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Paradise Papers Expose Canadian Scalper's Multimillion-Dollar StubHub Scheme (www.cbc.ca)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBC.ca: When Adele fans went online to buy tickets to the pop superstar's world tour last year, they had no idea what exactly they were up against. An army of tech-savvy resellers that included a little-known Canadian superscalper named Julien Lavallee managed to vacuum up thousands of tickets in a matter of minutes in one of the quickest tour sellouts in history. The many fans who were shut out would have to pay scalpers like Lavallee a steep premium if they still wanted to see their favorite singer. An investigation by CBC/Radio-Canada and the Toronto Star, based in part on documents found in the Paradise Papers, rips the lid off Lavallee's multimillion-dollar operation based out of Quebec and reveals how ticket website StubHub not only enables but rewards industrial-scale scalpers who gouge fans around the world.
Lavallee's name appears over and over in the records, alongside the names of his wife, his father and other friends and family. The records show them somehow buying tickets from different locations around the world at the same time, placing orders from cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, London and Montreal. Lavallee, who got his start in his early 20s reselling hockey and concert tickets while living at home with his parents, now runs an international ticket harvesting operation. Financial records detail $7.9 million in gross sales in 2014 alone. [T]he CBC/Star investigation also discovered a password-protected portal exclusively for StubHub's top sellers who prove they can move more than $50,000 worth of tickets a year. The company offers them special software to upload and manage huge inventories of tickets. StubHub said in a statement: "StubHub agrees that the use of bots to procure tickets is unfair and anti-consumer. StubHub has always supported anti-bots legislation and encourages policy-makers to look comprehensively at the host of factors that impact a fan's ability to fairly access, buy, resell, or even give away tickets in a competitive ticket market."
Lavallee's name appears over and over in the records, alongside the names of his wife, his father and other friends and family. The records show them somehow buying tickets from different locations around the world at the same time, placing orders from cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, London and Montreal. Lavallee, who got his start in his early 20s reselling hockey and concert tickets while living at home with his parents, now runs an international ticket harvesting operation. Financial records detail $7.9 million in gross sales in 2014 alone. [T]he CBC/Star investigation also discovered a password-protected portal exclusively for StubHub's top sellers who prove they can move more than $50,000 worth of tickets a year. The company offers them special software to upload and manage huge inventories of tickets. StubHub said in a statement: "StubHub agrees that the use of bots to procure tickets is unfair and anti-consumer. StubHub has always supported anti-bots legislation and encourages policy-makers to look comprehensively at the host of factors that impact a fan's ability to fairly access, buy, resell, or even give away tickets in a competitive ticket market."
It'd be even easier if stupid people wouldn't buy tickets from scalpers. After a few concerts with no body in the seats and scalpers on the hook for millions, the problem will solve itself.
some karma... and kinda lukewarm about it.
For every person you could possibly convince not to purchase, five more are waiting to buy. Fantasy ideas about supply and demand aren't helpful.
If a gas station sells for $2 a gallon, and then an emergency strikes, that station will be empty even if they raise their prices to $10 a gallon. For a once in a lifetime event, most people would pay far more. It doesn't matter if it's concert tickets or emergency rations, they are a limited resource and valuable.
It's deranged thinking that you can stop ticket scalping or price gouging. There is always someone willing to pay more than you.
Even the H1b visa lottery is being manipulated...
Obvious solution: Replace the lottery with an auction. The visas will go to those that value them the most, and the price will be too high for anyone looking for cheap labor.
Spam emails still exists because they're lucrative even though "nobody" replies to these things.
And you're asking people to NOT buy things they WANT?
#DeleteFacebook
Require the ticket user's name be printed on the ticket, and confirm your ID matches before you're allowed in.
That the ticket sales sites don't implement such a simple solution suggests they actually like scalpers. The scalpers help guarantee an event sells out even if not all the seats are filled. i.e. The risk of a non-sellout is shifted from the ticket sales site to the scalpers, with the scalpers losing money if the event doesn't sell out, but pocketing the cash if the event does sell out. The ticket sales sites benefit from less variability in ticket sales, and thus more predictability in their income.
That's what every real estate, product or service seller is thinking -- how do I extract all the money my customer has? And it's called gouging. This is why the working class is always working; their increased income is absorbed by increases in product prices.
It is basic supply and demand, not price gouging. Price gouging nearly always refers to essentials such as food or medicine during emergencies. Charging the maximum people will pay for a concert, which is entertainment with nearly infinite alternatives, is just basic economics.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke