant "sold out" show and they no longer have a risk for unsold seats. The scalpers now incur that risk (and mitigate it by jacking up the price enough that it more than covers unsold tickets).

People who use the ticketing agents (and care about their fans) should demand those ticketing agents implement better bot detection.

Because technology can't solve some major problems. You are correct that ticket sellers don't care about who bought tickets. However, that's a short-sighted thought. Those resellers usually sell tickets at a lot higher price than their face value because they expect that they can't sell all tickets. As a result, there are empty seats in the venue. No artist or show likes to have empty seats in their show even though their tickets are sold out because audiences would think negatively of the show. They do not know what's going on but rather gauge on what they see. The empty seats make a negative impact on future shows.

The AC proposal may work (make harsh penalty) but it may not work in the U.S. due to the way the country is (and people are). Also the GP method (check ticket validity at the entrance) isn't going to work because a huge cost will fall onto the venue owner and may be passed on to artists (but not the ticket sellers). Even though TFA stated a somewhat reasonable solution (come out with a bill), it may not work at all because I can still see loop holes in operations...

Re:Gratuitous Admonishment

[TsuruchiBrian]

If the tables were flipped, and voter IDs hurt Republican voters, we'd have the democrats saying we need voter ID to stop voter fraud, and you'd have Republicans claiming that there is no voter fraud to stop. It's all just the politics of winning elections, which includes all manner of dirty tricks from gerrymandering to voter suppression, etc, the latest of which is voter ID. Neither side is acting on principle.

Re:Gratuitous Admonishment

[TsuruchiBrian]

Sniping happens on ebay because people do not know what they themselves are willing to pay. If people just bid what they are actually willing to pay, they can't get sniped, they con only get outbid. But because people are irrational, getting outbid makes the thing being auctioned more in demand and therefore makes them want it more.

Silent auctions also eliminate sniping, but most silent auctions are run by greedy fuckers who use them to try to get more money out of winners who bid much more than the runner up.

The real answer is a combination of ebay and normal silent auctions.

If you have N things for sale. You have an auction (preferably but not necessarily silent) where all the top N bidders win, but pay the N+1 bidders bid. So you could bid $1 million on a concert ticket (out of 10000) and basically guarantee yourself a ticket, and as long as the 10001st highest bid was only $200, then you are only going to pay $200.

That part of the way ebay worked was really good.

But will they pursue charges?

[eepok]

Investigations are expensive. Forensic IT is even more expensive than regular investigations. If anything, they should make the companies allowing bots share the liability that way those companies will just outright bring an end to facilitating the bot purchases.

Re:But will they pursue charges?

[Joe_Dragon]

And what if the sells / buys / servers / etc are not in ny? What about when ticketmaster is scalping its own tickets

Re:But will they pursue charges?

[Anonymous Coward]

Forensic IT is even more expensive than regular investigations.

gosh it's SO HARD to look at timestamps and IP addresses on server logs

Re:But will they pursue charges?

[Anonymous Coward]

And what if the sells / buys / servers / etc are not in ny? What about when ticketmaster is scalping its own tickets

The one big thing here no one is mentioning so far: how do the scalpers have a market? If people are willing to pay "many times over face value" then the scalpers are just recognizing what the market will bear. These are tickets to shows, not necessities like food and water. If Ticketmaster or whoever really wants to solve this perceived problem, they can implement multiple captchas and call it a day. It's hard to justify having the government make this into a criminal matter when the entire event involves willing buyers and willing sellers all around.

Re:But will they pursue charges?

[Anonymous Coward]

And what if the sells / buys / servers / etc are not in ny? What about when ticketmaster is scalping its own tickets

pretty silly to buy tickets and not show up, isn't it?

Re:But will they pursue charges?

[prograsm]

I'm sure the sellers / Ticketmaster would not enjoy being barred from doing business in the largest city of the US, or the fourth largest state. It would be trivial to bar companies that allow these practices from doing business in-state, and NY has a sufficiently large population for that to have an impact.

Re:But will they pursue charges?

[Verdatum]

IANAL but, if an investigation brings up a potential crime, they may be able to take the money involved in these company's accounts via civil forfeiture. Potentially, that could make investigations not merely inexpensive, but downright profitable to enforcement agencies.

Re:But will they pursue charges?

[Zak3056]

IANAL but, if an investigation brings up a potential crime, they may be able to take the money involved in these company's accounts via civil forfeiture. Potentially, that could make investigations not merely inexpensive, but downright profitable to enforcement agencies.

As satisfying s that sounds, civil forfeiture is a cancer that needs to be killed with fire, not expanded to target "People We Don't Like." Two wrongs don't make a right.

Re:But will they pursue charges?

[Kierthos]

And we all know that the authorities would never abuse civil forfeiture laws at all, except for all the times that they have.

Re:But will they pursue charges?

[Joe_Dragon]

In the past ticketmaster was scalping its own tickets / selling them at non fixed prices based on demand.

Re:But will they pursue charges?

[Holi]

Says some one who has never bought tickets months in advance. Sometimes life happens.

Granted this law will do nothing with the biggest offender. Credit card pre-sales. You know, those credit card rewards that guarantee you tickets before anyone else can get them. Or the fact bands themselves may scalp their own tickets.

Your likely hood of getting tickets from the box office are basically nil for a popular show.
Take the Jan 18 Bieber show. Out of 14000 seats, just over 1000 were available for general sale.
6000 went to Amex presales
3000 to Fan Club members
2600 to promotions, guest lists and un-sell-able seats (due to visual obstruction)
900 to other VIP programs
and 500 were scalped by the biebs himself

1001 were sold to the general public.

So yeah, lets blame the scalpers.

Re:But will they pursue charges?

[Holi]

When the majority of your tickets are already sold before the public gets a chance it is extremely disingenuous to blame the scalpers.

Re:But will they pursue charges?

[Anonymous Coward]

The one big thing here no one is mentioning so far: how do the scalpers have a market? If people are willing to pay "many times over face value" then the scalpers are just recognizing what the market will bear. These are tickets to shows, not necessities like food and water. If Ticketmaster or whoever really wants to solve this perceived problem, they can implement multiple captchas and call it a day. It's hard to justify having the government make this into a criminal matter when the entire event involves willing buyers and willing sellers all around.

Except they aren't all willing. You see, the venue is not negotiating with the scalper in a public and honest transaction for a sale of tickets to be resold, the scalper is instead manipulating the situation to control tickets in order to escalate prices. They aren't offering anything, they aren't adding value to the transaction.

The public recognizes this, and isn't willing to just go along with it, and while Ticketmaster could be made to implement additional security steps, we also realize that costs them. Which costs they may pass onto us. And frankly captchas are bothersome.

So maybe we want to make people causing a problem to pay. Which is the scalpers. Who aren't providing any value to the system.

And it's millions, even billions in business. Yes, you might say these tickets aren't important, these games don't matter, but apparently lots of people disagree.

Thus there's a need to weigh the interests of the public.

Re:But will they pursue charges?

[Verdatum]

I agree. But the potential to make use of it may have been what motivated pushing this idea through; it may motivate what causes funds to be devoted to actual investigations. As, without investigations, this law won't result in a single charge being brought.

Re:But will they pursue charges?

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

In that particular case, I would call that a public service.

Otherwise, scalpers should be scalped.

Re:But will they pursue charges?

[bluefoxlucid]

The one big thing here no one is mentioning so far: how do the scalpers have a market? If people are willing to pay "many times over face value" then the scalpers are just recognizing what the market will bear.

That's called "economic rent". It has a few impacts.

With the lessened consumer buying power, fewer jobs are available. Tickets become more expensive, and so your average consumer now has less money to spend. That money, when spent on goods, creates a need to produce those goods, which creates employment; when the cost-per-good increases, the proportion of all incomes spent on that good increases, and diverts away from other goods. Because income is both made and spent over time (e.g. per year), the enrichment of one person at the expense of ten others doesn't translate to that one person then creating ten more jobs.

This effect is likely less-pronounced in specific markets because there's more of a spreading effect, e.g. a minimum-wage increase raises the cost of a great many goods (by a *tiny* individual amount--think paying 8 cents more at McDonalds for your whole order, not the Conservative apocalypse of a $20 hamburger or the Liberal utopia of businesses just paying the wages out of profits), and the wage recipients must pay that additional cost on almost everything they buy, thus there is a direct loss of buying power; by contrast, *most* of the income gained by ticket scalping is likely spent on a broad set of goods, concert tickets being a minimum proportion of that, and thus in isolation the scalpers are basically making *someone* poorer but not degrading the general buying power of the economy to as great a degree. It would be different if 40% of the income in the cycle of spending of those moved dollars went to buying scalped concert tickets.

(The same basic argument applies to taxes: the people involved in making goods must get paid, and part of that pay goes to taxes; thus the consumer's take-home buying power is less than the total cost of his employment, and his ability to pay the proportional wages of anything he buys is diminished by as much. There is valid reasoning behind both taxes and minimum wages, although I continue to argue that minimum wages are outdated. This discussion of economic rent is a large stretch beyond my normal territory, and the same rules don't apply nearly as firmly.)

In a more direct sense, those concerned with the concert may consider scalping as a form of theft. Concert-goers have less money, and so can't spend it on t-shirts, mugs, signed CDs, and other paraphernalia they'd normally buy. The concert's total revenue is reduced, and the scalper receives the proceeds.

Re:But will they pursue charges?

[Anonymous Coward]

Take the Jan 18 Bieber show.

I'd rather take poison

Re:But will they pursue charges?

[KindMind]

Yes - the companies selling the tickets need to have a financial stake in stopping the bots. Without a financial motive, the ticket sellers will continue to have crappy code. Currently, the incentives are all wrong. The ticket sellers sell tickets quickly and get all their fees under the current system. The bulk scalpers are good business for them, and they have no reason to stop them.

If anything, the ticket sellers should be required to have a system that prevents bulk scalping, with penalties for failing to do this.

Re:But will they pursue charges?

[Anonymous Coward]

My Canadian company doesn't care. The internet works outside the USA. And the USA has two countries close enough where one can pick the tickets up. Use mules if they start banning you personally from entering the country. I know for a fact Canadian customs cares not at all about concert tickets. I even tried to pay taxes on them, they don't count. Zero risk, high reward.

Re:But will they pursue charges?

[budgenator]

Seems like if your advertising the sales of tickets for a 14,000 seat venue, and only 1,000 seats were available to the general public, there most be some kind of Unfair Trade Practice or False Advertising. New York is a pretty liberal state, one would think that a state that would have Clinton as its Senator would have very strong regulations for Consumer protection. North of the border, The Tragically Hip's whole Canadian farewell tour sold-out in minutes, so there is a lot of angst in Canada over the same thing as well.

Re: But will they pursue charges?

[hackwrench]

Not all social goods that are not private necessities should be priced at what the market can bear
Take that! Mr. Capitalism uber alles.
Now demonstrate to me how I am wrong. I don't go in for the concept of proof, but I do accept by the preponderance of evidence.

Re:But will they pursue charges?

[wierd_w]

I would too!

Poison is a much better band. ;)

Re: But will they pursue charges?

[hackwrench]

Gee, maybe investigations should be driven by public outcry?

Re:But will they pursue charges?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yeah, Clinton is allll about the little people, yessiree...

Re:But will they pursue charges?

[Jack_the_Tripper]

With the lessened consumer buying power, fewer jobs are available. Tickets become more expensive, and so your average consumer now has less money to spend. That money, when spent on goods, creates a need to produce those goods, which creates employment; when the cost-per-good increases, the proportion of all incomes spent on that good increases, and diverts away from other goods. Because income is both made and spent over time (e.g. per year), the enrichment of one person at the expense of ten others doesn't translate to that one person then creating ten more jobs.

Umm...no, life isn't a zero-sum game...

Re: But will they pursue charges?

[Jack_the_Tripper]

They aren't priced at "what the market will bear" but are priced at "what the market will pay" -- there is a difference. Market-clearing price and all that...

Re:But will they pursue charges?

[Anonymous Coward]

No one has to pay for tickets they don't want, so the market price is the correct one. It does not matter that less money is left over for trinkets. If they want a market for trinkets it should be outside the theater where no-one needs a ticket.

The only reason these tickets are sold at below market price is because ticketmaster does that to protect their monopoly. It's a political show.

Re:But will they pursue charges?

[Ol Olsoc]

The one big thing here no one is mentioning so far: how do the scalpers have a market? If people are willing to pay "many times over face value" then the scalpers are just recognizing what the market will bear.

Probably because it pisses people off to hell and back. I see a high speed stock situation happening. where scalpers sell to scalpers who then sell to more scalpers and then its scalpers all the way down.

If your free market example is to be adhered to religiously, a whole shitload of people hwo do nothing but buy and resell will make money, but the venue will suffer. After all, the only way to find out what the market will bear is to exceed what it will bear. And everyone has a different max price they will pay.

And as for pissing people off, our university had a number of new seats to offer,at the fBll stadium. people lined up, and no one in line got a ticket - they sold out in something like 24 seconds to the first group online. Damn near a riot ensued.

The completely free market will kill people if there is a profit in it - much better to not piss off the very people yu are trying to get to go to your venue.

Re: But will they pursue charges?

[Ol Olsoc]

They aren't priced at "what the market will bear" but are priced at "what the market will pay" -- there is a difference. Market-clearing price and all that...

Looking at a homogenous sort of "What the market will pay" is a real loser. Because not everyone is going to have the same level of where they cut off. That inevitably leads to less attendance. Now if I have to pay 90 dollars a ticket, I'll think long and hard about what I will go to.

An example - I used to travel to my favorite Hockey team's games many times a year. As the prices increased, I started to go to less and less. At first I spent around the same price on tickets in total. So a while back I might have gone to 10 games, then it went to 5, then to 2, and then I just got out of the habit.

And as I started going to fewer games, I bought less and less food and promotional items. Now its zero.

Less money for them, more for me.

Another example that doesn't employ middlemen taking tickets is when the local university tried a tactic that they used for football and applied it to the BBall team. For the football team, a huge portion of the tickets are bought by corporations that then hand them out to visitors as a promo when they visit the corporations.

So they tried it with the Basketball team. Didn't work at all because even when the corporations gave tickets away, so many games were in the middle of the week that the recipients didn't bother to drive to them. The results? 3/4 empty arena - because no one could buy the tickets the corporate customers bought, and 3/4 empty arenas don't translate into concession sales. Concession sales, by the way, make a metric shitload of money. Money thatwhen you don't make it, you lose money overall. Amazingly enough, the wome's team had more attendance than the mens, and made more money. Point is, attendance is important, and if some one or group makes ticket prices at the maximum th market will pay, the market won't pay any more, and other profit making items will not be sold.

And since locals couldn't get tickets, they lost interest, and then the students lost interest, and they stayed away.

Looking at this as a pure free market exercise fails, as that particular solution does not take all of the extractable money into account. It doesn't look a penny past the ticket sales and what a middleman can make from them.

Re:But will they pursue charges?

[Ol Olsoc]

Take the Jan 18 @%$&* show.

Speak not her name in here laggard!

Re: But will they pursue charges?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ticketmaster takes on the risk of venues by paying them guaranteed monthly lock-in fees to be their ticketer. Then both TicketsNow and Stubhub get to creamy the economic discrimination of scalping for those who desperately need tickets, although they risk taking a hit if the concert does not sell out.

Re:But will they pursue charges?

[Master Moose]

Yes this! I hate how ticketing agents (ticketmaster) do not specify how many seats are actually going to be available for public or semi public consumption Or which seats are available for which grouping.

I have been granted access to tickets from Promoters "preferential presale" before. Been ready to buy right on the minute and had to deal with less than ideal seats, only to find that better ones are for sale come the general public sale. (And vice versa)

I have also found large areas of premium seating reserved for pomos - they have either gone to sponsors and their families or as radio giveaways. Each of these spots represents a space that a member of the public would have gladly purchased at a premium.

I do not know why the promoters do not want to see how 1st day/week sales are going before dipping in and using extra seats for their giveaways. . More dollars in the boxoffice should be good for them?

Re:But will they pursue charges?

[Anonymous Coward]

So yeah, lets blame the scalpers.

You must be one, too. Scalping is illegal. End-of.

Re:But will they pursue charges?

[NotAPK]

"Scalping is illegal. End-of."

So? I think this is precisely the sort of thing that should never be "illegal" and is absolutely not a criminal matter.

If the ticket seller has a "terms of service" that re-selling tickets is against their policy, then they can take appropriate civil action against those that break their policy.

I thought the first sale doctrine was pretty strong in the US and most items could be resold without regard.

What is different about ticket sales? Can someone explain it to me?

Re: But will they pursue charges?

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, charging below the maximum that could potentially be extracted from the market obviously can't be a rational move. Nope, scalpers are the only rational actors involved.

Re:But will they pursue charges?

[bluefoxlucid]

Of course it's not a zero-sum game. Some actions cut back on accessibility of tradable labor (reducing jobs), others improve output. Technical progress, for example, increases output per labor-hour, thus increasing consumer buying power (you work the same hours, but make twice as much stuff; you take your pay for working 40 hours and go to buy from the other guy, who also works 40 hours, and makes twice as much stuff; you only have to pay him for *half* as many of his working hours to buy the same stuff from him, so you can buy twice as much stuff).

Re: But will they pursue charges?

[Ol Olsoc]

Also, charging below the maximum that could potentially be extracted from the market obviously can't be a rational move. Nope, scalpers are the only rational actors involved.

I liken it to the case of Martin Shkreli of Turing Pharmaceuticals infamy, who after buying the firm, raised the price of the drug Daraprim by over 5000 percent from around 13 dollars to 750 dollars per dose.

He's since been arrested for other money shennnagins like securities fraud.

Now yes, if you are a person who is going to die without Daraprim, you'll probably pay the man. But at some point it becomes indistinguishable from blackmail. In addition, with one group extracting all of your income, you do not have money to spend with other groups.

That's why I say that the free market must be protected from itself. That's why I say that the free market will kill people if given the chance. Certainly if I had to take that drug every day, I would at 13.50 a dose, but would just let nature take it's course and die at 750.00 a day. I have no plans to give my estate to the good Mr Shkreli.

And while going to concerts or football games isn't a life and death matter, it does serve as an illustration of what happens when a group goes for maximum pecuniary extraction. It's a predatory thing. Middleman ticket services don't care if they put a venue out of business. There are plenty more places (yet) As long as Midleman Ticket Services makes their money - and make no mistake - the costs of maintaining a venue, paying the bills for it and procuring the entertainment is a little more than having a computer and buying up all of the tickets when they go on sale.

The only free market solution for the venues is to hike the prices to the maximum amount that people will pay as they sell them. That way the professional scalpers won't sell any of their scalped tickets.

Then again, the venues seem to understand that happy people who don't feel they are being fleeced tend to spend even more money once inside the venue.

Re:But will they pursue charges?

[Whibla]

Wish I had mod points left.

Having said that, there's clearly two separate issues at play here, and, unlike the GP, it pays to be clear as to the difference.

Firstly resale, which as you suggest should be perfectly fine. If Joe Random buys a ticket for an event he later finds himself unable to attend he should be allowed to sell it, and furthermore he should be allowed to sell it for whatever price he likes - that's not to say someone will be willing to pay that price, merely that I don't see that a third party has any right to dictate a price limit on that resale.

The second issue is that of botting, and this presents rather more of a concern. I'd like to use an analogy here. Imagine a free buffet, with plenty of food. You join the queue, but, just before you reach the table, the person in front of you pulls out a large bag, and proceeds to fill it with the remaining food from the buffet. He then offers to sell the food he has to anyone who's hungry. Most people would see a problem here, but it's a problem based on fairness, not law, after all the buffet was free, so the man with the bag hasn't actually stolen anything.

Because there is no 'morally' correct solution to the problem New York is simply attempting to change the problem domain from one of fairness to one of legality, thus creating an obvious (if not easy to implement) solution, arrest the perpetrators. In doing so however, it does create a conflict with other perfectly reasonable 'edge-cases'.

In a sense this is a perfect example of the adage "for every complex problem there is an answer which is clear, simple, and wrong."

Re:But will they pursue charges?

[Anonymous Coward]

Investigations are expensive. Forensic IT is even more expensive than regular investigations. If anything, they should make the companies allowing bots share the liability that way those companies will just outright bring an end to facilitating the bot purchases.

Why should forensic IT be expensive at all? You don't need to order special materials or tests or chemicals or build specialized equipment or instruments. Are people just wasting cash and overpaying for labor?

Re:But will they pursue charges?

[eepok]

Yes. They are wasting cash by overpaying for labor. That's the benefit of being an approved contractor for a governmental (law enforcement) agency. You're welcomed to make a not-for-profit/subsistence business and undercut their fees, of course. The taxpayers would thank you.

Re:But will they pursue charges?

[ebvwfbw]

Finally, a reason to have an Amex card... sort of.

Re:But will they pursue charges?

[Holi]

I am wondering how the ac got the idea that I must be a scalper from my comment.

easily exploitable software?

[The-Ixian]

I am just trying to understand a little bit about this automated software.

I mean, we have been dealing with automated bots in the online world for a long time.

The general solution is stuff like CAPTCHAs.

Do these types of systems not exist in the ticket buying world?

It sounds like this is just legislation around lazy business practices.

By all means, feel free to point out my logical fallacy.

Re:easily exploitable software?

[Anonymous Coward]

???

You log into the site as a human and let the bot run before the tickets go on sale bip bap boopity bop

Re:easily exploitable software?

[Anonymous Coward]

By all means, feel free to point out my logical fallacy.

You attempted to apply logic and standards to New York City.

Re:easily exploitable software?

[Anonymous Coward]

CAPTCHAs are easy for bots to defeat. Simply use a service (or set it up yourself) that pays people pennies or fractions of a Bitcoin to answer captchas. Easily can have 3 people answer same captch in a second & if at least 2 match, submit that as bots answer.

Re:easily exploitable software?

[wbr1]

I go to quite a few concerts and have had to buy bot bought tickets to get to some shows.

The big two, Live Nation and TicketMaster do have captchas, and they give them several times throughout the buying process. However, it is very easy to fake many of these systems. In addition, at least live nation now offers resale tickets on their own website. That means they are double dipping, the original sale+fees, plus commission+fees on resale tix. The have no incentive to stop this process.

IMHO, that is where the problem lies, not the scalpers. The system as it is is broken, but it is allowed to be broken by the companies that sell tickets as the market operates in their favor.

The only real fix I see to this is to associate a CC or ID with the ticket purchase and require it to be presented with the ticket for admission. This creates a whole host of other issues, such as inability to resale or gift easily, plus longer, slower lines at venues.

Re:easily exploitable software?

[sjames]

Don't even present the captcha until the tickets go on sale. Don't sell a thousand tickets in a single transaction. Each transaction gets a new captcha.

Re:easily exploitable software?

[mark-t]

I believe the point was to verify that the actual *purchase* was being made by a human, not simply that a human had logged in.

Re:easily exploitable software?

[in10se]

The reason the bots work on these ticket sites is because they are faster than humans. If they had to wait for humans to enter CAPTCHAs, they would lose all their advantage.

Re:easily exploitable software?

[Qzukk]

Every single person likes it the way it is, except for the people who complain while paying the scalpers to do it again. That's what it boils down to.

The real "fix" would be an auction system where everyone puts in a bid for whatever they'd pay to see the show and the tickets are sold highest bid first when the bidding ends. Instead of paying the scalper $500 for your $60 ticket, you'd just pay $300 or whatever your bid ends up being. Scalpers could bid too, but then they're stuck with tickets that they might be able to unload on a latecomer who missed the bidding.

As it stands though, TicketMaster et al don't have to reprogram their sales system, the show can proclaim how awesome they are for selling out in a few minutes, the humans that manage to get tickets get them cheaper than the people who buy them from the scalpers, and the scalpers make tons of money.

Re:easily exploitable software?

[DarkOx]

The only real fix I see to this is to associate a CC or ID with the ticket purchase

Actually that would be pretty good solution. The airlines will have you swipe a CC and enter your destination airport to look up your e-ticket / reservation. Does not have to be the CC used to buy the ticket they are only using it to get your name. Reading mag strips is fast.

For gifting simply supply the name of the recipient when you buy the tickets.

When someone buys a ticket associate a pin with the name send them the pin on the receipt.

So at the show, its swipe + pin. Now TM does not even have to print and mail physical tickets. Its all just data and tokens people already have. TM has just increased their margin.

You can handle resales, online too, the original purchaser logs on and marks the ticket as resold to to person X and is given a new pin which they provide to person X, person X than logs on and buys the ticket with a credit or debit card in their name and enters the pin, TM issues a new final PIN. TM collects the funds, takes a percentage (of course) and finally credits the original purchasers card. This way they can close the scalping hole and double dip at the same time.

Re:easily exploitable software?

[St.Creed]

The only real fix I see to this is to associate a CC or ID with the ticket purchase and require it to be presented with the ticket for admission. This creates a whole host of other issues, such as inability to resale or gift easily, plus longer, slower lines at venues.

- Inability of resale: the ticketing venue could easily buy your ticket back at salesprice minus a small fee, or auction it off through their website - with a deadline, of course. Some already do.
- Gift: just say it's a gift when you purchase it. Gift tickets are limited to 1 per creditcard, but don't have to be accompanied by creditcard. Alternatively, you declare who it is meant for at purchase, and an ID or CC has to be brought when converting the gift certificate into a ticket.

Longer, slower lines at venues could be an issue. Easily solved by having pre-check checkpoints in a larger area outside the entrance. If you're pre-checked, you can get in faster. Or skip the purchase of physical tickets altogether: if you purchase tickets on a creditcard, the creditcard *is* your ticket. Just scan it and you get in - this should actually be faster.

Yes, it might create issues. But I don't think they are very difficult to overcome.

Re:easily exploitable software?

[Anonymous Coward]

Plot twist: The ticket sellers are the same ones doing the scalping.

Re:easily exploitable software?

[PixelPusher1532]

That is fine if your name is Person X. If your name is say, Person Krzyzewski, and you are counting on someone else to type your name in, you will never get any tickets.

Re:easily exploitable software?

[budgenator]

You mean like limiting tickets per transaction to something reasonable like 6 and locking a credit card number for 5 minutes? 5 minutes would be an eternity when whole tours sell out in 10 minutes.

Re:easily exploitable software?

[Joe_Dragon]

like ticketsnow (owned by Ticketmaster) ?

Re:easily exploitable software?

[TsuruchiBrian]

Not necessarily. If you have a pool of captcha answerers, you'll have an advantage. I can take a pool of 100 people and take the fastest answer and beat you 99% of the time (that's assuming that on average, you are as fast as a bunch of people that answer captchas in a pool all day long for a living).

Re:easily exploitable software?

[wierd_w]

Limit the number of tickets you can buy per transaction.

If you can purchase thousands of tickets on one captcha, it defeats the purpose of the captcha.

Limit it to a max of 5 tickets per transaction, with each transaction requiring a new captcha, and a restriction on purchasing more than 20 tickets per credit card.

That would make a big dent.

Re: easily exploitable software?

[hackwrench]

Not when they are competing with the human customers that also have to input captchas. When you streamline the rest of the process, the bot can still come out ahead most of the time.

Re: easily exploitable software?

[hackwrench]

Always have the customers type their own names in when typing names is required, but you seem to be a little confused about the process at the counter and I may not even have it correct, but I can see how it wouldn't require inputting a name. The system doesn't even require an airline rep. At a kiosk, the customer gives the flight, and swipe. The kiosk gets the name connected with the card and checks the manifest. The kiosk can even take a picture of the customer and print it on the boarding pass, or the picture can be stored in the central database. Or both. There are so many ways security could be less intrusive if that is what they really wanted. My aunt tells me how Israel's security is actually much better in the hat department, which reminds me I've been meaning to ship he some bears. Teddy bears.

Re:easily exploitable software?

[Mr D from 63]

That and come up with new captcha types so the bots aren't ready for them, and maybe add a delay.

There's a lot of attention on this in Canada recently, where the Tragically Hip final tour sold out before fans could buy the tickets, scalpers got most of them. Its particularly intense in this case since the lead singer has terminal cancer and this is really the last tour.

What's Next....

[Anonymous Coward]

a ban on using bots to trade on wall street!!!!

this anti-american legislature has gone to far!

Re:What's Next....

[Holi]

Considering HFT does nothing for the company who's stocks are being traded, I see no reason it shouldn't be.

Solution is SIMPLE. Sell ticket to a person.

[Maxo-Texas]

Require tickets to be tied to a person (first name, last name) when sold. Require that person to have valid ID on arrival. And prosecute anyone caught using fake ID's.

Airplane, boat, and train tickets require the ticket match the person. Any area subject to ticket scalping should require an ID too.

ooOOOohhh, class A misdemeanors!

[swschrad]

it's extortion and theft, how about send those guys upriver for 5 to 20?

Re:ooOOOohhh, class A misdemeanors!

[pak9rabid]

it's extortion and theft, how about send those guys upriver for 5 to 20?

Because the punishment should fit the crime?

Re:ooOOOohhh, class A misdemeanors!

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, then castration.

bad summary

[Anonymous Coward]

is it scalpers or ticker buying bots? what if I want to hold an event where writing a flexible bot makes you worthy to have the ticket, why is that illegal?

Who writes these things?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone really review these things before they are passed. The definition of this law is so broad as to criminalize Chrome if you use it to purchase your ticket.

http://assembly.state.ny.us/leg/?default_fld=&leg_video=&bn=A10713&term=2015&Summary=Y&Text=Y

Re:Who writes these things?

[yakatz]

Let's see what it actually says:

The term "ticket purchasing software" shall mean, any machine, device, computer program or computer software that, on its own or with human assistance, bypasses security measures or access control systems on a retail ticket purchasing platform, or other controls or measures on a retail ticket purchasing platform that assist in implementing a limit on the number of tickets that can be purchased, to purchase tickets.

That would cover Chrome only if you are otherwise buying more tickets than you should, not if you are a normal user buying a normally allowed number of tickets.

Auctioning tickets would get rid of scalpers

[Anonymous Coward]

But then certain people would complain because they had to pay more than they wanted for a desirable seat. It would be efficient, though.

Re:Auctioning tickets would get rid of scalpers

[Ichijo]

This is the right answer. What the scalpers are doing is engaging in arbitrage and fixing the shortage which was caused by the original sellers setting the price below market equilibrium. Selling the tickets on eBay would significantly reduce the amount of profit a scalper could make.

Re:Auctioning tickets would get rid of scalpers

[ooloorie]

If an apparently bad system like this persists for so long, it's worthwhile to ask why.

Probably one the reason these tickets are not auctioned is that the events, teams, and/or venues are subsidized by tax dollars, and people might start to ask questions about why their tax dollars go to subsidizing events "for the rich".

Furthermore, the politicians and "sponsors" who created this system get their tickets through other channels anyway, and hand out even more tickets as rewards; they like to have seemingly cheap ticket sales as a cover for their other activities.

Re:Auctioning tickets would get rid of scalpers

[Anonymous Coward]

You wouldn't work for eBay now would you? Seems awful constraining/specific.

Re:Solution is SIMPLE. Sell ticket to a person.

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree this would be a good way to go. But, for NYC at least, I remember reading rules that prevent this for some reason I'm forgetting.

Re:Solution is SIMPLE. Sell ticket to a person.

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you deal with tickets that are purchased by entities then given away promotionally - think radio station contents and other giveaways? This solution is not viable - the only viable solution is to make the criminal penalties for scalping tickets so powerful to deter anyone from trying make money...

Bad for individuals but

[Archfeld]

This is bad for an individual to do but OK for the 2nd hand reselling companies that snap up 100's of prime seats and sell them online for ridiculous amounts. Reselling is OK if you don't do it on the street in front of the venue, where it is considered scalping in many places. I've been to shows where the first 3 or 4 rows were corporate owned seats that rarely fill up, and heard the performers complain about the empty seats and call for the fans to fill them up, stating it gives them energy to have true fans up close vs. wine sipping corporate douche bags sitting on their hands.

https://seatgeek.com/tba/artic....

New York Comic Con does this - Fan Verification

[SuperKendall]

New York City Comic Con attendees were required to register before purchase, and only registered people could purchase tickets

Shame they aren't selling VIP tickets any more though.

.

Re:New York Comic Con does this - Fan Verification

[Anonymous Coward]

This is how the Glastonbury music festival in England works too.

You have to register, which you have months to do, then the tickets are available only to people who've registered. Registration requires photo ID.

It still sells out in like an hour on the morning the tickets are put on sale, but every ticket goes to a person, not a scalper.

And yes, they do still have the ability to issue "special" tickets for a prize draw or other event, it's just that you need ID for those too.

Re:Solution is SIMPLE. Sell ticket to a person.

[Anonymous Coward]

And prosecute anyone caught using fake ID's.

so now we need to show ID to go to a baseball game? welcome big brother

Don't sell things on the internet

[Anonymous Coward]

Business does not belong on the internet.
Ads don't belong on the internet.
Even video does not belong on the internet!
Plain text, maybe a few images... the rest is useless crap.
I used to love the Internet, then it got fat and ugly.

Re:Don't sell things on the internet

[ceoyoyo]

What?

Posted with Lynx

(old joke from the glory days of Slashdot, young 'uns)

Re:Don't sell things on the internet

[NotAPK]

Hasn't Lynx been updated to include an image to ASCII art renderer? Can't it even render HTML5 video to live streaming ASCII art?

Sigh, no? Must have been a dream I had once...

Re:Don't sell things on the internet

[Anonymous Coward]

That's from the time that the Internet was for research purposes only. Only universities and corporations doing research had access. Wanted to find something? Use the command line "gopher" command. Wanted to download something? Use ftp, and if your anonymous ftp service had a maximum file size or time limit, you could get a server to send the data by uuencode/uudecode and email. Mpeg video didn't even exist. A desktop hard disk drive was lucky to be able to store 40 Megabytes of data.

Re:Solution is SIMPLE. Sell ticket to a person.

[stabiesoft]

This!!! And if the buyer does want to sell the ticket, make the buyer sell it back to the venue. I was talking to a friend about this recently with regard to college football tickets. I think this is where it all started because the colleges were complicit with stubhub. The face value of tickets is a joke, as the purchaser pays much more. My friend makes a required donation to the school every year to gain the right to buy a season ticket. The price of the season ticket is peanuts in comparison to the donation. Then what everyone does is stubhub the tickets they do not use to try to recoup some of the "donation" and season ticket price. Of course the stubhub price is closer to the real price (donation+season price / number of games) So now that everyone is used to paying 10X or more face value it has migrated to all tickets.

Why not a reverse auction instead?

[swb]

Tickets get scalped because the price doesn't reflect demand. Instead of impossible to enforce regulations, why don't venues/artists instead change their pricing model?

Something like a reverse auction -- start the ticket process extremely high, like $10,000 per ticket and keep cutting the ticket price by small amounts based on sales volume. If volume remains fairly constant, then the price stays constant. The ticket price will then reflect what people are truly willing to pay, and ticket brokers won't be able to arbitrage the low face price versus the actual demand price.

Brokers can snap up all the $10,000 tickets they want on a day 1 of sales, but it will be both a huge capital outlay and they will not be able to sell many tickets for those prices plus their own profit premium.

You will still run the risk that as volume flags and the price falls, the tickets will hit a threshold where brokers believe they can still bulk purchase tickets, but I'd guess that the risk of being stuck with tickets they can't sell at a high price would be a negative incentive.

The bad thing would be -- well, tickets will be more expensive if you want to go, because you will be paying a higher price. But right now, the price is artificially low and acquiring tickets from the box office is more akin to a lottery than a marketplace.

Re:Why not a reverse auction instead?

[Anonymous Coward]

Tickets get scalped because the price doesn't meet demand? What fantasyland do you live in?

Tickets get scalped because someone got there first, bought all the tickets, and resells them.

Re:Why not a reverse auction instead?

[swb]

Tickets get scalped because the price doesn't meet demand? What fantasyland do you live in?

Tickets get scalped because someone got there first, bought all the tickets, and resells them.

Tickets get scalped because demand exceeds supply and the demand price (what people are willing to pay to see the event) exceeds the face price.

When was the last time you went to a concert for which there were expensive scalped tickets available but where the venue was half-empty? Probably never, because most scalped tickets get sold to people willing to pay the price to see the event. They may think they had to pay too much, but obviously they made a decision that they were willing to pay the price to see the event.

The marketplace (the universe of ticket buyers and sellers) have decided that the price to see an in-demand concert is higher (in many cases, much higher) than the price printed on the ticket.

Re: Why not a reverse auction instead?

[Anonymous Coward]

Brilliant idea. This would likely work for a lot of performances. But. Two things :

- the creators of the performance would want a stake, yes?

- the creators of the performance often want to not over charge folks. Either season ticket holders or the 'this is the show for the fans, man' type of acts.

I'm curious why there cannot be a market maker, like for options. Like options, tickets expire at a set point in time. I'm not smart enough to understand why stubbhub isn't the same...

Re:Why not a reverse auction instead?

[Anonymous Coward]

In particular:

To a concert performer, or an audience member, the goal is to fill the auditorium but with everybody getting paid so they'll do it again. 1000 people paying $20 each gets you $20 000 for the performance AND 1000 happy people who saw a great concert. If it cost $19 000 to put on the show they've still got 1000 happy fans, which is great.

To a scalper, the goal is to maximise their profit. If they buy 100 tickets for $20 each (total $2000), then sell just 10 to very rich people who buy at the last minute for a sky-high price from a scalper at $300 each ($3000), they made $1000 easy money. Shame the concert venue looks almost empty, and most fans are disappointed.

Most "sold out" shows play half empty because of scalpers. Get rid of the scalpers and everything is better - unless you're a scalper.

Re:Why not a reverse auction instead?

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

The demand exceeds supply because the scalpers use automation to suck up all the supply and prevent normal people from buying at regular prices.

Re:Why not a reverse auction instead?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can get the same effect, with less complexity, simply by offering the tickets at a higher fixed price. Set the price at what people are willing to pay, and no one will bother to scalp them - because if they buy them for that price, there'll be no one willing to pay them more for it.

Re:Why not a reverse auction instead?

[Fire_Wraith]

This is a situation of artificial scarcity, which the scalpers have some role in causing. Essentially, they're speculators on the price of the tickets, buying them all up in anticipation that they'll be able to resell them at higher value. The catch is that's not always the case. They may sell some at higher value, but as the show approaches, they're forced to do exactly what you describe - offer those tickets at a lower and lower price, even to the point of selling some of the tickets at a loss, if only to minimize the amount they lose (since the tickets are worthless after the show).

Re:Why not a reverse auction instead?

[Anonymous Coward]

Scalpers can scalp because of scarcity (limited stock) and the deadline for buying which causes demand/offer ratio to go up as you near the event ("must buy now or I may not have a ticket at all" / "most tickets already sold") and so the price will eventually go up. It's only if the event grossly overestimated that demand that prices will keep going down.

So your auction might work for the early sales but the price will quickly go down after the initial rush and then slowly rise until the deadline. Scalpers will just need to wait for the end of the dip.

Re:Why not a reverse auction instead?

[Ichijo]

Scalpers will only do that if the price is below market equilibrium, because otherwise there's no profit to be made. So root cause of demand exceeding supply is the low, below-market-equilibrium price.

Re:Why not a reverse auction instead?

[ooloorie]

Tickets get scalped because the price doesn't reflect demand. Instead of impossible to enforce regulations, why don't venues/artists instead change their pricing model?

Probably a bunch of reasons:

(1) Many of these bands don't need to maximize profit anymore; they want to minimize the risk of having a venue that is not sold out because that makes them look bad. (2) Many of the venues are publicly subsidized and/or at the receiving end of political attention, so it is in their interest to appeal to voters in general, and they can't do that if their ticket prices seem astronomically high.

Distributing tickets in this kind of lottery system probably isn't all that bad if your goal is to "give everybody an equal chance". Of course, if you have the right contacts or enough money, you can still get the tickets anyway.

Re:Why not a reverse auction instead?

[swb]

So concerts would never sell out ahead of time? There's enough seats in the venue or enough performances for everyone who wants to attend? Supply and demand are in perfect balance?

Re:Why not a reverse auction instead?

[GLMDesigns]

Then how come you get tickets for less that than the printed price? (Sometimes).

Especially if it's a cold rainy day AND the concert / game is about to start (or has started).

I've bought many a Knick ticket at less than face value. I've bought some good concert tickets at below face value at numerous venues? Why? Because supply was greater than demand.

There are many good solutions out there - from lottery, to auction to combinations of the two.

Re:Why not a reverse auction instead?

[Deadstick]

The marketplace (the universe of ticket buyers and sellers) have decided that the price to see an in-demand concert is higher (in many cases, much higher) than the price printed on the ticket.

...which would seem to imply that the performers and producers are gullible fools, missing out on the bounty they could reap by doing what the Invisible Hand says to do. Occam might think it more likely the producers are pretending to work at reasonable prices but getting a cut from scalpers who take the blame for ripping off the public -- in return for dipping their beaks.

Re:Why not a reverse auction instead?

[Attila Dimedici]

Are you saying that there were not more people who wanted to see Game 7 of the NBA championships (to use a recent example of very high priced scalped tickets) than there were seats at the game?

I do think the idea of a reverse auction would work very well to eliminate scalpers. It would probably in the long run lower the prices of tickets for many of these events.

The fact of the matter is that event planners LIKE these bots purchasing tickets. They like "selling out" minutes(or seconds) after the tickets go on sale. It creates greater hype for their shows.

Re:Why not a reverse auction instead?

[Anonymous Coward]

The scalpers are ripping off the performers. End of story.
Every dollar the scalpers make because the "The ticket prices are below equilibrium" is not paid to the actual people providing the show. They all need to go die in a fire.

Re:Why not a reverse auction instead?

[Khashishi]

Because fuck capitalism, that's why. Most artists aren't interested in gouging their fans just because their businessman tells them that's the way it should be.

Re:Why not a reverse auction instead?

[Ichijo]

No, whoever's selling the tickets at such deflated prices is ripping off the performers and creating ideal conditions for scalping.

Re:Why not a reverse auction instead?

[ooloorie]

This is a situation of artificial scarcity, which the scalpers have some role in causing.

"Artificial scarcity" is a meaningless concept. The scalpers simply try to price tickets rationally because the original seller isn't doing so.

Re:Why not a reverse auction instead?

[ooloorie]

Most artists aren't interested in gouging their fans

No, what the artists are interested in is fucking their fans over, by giving away many tickets as favors to the rich, famous, and connected, and watching a feeding frenzy over the remaining tickets. It makes those "artists" feel powerful and important.

Re:Why not a reverse auction instead?

[WorBlux]

During the dip Scalpers will be bidding against scalpers as well. However supply added by scalpers can mitigate the last-minute price jump. Additionally the ticket release curves may tweaked depending on what the venue and the artist have in mind.

Re:Why not a reverse auction instead?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a situation of artificial scarcity, which the scalpers have some role in causing.

"Artificial scarcity" is a meaningless concept. The scalpers simply try to price tickets rationally because the original seller isn't doing so.

Nope, they want to price tickets irrationally, that's why they create an artificial scarcity, portray themselves as the only place to get tickets, and otherwise foster an inflated and imagined sense of demand for their own advantage.

That's why they scalp tickets, they don't run concert venues. They seek the lazy course, the one of advantage and damn the costs to others.

Re:Why not a reverse auction instead?

[Anonymous Coward]

Most big acts use Live Nation as their promoter.
Live Nation is owned by Ticketmaster.

Re: Why not a reverse auction instead?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a risk vs reward thing. If you sell the tickets cheap, your risk is low but your reward is low. Scalpers risk not being able to sell above their purchase price, so their risk is thigh although their potential reward could be high as well. Different people want different risk/reward profiles. If you own a venue with fixed monthly costs you have to meet, you may opt for lower risk and this lower reward.

Re:Why not a reverse auction instead?

[Anonymous Coward]

Calling the original seller unrational for not selling tickets based purely on short term profit is a bit over the top.

For the scalper short term profit is the rational goal, they can tell fans to bend over and take the price hit, since that is what is expected from them and a bad reputation isn't doing them any harm.

For bands there is a rational interrest to keep a positive image with their fanbase to improve long term profits. If this means keeping tickets underpriced so almost all their fans could afford going to a concert then the generated good will, will make up for that through other income channels. There is nothing unrational with long term profitability, despite the fundamentilst belive of most capitalists that the world ends with the next quarterly report.

Re:Why not a reverse auction instead?

[NotAPK]

You nailed it.

So I think the truth behind all of this comes from the shady back-room negotiations that go into putting on a concert. The band is probably super keen to get their cut of ticket sales, so the promoter reluctantly agrees that they can have 10% (say) of ticket sales. But others want to make more money on this, so the promoter and ticketing company team up and decide to devalue the tickets and sell them below market value, say $50 when they should be at $100. The band then only get their 10% of deflated ticket sales. If the ticketing company, or their subsidiary, can buy most of the tickets and re-sell them at a higher price, they can pocket the difference and no longer have to worry about the 10% cut for the band.

Of course every scenario may be different, and in the example above I used "band", when it could have been "venue" or the "owner" of the music being performed. Perhaps a 10% cut isn't worth the hassle, but what if they had negotiated 50%?

In other words, whenever a disparate group of people come together to negotiate a deal concerning money: nearly everyone is trying to rip off everyone else. Call me a cynic, I'm old, I'm allowed to be...

Re:Why not a reverse auction instead?

[ultranova]

Scalpers will only do that if the price is below market equilibrium, because otherwise there's no profit to be made.

There is if you corner the market - which, of course, is what scalpers do: buy all the tickets to every event so your options are to pay whatever they care to ask, or resign to never attend any.

So root cause of demand exceeding supply is the low, below-market-equilibrium price.

Root cause is the myth that "greed is good", which justifies any behaviour as long as it leads to profit.

Re:Solution is SIMPLE. Sell ticket to a person.

[mark-t]

The radio station reserves any tickets they are intending to give away, and then registers each under the name of its winner. The actual ticket shows both the name of radio station that purchased the ticket as well as the authorized recipient.

Ticketmaster

[Jack_of_Shadow]

So what about companies like Ticketmaster that do the same thing, buy up a ton of tickets right off the bat, then resell them? I have rarely found I could get a ticket at all from a venue, I almost always have had to use companies like ticketmaster, and yes, they add 'fee's' to the ticket face value.

Re:Ticketmaster

[danbert8]

They should be required to include all fees in the price of the ticket as well. It is outright fraud to advertise a ticket price that you cannot buy without fees tacked on. A mandatory fee is part of the cost of a ticket. A "convenience fee" is part of the cost of a ticket unless you can get it cheaper by being inconvenient.

Re:Ticketmaster

[ProzacPatient]

They should be required to include all fees in the price of the ticket as well. It is outright fraud to advertise a ticket price that you cannot buy without fees tacked on. A mandatory fee is part of the cost of a ticket. A "convenience fee" is part of the cost of a ticket unless you can get it cheaper by being inconvenient.

This right here. I recently went to a concert as a special treat and thought the ticket was advertised to be something like $45 for a seat it came out closer to $65 after Ticketmaster and the venue added all their outrageous fees, and if you're taking friends with you it adds up real fast.

Re:Ticketmaster

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not hard to figure out why.
The largest concert promoter is Live Nation.

Bands hire managers.
Band managers hire promoters to arrange the logistics, venue rental and local promotion of the shows.
Promoters organize selling of the tickets with the venues, including who is allowed to sell tickets.

Live Nation is owned by Ticketmaster, of course no one but them can sell the tickets.

Organized scalping is the way the mega-corp increases their slice of the concert pie.

Re:Ticketmaster

[WallyL]

This. My $20 (heavily subsidized by the casino venue, I'm sure) tickets ended up being about $30 per person. I realize that's small change to some people, but that's a 50% increase in cost of the ticket! Next time, I simply won't go. Forget Ticketmaster.

Ticket lottery system is needed

[Joe_Dragon]

Ticket lottery system is needed

A system like that is more fair / get's rid of the rush to buy with sites some times lagging out / crashing also helps people in different times zones have a fair chance at getting tickets.

Re:Ticket lottery system is needed

[Anonymous Coward]

Ticket lottery system is needed

A system like that is more fair / get's rid of the rush to buy with sites some times lagging out / crashing also helps people in different times zones have a fair chance at getting tickets.

No, because then scalpers will just get "fronts" to get the tickets to resell.

The problem is people who want for $30 what others are willing to pay $300 for.

If someone's willing to pay $300 for something, you have no right to get it for $30.

Re:Ticket lottery system is needed

[The-Ixian]

If someone's willing to pay $300 for something, you have no right to get it for $30.

Seriously?

Where I come from, that is called getting a good deal. No harm in that.

The thing is, the venue or the performer/artist are the ones setting the price. If they set it at $30 it doesn't matter if someone is willing to spend $300. You absolutely do have a RIGHT to get it for the price offered as long as there is availability (all the tickets aren't sold)... --- right here is where the dilemma exists

Re:Ticket lottery system is needed

[im_thatoneguy]

Just increase the number of bots and you still have the majority of bots being the "lottery winners".

Re:Ticket lottery system is needed

[spacepimp]

If the band is willing to sell the ticket for $30 so their fans can enjoy their show, then certainly the fan deserves that ticket for $30. If a bully was willing to punch the music fan in the gut and steal his ticket, by your simplistic logic, the fan, doesn't deserve the ticket. So let's extrapolate.

So the music fan gets gut punched and has his ticket stolen. He then gets up kills the gut puncher and can go to the show, and deserves to go because he wanted it more.

Re:Solution is SIMPLE. Sell ticket to a person.

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you deal with tickets that are purchased by entities then given away promotionally - think radio station contents and other giveaways?

Easily. Setup a corparate ticket sales office, where major customers can be verified for authenticity, then provide them with specially printed tickets that dont have the designated name policy applied. Businesses do that sort of thing all the time.

Legislation isn't the answer - economics is

[Anonymous Coward]

Concert tickets are a luxury good, not a basic good to which citizens have some unalienable right.

They should thus be treated like any other luxury good - i.e. let the vendor raise prices until demand reduces to match supply.

If scalpers are able to resell tickets for "many times" their face value, then the original ticket vendor should have sold them at "many times" their face value. I'm sure the State would appreciate the extra tax revenue.

But doesn't this mean only rich folk get to go to concerts? Yes, but only rich folk get to drive Ferraris or buy Rolex watches, and no-one complains.

Or have a secret auction. Let everyone bid whatever amount they're prepared to pay, subject to a public minimum. The amount you bid is then deducted from your credit card, to discourage time-wasters When the auction closes, the winning x bids get allocated tickets, and the losing bids get refunded.

But doesn't this mean I might end up paying more than the dude in the seat beside me? Yes, which is why you should only bid what you're prepared to pay, i.e. what you believe the concert to be worth.

Scalpers won't be able to resell tickets in this system, since anyone prepared to pay an inflated price (higher than the scalper paid) would have had the opportunity to legitimately bid that higher amount during the auction, and in doing so would have been allocated a ticket ahead of the scalper.

Re:Legislation isn't the answer - economics is

[Holi]

The rich don't pay scalper prices. They get them from AMEX, who gets far more tickets then anyone else, far far more then the scalpers. No it's the poor and the middle class who get stuck paying scalper prices.

Re:Legislation isn't the answer - economics is

[Anonymous Coward]

Concert tickets are a luxury good, not a basic good to which citizens have some unalienable right.

Fair dealings, however, are. This is one of the cases where a party is perceived as behaving in some less than fair manner, due to its manipulative and non-productive nature.

Scalpers, to put it another way, are not contributing to the supply of tickets or concerts, merely enriching themselves.

It is not a desired state.

They should thus be treated like any other luxury good - i.e. let the vendor raise prices until demand reduces to match supply.

The ticket venue is the vendor, not the scalper.

If scalpers are able to resell tickets for "many times" their face value, then the original ticket vendor should have sold them at "many times" their face value.

But then the scalpers will just sell their tickets for that much more.

I'm sure the State would appreciate the extra tax revenue.

Oh please, like there's extra tax revenue that's going to apply.

Nope.

But doesn't this mean only rich folk get to go to concerts? Yes, but only rich folk get to drive Ferraris or buy Rolex watches, and no-one complains.

I don't know of anybody artificially reducing the supply of those goods by seizing for themselves first, then withholding them for their own enrichment.

If that happens, I would imagine Ferrari and Rolex won't like it either. They'll work with importers, but if somebody constricts their ability to supply a good, they'll be offended.

Or have a secret auction. Let everyone bid whatever amount they're prepared to pay, subject to a public minimum. The amount you bid is then deducted from your credit card, to discourage time-wasters When the auction closes, the winning x bids get allocated tickets, and the losing bids get refunded.

But doesn't this mean I might end up paying more than the dude in the seat beside me? Yes, which is why you should only bid what you're prepared to pay, i.e. what you believe the concert to be worth.

Scalpers won't be able to resell tickets in this system, since anyone prepared to pay an inflated price (higher than the scalper paid) would have had the opportunity to legitimately bid that higher amount during the auction, and in doing so would have been allocated a ticket ahead of the scalper.

Well, you could propose that as a fair deal system if you wanted, sure. But other places prefer public posting of prices, and would find such secrecy against the public interest.

Re:Legislation isn't the answer - economics is

[Gavrielkay]

There is a caveat to this that someone else mentioned... the venues are often subsidized in some part by the public via taxes. So there is at least some expectation of ordinary tax payers getting to benefit from the place they helped pay for.

Re:Legislation isn't the answer - economics is

[jareth-0205]

Except... that breaks the actual event. Generally artists want their actual fans to be in the audience, more than they want the highest possible ticket price. It makes for a better experience for everyone, the fans appreciate it more, the band get a better reaction. To just sell to the highest bidder means that as an artist gets more successful they end up pricing out the people who made them successful in the first place, and replacing them with rich tourists.

Raising the prices might 'solve' the problem, but it doesn't make things better. This way the artist can retain control over the price, and restrict the ability of middlemen using technological means to change the price. Not entirely convinced it will work or that there aren't better solutions, but pretty sure that hiking the price, while the cleanest solution, would be the worst solution for actual people.

What about outside New York?

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in Canada and form a Canadian scalping company. How does this prevent me from scalping said tickets?

Re:What about outside New York?

[Holi]

As long as you never go to New York, nothing. If they do id you though, you could be arrested next time you try and cross the border.

Re:What about outside New York?

[Anonymous Coward]

How does that work if it is legal in the country you are from? If I live in the US and I have a US based company I am not subject to France's laws simply because I sell crap on the internet

Re:What about outside New York?

[budgenator]

Be careful, some laws says something like "It is Illegal for anyone to ... " and some say "It is Illegal for anyone in the United States to ... " , so you might want to consult an Attorney for specific guidance.

Re:What about outside New York?

[Anonymous Coward]

American exceptionalism. That's why we can arrest people like Dmitry Sklyarov when they come to our country. Because our laws are exceptional like that.

multiple captchas will not stop all scalpeing

[Joe_Dragon]

multiple captchas will not stop all scalpeing.

What about 1 time a year event's with an limited number of slots? Where there is an rush to buy where people with bot's or just happen click refresh at just the right time get in?

Locking to name to with no refund and no resell will just lead to people buying and if they can't go then the event having open unused slots or people who feel like why should I get no refund and the event gets to make X2 off one ticket when I give it up?

Why do you think they're "Ticket Bastards"?

[Anonymous Coward]

If the official event gate is an artificially-low $2 million, the performers get $1 million, say.

If the official event gate is the actual market-driven $10 million, the performers get $9 million, perhaps.

Who do you think gets that $8 million - scalpers.

How much do you think they pay Ticket Bastards for the privilege?

Re:Why do you think they're "Ticket Bastards"?

[swb]

Despite decades of complaints about ticket scalping, artists and/or venue don't change their pricing policies.

It wouldn't surprise me at all if both were making money on the back end -- and possibly avoiding taxes or other financial scrutiny -- by scalping tickets. Concert tickets represent an asset easily exchanged for cash and one for which artists or venues can give away, write off as expense, yet sell for untraceable cash.

Fixing collusion by venues and artists is probably really hard, since they can "sell" tickets at face value (and pay whatever taxes they have to pay) to shell entities and then those entities can resell them at higher prices and funnel the money back. I don't know how you fix this other than public audits of ticket sales -- "Hey, Beyonce/her management sold 3000 prime tickets to one person" so that their double-dipping can just be named and shamed.

But none of this changes the market economics that the price people are willing to pay exceeds what the face value of the ticket.

associate a CC or ID with ticket + ticket lottery

[Joe_Dragon]

associate a CC or ID with ticket + ticket lottery (at least some small events with limited room)

Re:Solution is SIMPLE. Sell ticket to a person.

[Holi]

The largest percentage of tickets sold do not go to the general public, they go to AMEX and are sold to card holders as rewards. Depending on the concert AMEX may get 50% of the tickets before they ever go on sale.

Class A misdemeanor? Eek.

[L. J. Beauregard]

I'm sure these guys are quaking all the way to the bank.

"High Frequency Trading"

[Bugler412]

So this bot driven scalping activity is illegal now in NY? How about they apply the same principal and block a similar practice by large Wall Street firms in our stock, commodities, futures, etc. markets? Bot driven trading has an identical effect in blocking out human participation, or making that participation less lucrative for human participants in the market. I guess if a large bank does it then it's ok then eh?

Re:"High Frequency Trading"

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent up.

It's a clear case of only going after the little guy. Again, again and again. How will this go on?

Two words: mechanical turk

[davidwr]

Sure, it will cost the scalpers a little more but it's not illegal. Yet.

Auction the tickets

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a simple solution to the problem I just don't understand why ticketmaster doesn't do it. Don't blame the scalpers, it's the system that's rigged.

Re:Solution is SIMPLE. Sell ticket to a person.

[geoskd]

How do you deal with tickets that are purchased by entities then given away promotionally - think radio station contents and other giveaways? This solution is not viable - the only viable solution is to make the criminal penalties for scalping tickets so powerful to deter anyone from trying make money...

Simple. Larger *certified* entities like a station that *are authorized* to do so, may purchase tickets that do not yet have a name associated with them.

You could do this with individuals as well. Allow any given ticket to be transferred to a new ticket holder, but limit transfers so that a single individual may not transfer more than 5 tickets per year. There are lots of ways to enforce these types of things. The only reason no one has is because ticket scalping is a fundamental outgrowth of capitalism. Supply and Demand in its purest form. Anyone who doesn't like the logical outcome that we have now, should be sat down and shown how the stock market is functioning in exactly the same way, to exactly the same effect, only with several order of magnitude more money at stake.

Re:Solution is SIMPLE. Sell ticket to a person.

[St.Creed]

The giveaway tickets are not part of the scalped tickets anyway, so no need for a solution there. Yes, these could be sold by anyone, but that's not the issue - they were off the market for normal sales in the first place, so resales for more money have zero impact on the sale of the remaining tickets. The issue is bots quickly buying up all tickets, not resale of tickets that were never going to be sold in the first place.

Free Market

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this just not exploiting the free market with technology?

And has been stated earlier sub-vendors would then bear the costs to sell the tickets. If the gig is not proving as popular as predicted, then the sub-vendors will be eating the loss.

Re:Solution is SIMPLE. Sell ticket to a person.

[tlhIngan]

The largest percentage of tickets sold do not go to the general public, they go to AMEX and are sold to card holders as rewards. Depending on the concert AMEX may get 50% of the tickets before they ever go on sale.

Actually, a lot more than 50%.

The promoter gets a share of the tickets. The artist gets a share of the tickets. The venue gets a share of tickets. Then credit cards, media, etc get a share of tickets. Etc.

It ends up being anywhere from 66-90% of tickets are sold before the general public gets them. A few places they do "VIP" tickets which are pre-registered members get to buy tickets (they get a password to buy tickets - usually they can get the best seats, but they can buy regular tickets as well).

Think of it this way - is it really so hard to sell tickets that venues go to people like Ticketmaster to handle their ticket selling?

About your sig... [OT]

[mark-t]

Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.

Only if you presume that a teleporter reconstructs you out of subatomic material available at the destination. If instead, the your quantum wave function were to be directly manipulated so that the probability of the collection of particles that represents you is reduced at one location while being increased at another location (subject only to uncertainty principles that are unavoidable at quantum levels), then you are not killed at your old location at all, as the probability of you being at the original location drops to zero (while the probability of you being somewhere else is 1 minus that probability), you would quite literally cease to be there in any way, and would simultaneously materialize at your destination. The "you" at the destination is not a copy of you, any more than a particle that has experienced quantum tunnelling is a copy of what it was before it tunnelled. Of course, the practical limitation on distance that this is liable to ever be achieved over is small enough that it would probably always be more efficient to simply walk.

Re:About your sig... [OT]

[drunken_boxer777]

One hurdle that would need to be overcome is the speed at which your quantum wave function were manipulated. Every living cell of your body contains thousands of enzymes catalyzing hundreds, thousands, or even millions of reactions per second. Failure to suspend, or nearly suspend, molecular and atomic motion prior to manipulating the quantum wave function would result in massive cellular disruption, not just in enzymatic activity, but structurally, as proteins would undergo conformational changes if a binding partner were not present. Basically, the quantum wave function of each particle would probably need to be manipulated in synchrony.

Now, if that was implied in your post, then carry on. IANAQP, but I was a biologist.

Re:About your sig... [OT]

[mark-t]

I was channeling a little more sci fi author than quantum physicist, to be perfectly honest.... I was talking about teleporters here, after all.

Re:About your sig... [OT]

[Holi]

You are the first person to ever comment on my sig. Kudos to you good sir.

Is this for the NYSE also?

[caffiend2049]

I look forward to this being implemented for bot transactions on the exchange also. I mean....if it's bad for concert tickets.....it's really bad for your investments, right?

Limit re-sales

[davidwr]

If you really want to slow down wholesale scalpers, tie at least 1 ticket in each purchase to a real person and don't allow any one person to buy more than 10 tickets per purchase without registering as a "group purchase."

The other tickets can have names assigned to them or not at the time of purchase as the buyer sees fit. The original purchaser can assign names to the unnamed tickets any time up to the event or they can be left un-assigned as "bearer tickets."

However:

* "Unnamed/bearer" tickets are not valid until at least one "named" ticket has entered the event.
* Once a name is assigned to a ticket, the name can be only be changed with a time-consuming phone call, paper-mail, or in-person visit that would include some form of identity verification. The venue can (and probably will) limit the number of such changes to a few dozen per year per person to curb abuse.

In exchange for making it somewhat harder for "Average Joe" ticket-buyers to re-sell their tickets, venues and authorized ticketing agents like Ticketmaster would promise to buy back tickets for a full refund for the ticket price and the convenience charge up to, say, a week before the event and refund the full price of the ticket up to a day before the event, subject to limits to prevent abuse.

Tickets sold to registered groups would come under different rules.

This system is NOT designed to stop or even put much of a road-block in the way of small-time scalpers or people who resell their season tickets. It's designed to increase the cost of doing business for organizations who buy and resell hundreds or thousands of tickets per year and who are determined to "beat the system" by
* Forcing them to have lots of different "buyers" with lots of different credit card numbers so their high activity won't be flagged
* Forcing them to assign a name to at least one out of every 10 tickets
* Forcing them to make sure at least 1 of every 10 tickets is represented by a warm body who shows up at the event before the other 9 people in that "ticket group" do

This will make large-scale scalping non-cost-effective for events where the secondary-price of the ticket isn't a whole lot more than the face value of the ticket. Since the non-mass-ticket-buying public can get a full refund, they won't have an incentive to sell tickets to scalpers at anything less than face value.

Wholesale ticket-buying by scalpers will still be an issue for high-demand events. For those events, either a ticket lottery with every ticket having a name on it and a full refund may be the only way to ensure the general public can get tickets at reasonable prices. Alternatively, a dutch auction wouldn't save ticket-buyers any money but at least the ticket revenue would go back to the venue and those running the event rather than to scalpers.

Re:Limit re-sales

[Anonymous Coward]

Just make it illegal to sell a ticket above face value. If you can't come to the event, you can still sell it for what you paid.

Re:Limit re-sales

[davidwr]

Without tying the ticket to a person, "good luck with that."

The system above ties some tickets to people directly and it ties the remaining tickets (except group tickets and other special situations) to tickets that are tied to a name.

Orange is the new Bot

[WillAffleckUW]

One day, these micro-aggressions will cause bots to rise up in revolt, mark my words!

First sale tickets should be auctions

[SoulMaster]

Seriously -
The current system of fixed-price, then ticket resale, proves is that "people will pay what the market will bear". It boggles me that the original seller (venue, artist, etc...) wouldn't want to capitalize on the additional revenue that's currently going in the re-sellers pockets. If, for every event, the tickets when to an online auction system, and capitalism rules were allowed to work @ point of original sale, I'm not sure you'd need this law.

Yes, poor fans will be pissed that they "can never buy tickets at reasonable prices" but that's just more motivation to succeed at life rather than work for minimum wage. Also, people are pissed that they can't by face-value tickets b/c bots & scalpers anyway. If face-value was dynamic, that argument would be moot.

An auction-style system would almost certainly reduce the amount of scalpers that wind up with tickets. I'd assume that the secondary market would wind up limited to unwanted tickets from season ticket holders.

My 2
-SM

Auction

[brian.stinar]

The authorities don't really want to "solve" this problem. There are many solutions for managing bots, such as CAPTCHAs and order limits.

One real solution is to auction off every ticket. The auction would begin as early as possible, and continue until the event begins. As soon as a ticket is bid for (requiring an escrow) the auction for that ticket would continue for another hour. If, at the end of that hour, no one else has bid, it goes to the last bidder. If someone else has bid, then it goes to them. They wouldn't have to wait for the entire hour to be up - they could place another bid immediately after the previous bid was placed. If the payment were not received / the escrow failed, then auction the ticket again.

I think you would see how tickets are actually valued by people that plan ahead if such a system were implemented. Scalpers aren't a problem in this system - they seem like a you-failed-to-plan-accordingly surcharge.

The problem is a timing disconnect between how the tickets are valued. This presents an opportunity for arbitrage, which scalpers capitalize on. The difference in timing, and relative values, presents opportunities, not a reason to throw someone in jail. It also presents an opportunity by which the ticket venues could actually try and understand these differences in timing, and increase their profits.

However, it's much easier to sell all your tickets, at like MAYBE 5 different prices, to one scalper than to actually think about novel distribution channels.

Re:Solution is SIMPLE. Sell ticket to a person.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's how Nine Inch Nails tickets have worked for the last 10 years.

Limit by phone number?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since cell phones are so common, couldn't the ticket sellers just require a unique phone number to be entered with each transaction and send a confirming text message?

Scalpers might try to hoard a bunch of cell numbers, but there are going to be patterns if they try to reuse those numbers for multiple concerts in a row.

Re:Solution is SIMPLE. Sell ticket to a person.

[Maxo-Texas]

AC asked
"How do you deal with tickets that are purchased by entities then given away promotionally - think radio station contents and other giveaways? This solution is not viable - the only viable solution is to make the criminal penalties for scalping tickets so powerful to deter anyone from trying make money..."

AC, if you read the thread, you'll see this solution is already in use for ticketed events. The issue you raise is already being handled successfully too. So not only is the solution viable, it's being used.

Now the more fundamental problem is selling a limited number of tickets to an increasingly larger population. But at least if you tie the name to the ticket, you won't have uninterested 3rd parties speculating on tickets and using banks of computers to autopurchase many blocks of tickets.

Re:Solution is SIMPLE. Sell ticket to a person.

[Maxo-Texas]

Well, you have the choice of going to the baseball game with an id for $50 or without an id for $790.
Which means for most of the population, they are not going to the baseball game with or without an id anyway. At best, it's the nosebleed section.

Oh thank goodness

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank goodness we are expending all this effort on these horrible ticket crimes. I feel so much safer. *infinite facepalm*

A couple of benefits - liquidity and parity

[raymorris]

> Considering HFT does nothing for the company who's stocks are being traded

There are some problems with high-frequency trading, so don't misunderstand what I'm about to say. I'm NOT saying "HFT is great."

A more liquid asset is more valuable than an otherwise equalivent illiquid asset. HFT increases the liquidity of the stock, and therefore its value (slightly).

Also, investors don't like illogical markets. If the stock of company A and company B are both $100, and a mutual fund is equally invested in each, the mutual fund should have the same value. Similarly, 90% of Yahoo's value is the Alibaba stock they own. If the price of Yahoo is much higher or lower than Alibaba's, that's illogical and makes investors nervous. HFT removes this disparities, slightly increasing the value.

Re:A couple of benefits - liquidity and parity

[Anonymous Coward]

A more liquid asset is more valuable than an otherwise equalivent illiquid asset.

Yes and no. A little liquidity is like water. You need some. But there does come a point where too much liquidity, like too much water, is itself a problem.

And no, _some_ investors love illogical markets. It lets them take their rakeoff from the rubes. If you think this is okay that says something about you that is not a compliment.

AC

Re:A couple of benefits - liquidity and parity

[Anonymous Coward]

"HFT increases the liquidity of the stock"

This is an incorrect assumption. When there are problems in the stock market, a time when such liquidity is needed, these HFT algorithms wind up bailing, and the fake liquidity just disappears.

They're front-running penny shavers. That's all they are.

Re:A couple of benefits - liquidity and parity

[Smidge204]

HFT increases the liquidity of the stock, and therefore its value (slightly).

The way I understand it, this isn't and can't possibly be true.

HFT "works" by creating both buy and sell orders for stocks and commodities at the same time, and either completing those transactions or canceling the buy/sell orders and posting new ones based on new information, often several times per second.

If the HFT system ever completes a buy/sell order, it only holds the stocks it trades for typically less than a second, meaning there must be a matched bid to buy and a request to sell that stock within that time frame if any transaction is to take place. Otherwise, the orders would be canceled and reposted.

In other words, HFT can only be effective if there are already buyers and sellers in the market at that specific time, and even then only to the volume of stock that is being sold or purchased.

I have a hard time seeing it as anything other than a man-in-the-middle attack looking to shave a few fractions of a cent per transaction. Maybe this made sense before computerized transactions were a common thing and you still had humans negotiating the transactions, but now that *all* transactions are negotiated and matched by computers it seems completely unnecessary.
=Smidge=

Re: A couple of benefits - liquidity and parity

[Anonymous Coward]

But that doesn't justify said MITM transactions so they'll just continue repeating the myth of liquidity until it starts sinking in.

if ever

[superwiz]

if ever there was Streisand effect.... yeah, yeah... money is not speech. Until it's code.

That's great if you're a ticket reseller

[rsilvergun]

it sucks for the band. There's a small group of people willing to pay the inflated prices. They crowd out the regular ticket buyer. There's a _lot_ more money to be had in ticket sales catering to that smaller group. Trouble is very, very few bands get a cut of the tickets. They make their money on CD & T-Shirt sales. If Ticketmaster sell 10000 tickets for $10 the ticket seller just made $100k and the band gets to sell a lot of merch. If the same concert sells through 1000 tickets for $200 Ticketmaster just banked $200k but the band losses out big time. This is why bands fight scalpers and why they also fight your market driven ideas. It's like that old saying: For every sufficiently complex problem there exists a solution that is simple, elegant and wrong...

That's a trader, not an investor

[raymorris]

> And no, _some_ investors love illogical markets. It lets them take their rakeoff from the rubes.

You're speaking of TRADERS, not investors. Investors like stable and logical markets.

How often does this actually happen?

[Applehu Akbar]

If anyone could make a consistent profit by speculative buying of tickets for resale, obviously the event operator would be first to adjust ticket prices to match the established new market. This is really about a graft-ridden city making a perfectly normal market activity, reselling tickets people can't use, illegal by giving it an ugly name like 'scalping'.

Meanwhile here in Arizona, it's legal to resell any event or game ticket, right up to the Super Bowl. Reselling is done openly outside stadiums to accommodate fans who had a friend blow into town unexpectedly and want to see their team. Sharpies buying up all the tickets and cornering the market just doesn't happen.

Re:Solution is SIMPLE. Sell ticket to a person.

[Tony Isaac]

That's great, until I have something come up that prevents me from attending the event. When that happens, am I required to throw away the tickets? Am I allowed to transfer or sell them to someone else who can go? And if that is allowed, the suggested solution breaks down, because the bot operators just need to provide fake names, then sell the tickets to people who have real names and IDs.

I'm not sure I like tickets being non-refundable and non-transferrable.

death by captcha

[Anonymous Coward]

This API works well for those pesky captcha... :)

http://www.deathbycaptcha.com/user/login

Nonsense. Nobody is stuck paying scalper prices.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nonsense. Nobody is stuck paying scalper prices.

Big-Ticket concerts, sports, and other entertainment, especially live entertainment, are a luxury, not a necessity. Besides they are more often than not miserable experiences overall (travel, parking, bathrooms, concession prices, unpleasant staff, nasty crowds filled with multitudes of other people (the definition of hell.)

Lots of entertainment is cheaper, more convenient, and far more enjoyable. Let the idiots pay scalper prices, but don't feel sorry for them. It's a choice, and they made the wrong one.

Re:Solution is SIMPLE. Sell ticket to a person.

[Maxo-Texas]

It depends. The likely result would depend on why you didn't make it. Can verify you had to go to the hospital? Most businesses would give you a refund or credit. Something less drastic? Most businesses would give you a credit.

And besides, you'd be out $35 instead of $250.

I think the preferred policy is to let you return the ticket by phone or internet for full or partial credit (depending on the lead time before the show) so it can be resold. Perhaps with a modest restocking fee (so about $7 to $14 bucks for many tickets) in case it's not resold.

For your second point tho-- huh? Bot operators COULDN'T resell the tickets. The tickets could only be used by someone who whose real name was the same as the "fake" name.

Re:Solution is SIMPLE. Sell ticket to a person.

[Maxo-Texas]

Anonymous Coward said: That's how Nine Inch Nails tickets have worked for the last 10 years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

where it says...

In an effort to combat ticket scalpers, each concert ticket will list the purchaser's legal name.

Print at home against scalping

[krouic]

The company I work for has developped a ticketing system that can severely hurt scalping.
The buyers purchase tickets on-line and receive a PDF file that contains textual information (name of buyer, date and place of venue, etc.) as well as a unique 2D scan code. Before going to the venue they print them at home, or load the code in their smartphone.
At the venue entrance, tickets are scanned by hand-held scanners and the ticket code is checked against a database. If it corresponds to a ticket that has already been checked or to a ticket that has not been sold (forged code), the venue goer is not let in.

Scalping is severly reduced, because buying from a scalper presents a risk that the print at home ticket is forged, or that the same ticket has been duplicated and reselled many times. As the validity of the ticket can only be checked at the venue entrance, there is no way for the potential buyer from a scalper to know if he will be able to enter the venue, or will just be parted from his money.

Re:Print at home against scalping

[Anonymous Coward]

I do not get yet what is the advantage/difference of buying a normal ticket from a stalker, that could be forged too.

Re:Solution is SIMPLE. Sell ticket to a person.

[NotAPK]

"It depends. The likely result would depend on why you didn't make it. Can verify you had to go to the hospital? Most businesses would give you a refund or credit. Something less drastic? Most businesses would give you a credit."

I really disagree with this idea. Why should someone else be able to arbiter whether my reason for not attending the concert is a "valid excuse"? In a similar way I never tell my boss why I want time off work: if I have leave available then they can either approve or deny my request. I refuse to allow others the power to adjudicate my own life.

Re:Nonsense. Nobody is stuck paying scalper prices

[NotAPK]

"travel, parking, bathrooms, concession prices, unpleasant staff, nasty crowds filled with multitudes of other people (the definition of hell)"

In my experience the #1 reason people attend concerts is so they can brag to their friends (online or in person) and acquaintances that they attended the concert.

Easy fix

[Anonymous Coward]

Have all tickets be bought in-person.

Solution: Only pay normal price for tickets.

[Morpf]

Or, you know, we could all just not buy from shady sources for multiple times the normal price and let those idiots sit on their 1012 tickets. This should teach them.

Another useless measure

[Anonymous Coward]

Good, so it's illegal. Now try enforcing it.

Scalper Joe Bloggs, if questioned, will tell the police he bought his block of tickets from A Totally Different Person and has no idea how this different person came into possession of their tickets. Perhaps they VPN'd a bot, but who can say. Not his problem, guv, since he wasn't running the bot, just acting as an honest middleman which is STILL legal despite this new law.

Just make unauthorised intermediaries acting as ticket agents illegal, and this problem goes away. Why not do that hmm?

Re:Solution is SIMPLE. Sell ticket to a person.

[Maxo-Texas]

I hear you man, I really disagree with the idea of someone who has no interest in the concert, who probably never listened to even one of the bands songs, buy up a hundred and fifty tickets for $30 a pop and then resell them to the fans, some of whom may have followed the band for years, for $750 to $80 depending on the row and section.

But I get that you can only think about yourself.

Re:Solution is SIMPLE. Sell ticket to a person.

[Tony Isaac]

It all comes down to what you think a ticket is.

If a ticket is a good--something you can own--then you absolutely should be able to buy and sell it as you please, and even scalpers have every right to do what they do.

If a ticket is more like a seat rental contract--not a possession, but an agreement--then it makes sense to only be able to buy from the ticket seller, and to make them non-transferrable. In this case, we have a situation like we have with the airlines, where sure, you can get your money back...well, a little bit of it anyway, and then only in the form of credit towards future flights, after a $100 trip change fee. We ALL love how the airlines do things, right??? And that's how we want concerts to be? I don't think so.

There's no really good answer. But I don't think it's selfish to want to be able to resell a ticket when you can't use it.

That's sub-type of a type of HFT

[raymorris]

What you describe is a sub-type of one type of HFT.

The supertype of what you describe is called market making. Official market makers are REQUIRED to always have standing buy and sell orders for the same security, meaning they are willing to either buy or sell, guaranteeing that you and I can buy or sell whenever we'd like to (the market maker must sell when we want to buy and vice-versa). That's pretty much the definition of providing liquidity. The market maker isn't there to hold on to the stock, they are there to sell it to whoever wants to buy it and buy it from whoever wants to sell it. The stock could go up during the interval, or it could go down, so the market maker wants to get rid of it excess inventory as quickly as possible. Therefore yes, they'll often sell to one person half a second after buying from another. Unofficial market makers work the same way, without the commitment. They're always ready to buy sell at 100 and buy at 99.98.

What you describe, someone who looks for pairs of buy/sell and tries to squeeze market-maker orders in between, exists, too, of course, but there's not much room for a simple paired buy-sell of the same security. More often, it's a multiway order of different trades in cycle, described below. Most paired buy/sell orders of a single security like you describe are taking market maker positions, basically selling liquidity.

More HFT algorithms look for different types of this broad category of scenarios:

Sue wants to exchange Argentine pesos for Australian dollars.
Bob wants to exchange Australian dollars for Kenyan shillings.
Kevin wants to exchange Kenyan shillings for Australian dollars.

Left to themselves, Sue, Bob, and Kevin are stuck and get nowhere because nobody wants to take the other side of any of those trades. Helen, an HFT trader, recognizes that she can buy some $AUS and trade them to Sue for pesos, then trade the pesos to Bob for shillings, then trade the shillings to Kevin. Bob, Sue, and Kevin get the exchanges they wanted to make and Helen earns a small profit by facilitating it.

Resale

[phorm]

There's still the issue of resale for those who've bought tickets, but a simple solution for that would be to require ID for a transfer of ownership (and maybe even a small cut with a re-print) or that the original owner be present at entry. The mass-buying bots would fail but individuals could still resell if willing to do a bit of leg-work.

How about this?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you can't get a ticket for a price you find reasonable, decline to go to the event.

Now, everybody do it.

There, problem solved.

NY bans i7 CPUs

[Anonymous Coward]

NY has just announced that people with i7 processors in their computers are now banned from ordering tickets online, because it has been shown an i7 computer has a notable advantage over those using an i5 or worse. "It just isn't fair that people who have better computers tend to experience faster browsing functions, and therefore have a greater chance of getting tickets when the rush is so great, people often need to refresh their order page"

"How DARE people use their computers for the puspose they were designed for- to automate tasks using computer code. Hitlery Clinton has taught us the POWER of demonised words like 'bot' or 'secular society' or 'free choice' so we just love it when we can abuse our executive power to tell New Yorl citizens how to think or act- PS I do hope you remember that only people that hold a Hitlery Clinton approved NY licence are allowed to code for a living in NY state".

Re:Solution is SIMPLE. Sell ticket to a person.

[Maxo-Texas]

If you are reselling it for the same price you bought it for, it's not selfish.

But, allowing resell allows ticket speculation by people who are beyond selfish.

There are two fair options.
1) Selling the named ticket to a person who is the only person that can use it.
2) Starting the ticket off at more appropriate prices to suck the excessive profits out to reduce speculation.

There are a few other approaches to make it harder such as
* Limiting tickets sold to one billing address.
* Limiting tickets sold to home and apartment addresses.
* Limiting tickets buyable by a single purchase method. (So a single buyer would have to have many credit cards)

But selling named tickets is already being done by festivals, some bands, etc. It's a proven method.

Solution?

[Anonymous Coward]

Penalized Mass Ticket-Buying
For example: The ticket is on sale at $100, but only the first five and after the fifth ticket there is an incremental "penalization" for ticket hoarding.

1T $100
2T $200
3T $300
4T $400
5T $500 ($100 each)
6T $720 ($120 each)
7T $980 ($140 each)
8T $1280 ($160 each) ...
1000T $110000000 ($110000 each) :v