Favourite Player's Injured? Get a Refund (bbc.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: Any sports fan will know, or at least appreciate, the disappointment of going to watch your team only to find that a top player has been left out. But what if you could pay an extra bit of money for your ticket -- say, 5-15% on top of the normal price -- and insure the cost of your ticket against such a situation? If your favourite player does not play, for whatever reason, you get your money back. That's the intriguing premise behind Fansure, a start-up currently based in Belmont, California. When I spoke to the firm's marketing manager, Tara Fan, she explained it in the context of a basketball game: "Some tickets are $300-$400 to go to a game. Typically, you're paying that to see someone like LeBron James, or Kevin Durant, or someone like that." It works like this: You buy the ticket as normal. Then, at least 48 hours before the game, you go to Fansure, and you pay them an added percentage. The amount reflects what Fansure thinks is the likelihood of your selected player appearing or not.

Someone like Durant for instance, rarely misses a game for the Golden State Warriors and so the premium would be relatively low. "It would only be, I would say, 8% of your ticket price," Ms Fan explained. "It's like... $30 to cover a $400 ticket. And so that's where the benefit rolls out." If Durant plays, you've wasted your $30, which Fansure pockets. If he doesn't, you still get to go and enjoy the game, and Fansure will refund you the entire amount of the ticket (but keeps the bit you paid for insurance).

Comments

Gambling

[Bugler412]

So now we're developing a way to gamble using your event tickets? Like we needed another way to gamble?

Re: Gambling

[Anonymous Coward]

What if the event is better than expected? Like if I went to a game and found myself next to Creimette and we shared a coke and some nachos and got on the kiss cam. Should I pay more?

Re:Gambling

[Anonymous Coward]

Name one form of insurance that isn't like gambling.

Re:Gambling

[nsuccorso]

I bet this is hugely popular!

Re: Gambling

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

Pretty much this. They would open it to non-ticket holders too, but it's an obvious sucker's bet.

Re:Gambling

[LordKronos]

Pretty much every form of insurance is not gambling. The idea with gambling is that if things go the way you planned, you come out a winner. But generally with insurance, you don't come away feeling like a winner.

Car insurance: You get into a car accident, and your car insurance pays for replairs. But generally you are still at a loss. You've lost significant time dealing with it. Repaired cars with any significant damage are often not quite the same. When you go to sell the car you are likely to get less for it (and insurance rarely compensates you, fully or even at all, for diminished value. And there's a good chance you'll end up paying more in insurance in the future

House insurance: Your house burns down, and it's a gigantic life disruption. Depending on how extensive the damage and other circumstances, you could be spending more than a year living out of a hotel or rental. Your insurance will pay for a lot of your stuff, but realistically there will be so many things not covered and that you don't even remember to claim. Anything of sentimental value is impossible to replace. It's pretty much impossible to be made whole. In lesser cases, like where you just have a water leak, insurers are fearful of mold so you could end up getting dropped and find your house nearly uninsurable except for the most expensive policies. It can even affect you went you go do sell and the buyer finds nobody wants to insure the house.

Life insurance: If you have a very high value policy, then even with all your expenses incurred it may be possible to come out financially better off...but come on, someone you love has died, which can just destroy your life (especially if kids are invovled...for their entire life they'll never be quite the same). But realistically, in many cases you don't even come out financially positive in the long run when the big money earner is gone from the picture and year after year you chip away at the insurance payout

Medical insurance: Considering the cost of premiums, the only way for medical insurance to not be a negative value investment is to have a lot of medical bills, which generally means someone is pretty sick.

Sports player insurance: I still get to go to the game and still get to enjoy it, but maybe get 90% of my cost of the ticket refunded. And note that unlike other insurances, here I was already happy to pay 100% of the value to do that. So this is really like a positive value return when the insurance kicks in (as opposed to all the above examples, where you pretty much always lose out)

Re:Gambling

[kvonhorn]

No, you're looking at it backwards. The CREATORS needed another way to gamble, so they're developing this market.

Re:Gambling

[Anonymous Coward]

The idea with gambling is that if things go the way you planned, you come out a winner.

It is just as correct to say that the idea with gambling is that if things go south you come out a loser.

How about the drop the winner/loser aspect and get down to brass tacks. The idea with gambling is that you are betting on a thing happening or not happening. And insurance absolutely falls into that.

Note I fully support insurance, but it absolutely has all the markings of gambling.

Re:Gambling

[caseih]

Wait, what? Is all insurance gambling? If I buy trip cancellation insurance from American Auto Association, I'm gambling? Or any other form of external, third-party insurance? I don't think so.

This is not gambling. This is insurance. The only gambling going on is that the company is gambling that most players will not be injured most of the time, so their premiums will cover the occasional payout. If there is an injury, then all the participants in the pool get a pay out. It's not like only one person gets the pot, which is what gambling is.

Re:Gambling

[Anonymous Coward]

All you have to do to make it gambling is sell your ticket.

1. You buy a $400 ticket and $30 insurance.
2. you sell your ticket for $400
3. player you bet on not to play doesn't play you get refunded $400
4. minus the $30 insurance you pocket $370.

Re: Gambling

[Anonymous Coward]

That's insurance fraud and you can go to prison if you're caught.

Insurance generally only covers your loss for various reasons. One of which is that it would be gambling.

Re:Gambling

[Anonymous Coward]

Heheh the financial market do this all the time.

Re:Gambling

[Anonymous Coward]

If you buy trip cancellation insurance, you can cancel your trip, get your money back minus the insurance, and do NOT go on the trip. They aren't asking you to give back your ticket, you still get to go to the game. You are placing a bet that you get to see a game for a low cost if player X gets injured or profit by reselling the ticket you got refunded for.

Re:Gambling

[Geoffrey.landis]

Pretty much every form of insurance is not gambling.

No. Insurance is gambling, pretty much by definition.

You pay money to enter. There is an event with some unknown probability. If the event happens, you get a payout; if it doesn't, you lose your money.

That's the definition of gambling.

The idea with gambling is that if things go the way you planned, you come out a winner. But generally with insurance, you don't come away feeling like a winner.

Whether you "feel" like a winner or not is not part of the definition of gambling. You're placing money down, and get a payout or not depending on outcome.

I think that the problem is that you are assuming some moral connotations to "gambling", and you think "but insurance is good, so therefore it can't be gambling." Delete the moral connotations, and you see it is, indeed, a form of gambling.

(you can, if you like, think of it as a reverse form of gambling, if you want to think of life itself as the gamble.)

Re:Gambling

[jellomizer]

It is more like insurance. In some ways insurance is like gambling, except for the fact the reward for "winning" a settlement, is often offset from the damage that has occurred, and it is there as way to protect yourself from falling too far.

Now having insurance on a sports team ticket seems rather silly, because sure you can get a refund, but also watching your sports team play is still a leisure activity, and you shouldn't be paying so much for a ticket that if you didn't get an optimal experience, that you would hurt yourself too much financially.

Heck perhaps movie companies can make a few extra bucks by offering insurance on the Movie tickets, if they walk out of the movie in 1/2 hour they get a full refund, charge an extra $3 a ticket for it.

Re:Gambling

[Anubis IV]

This is a third-party insurance product, no different than most other insurance products, though I'd say it most closely resembles trip insurance.

We were on the hook for a few thousand bucks when we booked a major trip recently, so we wanted to make sure that the car breaking down on the way to the point of departure, or one of us getting sick, or me losing my job, or a death in the family, or us having to move across the country for my job, or any number of other things outside our control wouldn't mean that we had thrown good money away on a trip that we wouldn't be able to take. We paid the insurance company that money and didn't have to make a claim, but even if we had, they would have kept the premium we paid anyway because it covered the cost of a product we purchased from them. I've had friends who did have to make claims, whether because of illness, hurricanes in the Caribbean, or deaths in the family. It's nice to know that there's a safety net there when those sorts of situations emerge that are out of our control. And while I couldn't care less about who's playing in a game, I know that some people do, so it makes some sense to offer an insurance product aimed at guaranteeing what you thought you were paying for.

Gambling, in contrast, is almost the inverse of insurance. In the case of gambling, not playing means you suffer no loss (i.e. the only way to win is to not play), whereas with insurance you may still suffer loss if you don't play. With gambling, a small minority comes out well ahead of where they started by riding on the backs of everyone who lost, whereas no one comes out ahead in insurance, though a few people have their losses mitigated by riding on the backs of everyone who lost less. With gambling, the house controls the object of chance, but an insurance company has no control over the object of chance.

Or, put simply, gambling introduces instability (i.e. peaks and valleys) into one's otherwise stable fortunes, whereas insurance introduces stability (i.e. filling valleys) into one's otherwise unstable fortunes. Gambling serves no net benefit to society, whereas insurance mitigates major losses by amortizing those losses over large populations, thus creating financial stability for society.

This thing is an insurance product. A silly, rather frivolous one in my opinion, but it's definitely insurance, not gambling.

Re: Gambling

[Anonymous Coward]

gambling is taking risks in order to profit. i.e. without having to work.

buying insurance is mitigating risks for a nominal fee. i.e. to avoid losing your hard work.

running an insurance company might be like gambling, but most of them seem to turn consistent profits so it's not like any gambling I've heard of.

Re:Gambling

[hawguy]

All you have to do to make it gambling is sell your ticket.

1. You buy a $400 ticket and $30 insurance.
2. you sell your ticket for $400
3. player you bet on not to play doesn't play you get refunded $400
4. minus the $30 insurance you pocket $370.

But, just like with gambling, the house always wins. They priced the product so they'll make a profit, the only way you can earn a profit is through luck or insider knowledge about a player's injury that will sideline him)

Re:Gambling

[JesseMcDonald]

Wait, what? Is all insurance gambling?

Yes, all insurance is gambling. Or to be more precise, it's counter-gambling—you're already gambling by involving yourself in an activity with some element of risk, and in buying insurance you're placing an opposing bet in order to cancel out some or all of that risk.

Say you're a participant in a horse race, for example. There is no qualitative difference between taking out insurance against the possibility of a loss and simply placing a bet for your opponent(s) to win. Either way you get a bit less if you win (the insurance premium or the amount of the bet) in exchange for receiving some prearranged payout in the event that you lose, thus reducing your risk.

Re:Gambling

[Anonymous Coward]

I can kind of see where they're coming from.

You're placing money down, and get a payout or not depending on outcome.

You could argue that the difference is that in gabling you come out with more than you went in with, which is usually not the case with insurance. Insurance may compensate for loss, but often you end up with less than the item had cost you and lost time. For example, I was looking at travel insurance recently and most of them had an explicit (and low) limit on how much they'd pay out per item of electronics. If your £1500 laptop was lost/destroyed/stolen they'd give you a maximum of £500, even if that laptop was brand new.

Gambling is about gaining more than you had, insurance is more about making sure a loss is, usually, partially compensated for. You never get more than the value of your car for a replacement when it crashes.

Re: Gambling

[CoolDiscoRex]

Insurance rarely pays out big claims anymore. They try to âsettleâ(TM) for less, and when you try to sue, you find out they have an arbitration clause. Bad faith has been de-facto legalized in the insurance industry and it is very much a gamble when, if, or how much you will get paid. People feel âoeprotectedâ. That is until they try and file a claim. They pay premiums for years only to be offered half when the time comes, and are told to take it or go to a rigged arbitrator who will give them even less. Maturity is the point where you realize that most things youâ(TM)ve been told is a lie. Insurance is one of those things. Itâ(TM)s hardly the surefire protection that people think it is, and is a straight-up gamble in the USA.

Re:Gambling

[Kjella]

Well this is not so much insurance as it's a bundled bet. I mean who you are and whether you go to the game has zero impact on who's playing and it doesn't invalidate your ticket, so you could just go to any sports betting company and get odds on your favorite player not playing, then bet 1/odds so your winnings cancel out what you paid for the ticket. Either way you'll pay them a good administration fee & profit margin, so in the not-so-very long run you'll be better putting that money in our own "shit happens" fund. I'd never consider taking out insurance/extended warranty etc. on anything worth less than $1000. House, car and travel insurance is fine because that could get crazy expensive, but this is just wasting money.

Re:Gambling

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Like insurance, they analyze the risks and offer insurance at a price that statistically covers it + operations + profit.

The only concern is if they have deep enough pockets if some major star bows out. This is where backers come in, who, in exchange for profits, put their wealth on the line.

It's one of the few unlimited liability company types left, where, if the company incurs debt, they can go after the owners.

With modern corporations, the company goes bankrupt, tough on creditors. People rarely even think the other way anymore.

Re:Gambling

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not the same. With gambling, you are hoping for a profit. With insurance, you are mitigating a loss (exchanging the risk of a large, unexpected loss for a known, regular, smaller cost).

With gambling, there are three possible outcomes:
1) Profit
2) Break even
3) Loss

With insurance, there are two:
1) Break even
2) Loss

And most importantly: with gambling, you are voluntarily increasing your risk of financial loss. With insurance, you are reducing your risk of financial loss.

Re:Gambling

[sjames]

There is a good distinction. If the event happening or not is of no significant consequence but for the money that transacta, it's gambling. If it has significant consequence and the money from the transaction reduces of eliminates the financial consequence, it's insurance.

More succinct rule of thumb, if you can come out ahead, it's gambling. If you can at best not take a financial loss, it's insurance.

Re:Gambling

[John Napkintosh]

Do you consider the extra/optional fee you pay to avoid airfare cancellation fees to be the same as gambling? It's semantics, but that's basically the same as what's going on here.

Re: Gambling

[Anonymous Coward]

Running an insurance company is just like running a casino - practically guaranteed profit. Being a gambler or an insured person is guaranteed loss. We pay a premium, and hope to never need the insurance. Straight loss. If your house burns down, then the insurance company loose money replacing your house. You don't "win". You get a house, but you had one anyway - and you still lost that premium money.

Gambling is slightly better, in that you have a small chance of winning something. You will loose if you gamble regularly though.

Re:Gambling

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know. I got into a car accident and the insurance company told me to get as many quotes from any local places as I wanted for the repair, and they'd pay me 2x the highest quote and I could decide if I want to repair or not.

Another time a drunk driver with no insurance or license hit us. I was asleep in a relaxed position and was not affected much, but my wife took it pretty hard. The insurance said she could get any treatment that the doctor recommended and could continue on that treatment for as long as she would like without further doctor recommendations. My wife went to the chiropractor three times a week and got a massage once a week for nearly a year. Other than the first few visits, the insurance got setup so we never even saw a bill. And even for those few, we just called the insurance and told them how much we owed and they sent us a check the next day.

At the end of the year, we called to tell them she no longer needed any more treatment. They told us that there was no hurry and asked that we sit on it for a few weeks. We called a few weeks later, they sent us some papers to sign. As part of the papers we signed, they even gave us a few hundred $$$ for the inconvenience of it all. Also as part of the contract, and the insurance person stated and pointed out what our rights were, we still have the option to exercise further payments in the future if a long term issue is discovered due to the accident, like if we discover that my wife will need assistance or physical therapy.

Monetarily, I have come out ahead from every insurance payout.

Re:Gambling

[squiggleslash]

Name one kind of manslaughter that isn't like murder.

The difference between gambling and insurance is motive and intent. Gambling is about trying to make it rich. Insurance is about preventing an unforeseen event causing undue hardship. They're not the same thing even if they use similar mechanisms to achieve their set goals.

Re: Gambling

[Anonymous Coward]

Cdreimer left /. after 20+ years and posted 100+ videos in 2018. His trolls are still butthurt about this.

The thing to do for him: post more videos :)

Re:Gambling

[Anonymous Coward]

Having life insurance guarantees that someone will kill you sooner rather than later. There have been many crimes related to owning a life insurance policy. Don't do it.

Re:Gambling

[Geoffrey.landis]

It's not the same. With gambling, you are hoping for a profit. With insurance, you are mitigating a loss (exchanging the risk of a large, unexpected loss for a known, regular, smaller cost).

But what you "hope for" is entirely irrelevant. If you don't care whether you win or lose, it's still gambling. If you buy a lottery ticket and give it to your mother-in-law, who you dislike, so you hope it doesn't win, it's still gambling. Doesn't matter what you hope, it's still gambling.
You place your money down, and get a payout, or not, depending on the outcome. That's gambling.

Re:Gambling

[DickBreath]

If we're going to gamble on who can play, how about we have an option where we can PAY EXTRA to ensure that certain players (perhaps on the team we dislike) are guaranteed to NOT be playing that day?

(the players could skip the sporting event to get ice cream)

Re:Gambling

[Livius]

That's the definition of gambling.

Generally insurance is risk management with the statistical expectation of breaking even. Gambling is taking risk where the statistical expectation is a loss.

Re:Gambling

[Geoffrey.landis]

That's the definition of gambling.

Generally insurance is risk management with the statistical expectation of breaking even. Gambling is taking risk where the statistical expectation is a loss.

Exactly. Both gambling and insurance consist of making bets on risk.

The only difference is which bet and what payout.

Whaaaah

[Anonymous Coward]

I want a refund. Kevin Durant was supposed to say hi to my nephew and throw me his sweaty shirt for my sister but instead I just had to watch him score a bunch of baskets and assists sob sob sob

Awesome!

[Type44Q]

After all these years, a solution... to the world's smallest fucking problem.p Thanks for brightening my morning, Msmash! ;)

Insurance

[ardmhacha]

Wow, they've invented insurance.

Re:Insurance

[PPH]

Wow, they've invented insurance.

Wow. They invented gambling.

This will fly under the various state gambling commissions' radar for, oh, about 15 minutes.

Re:Insurance

[Anonymous Coward]

What are you a fucking moron? This is insurance. You can't get more from this than you've paid in. Now, if they start paying out more than what you've paid in, that would be gambling and almost certainly illegal.

This is just an extension of services that already exist to cover other things that prevent using a ticket. When I bought a concert ticket last week, I had the option of insuring it against other things. I didn't take them up on the offer, but I could have done so legally.

Re:Insurance

[BringsApples]

Gambling = betting on yourself to win and get extra money
Insurance = betting on yourself to lose, and not have to pay extra money.

Re:Insurance

[PPH]

Gambling = betting on yourself to win and get extra money

Gambling is games of chance. Like the roll of dice. Here, the chance is whether some big-shot shows up or not.

Insurance = betting on yourself to lose, and not have to pay extra money.

From TFA:

you still get to go and enjoy the game

So, I get my $400 back and still can attend the game. If the game were cancelled, or I turned my ticket back in, I'd call it insurance. Just like flight insurance for a cancellation or missing your plane. I can actually see ways to game this system by buying game tickets, insuring them and then scalping them (sans the coverage). I get a $400 return on $30 and the ticket is still 'good' in that the final holder can still attend.

Re:Insurance

[Anonymous Coward]

What about Life Insurance?

Betting on yourself to die, so someone else gets extra money.

Should be called Death Insurance.

Re:Insurance

[wed128]

You do get more then you paid in. If Kevin Durant doesn't play, i still get to go to the game, but now my ticket is free
So i went in with a $400 ticket, and i came out with a $400 ticket + $400

Sounds like i won.

Re:Insurance

[Anonymous Coward]

But you are paying extra money. That's not a gamble; it's a loss. If you win, there would be no insurance business as businesses are in it to make a profit.

Re: Insurance

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you lost. You bought the insurance because seeing him play was important enough to insure.

I personally think it's ridiculous to care about a specific player, but I'm not the target audience.

You may have more cash at the end, but you weren't insuring for the ticket, it was for the experience you didn't get.

Re:Insurance

[BringsApples]

I didn't read that part. Yes, you're correct. Thank you!

So with this in mind, I don't see how this company will be successful. People will certainly go in on tickets together (if your guy isn't there, I'll go, if my guy isn't there, you'll go), thus causing less people to buy tickets.

Now I just need to find...

[Lab Rat Jason]

the player MOST likely to be injured on the team, regardless of who I actually want to watch play.

--Don't hate the player, hate the game!

Re:Now I just need to find...

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with that strategy is that the insurance company also knows they are most likely to be injured, and will set the rates accordingly. Unless you plan to injure the player yourself, of course.

Re:Now I just need to find...

[Zocalo]

You need to read up on how insurance works, viz. probability of payouts - e.g., how actuarial tables work for life insurance. If they get their math right then this is no different from any other insurance scheme, the only winner will be the insurer.

Re:Now I just need to find...

[Anonymous Coward]

So, make sure to get it on Nancy Kerrigan?

Re:Now I just need to find...

[Anonymous Coward]

No no no. You find the one least likely to not play. Then get a few friends together, kneecap the guy and BAM! Guaranteed cheap tickets for everyone!

Re:Now I just need to find...

[Anonymous Coward]

Courtside tickets for 15% of the normal cost (their stated cap) once I get reimbursed because I said "I like Doofy Willard and will be so upset if I don't get to see him play!"sounds like a damned good deal to me. Seriously, this relies on nothing more than a stated player preference, This company is headed straight into liquidation, its nothing but a planned tax writeoff for its investors.

Re:Now I just need to find...

[cellocgw]

Unless you plan to injure the player yourself, of course.

Tonya Harding, is that you?

Re:Now I just need to find...

[Lab Rat Jason]

You need to read up on how insurance works,

Whoosh! You'll NEVER guess what I do for a living. I wonder what the actuarial tables say about people misunderstanding other people on the internet. Aaaaanyway... thanks for the laugh.

Re:Now I just need to find...

[Lab Rat Jason]

I like where your head is at.

That's not how apostrophes work.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, "Favourite Player's Injured? Get a Refund." is somewhat understandable - and language is fluid and all - but it's even shorter to just say "Favourite Player Injured? Get a Refund."

Re: That's not how apostrophes work.

[Anonymous Coward]

Thatâ(TM)s not and apostrophe, thisâ(TM) an apostrophe and itâ(TM)s how theyâ(TM)re supposed to work on slashdot

Re:That's not how apostrophes work.

[Sloppy]

Favorite player's leg injured? Get a refund.

Oooh, sorry, it was his elbow and you didn't buy any insurance against arm injuries. This is how we all learn to become smarter shoppers.

Not gambling

[registrations_suck]

This is not gambling, it's just insurance. As a buyer of this "product", there is no way for me to ever come out "ahead".

I buy a ticket for $100. Then I buy insurance for another $10. So I'm in for $110.

Now suppose "my player" is not going to be in the game, so Fansure goes ahead and gives me back the $100 for the ticket, but they keep the $10 premium. So now I've LOST $10.

For it to be "gambling", there has to be some path to come out AHEAD. They'd have to pay the $100 for the ticket, PLUS the $10 premium, PLUS some amount that puts me ahead.

Sure, it is a gamble for FANSURE, as all insurance is. Nothing novel there. But there's just no way this can be considered gambling on the part of the consumer.

Re:Not gambling

[Ogive17]

I disagree to a point. It's insurance with a gambling aspect. You pay $300 to go to an NBA game to see LeBron James play. You pay an extra $30 for this insurance. The $30 is a bet the player will not play which would refund your $300 ticket. By purchasing the insurance, you are betting for a chance to save $270 at that game.

I think the idea is silly. In every American major professional league except baseball, the star players will play unless there is a significant injury. So basically people are betting against the injury report that teams must provide.

Re:Not gambling

[stinerman]

In every American major professional league except baseball, the star players will play unless there is a significant injury. So basically people are betting against the injury report that teams must provide.

Especially in basketball, the top teams will rest their star players once they've clinched their playoff seeding. Some even do so when they play two games in two days because the science shows that people are more likely to be injured if they are fatigued. In football this only happens in the last two games at best due to the shortened season; each game matters. In soccer, weeknight games often feature a lower quality lineup.

It happens more often than you think.

Re:Not gambling

[Anonymous Coward]

If you can get tickets below face value, maybe there is a way to win.

Re:Not gambling

[jbmartin6]

You do come out ahead. Instead of losing the full ticket price you only lose the price of the insurance policy. There is nothing in the definition of gambling that requires a net gain from the point in time the bet is made.

Re:Not gambling

[registrations_suck]

I disagree to a point. It's insurance with a gambling aspect. You pay $300 to go to an NBA game to see LeBron James play. You pay an extra $30 for this insurance. The $30 is a bet the player will not play which would refund your $300 ticket. By purchasing the insurance, you are betting for a chance to save $270 at that game.

Spurious logic. How is this different from any other kind of insurance?

I spend $500 per year on car insurance. By buying the insurance, I'm betting $500 that I will get into a car accident and I will avoid a big expense if I do. I am also betting that I will get pulled over and need to supply proof of insurance lest I get a big fine and other negative consequences.

An insurance premium is not a bet, in any normal gambling sense. It's silly to describe it as a bet - but if you do, then ALL insurance premiums are bets and there is nothing novel or unique about this particular premium that makes it any different.

Re:Not gambling

[Anubis IV]

Having purchased trip insurance, which operates rather similarly to this insurance product, they'll almost certainly demand proof of payment before they pay out, specifically to avoid the sort of fraud you're suggesting here.

The way this stuff usually works, you tell them how much you actually paid for the thing you're insuring. If you got it for below face value, that's what you tell them because they'll lower the premium you pay accordingly, which is in your best interests. If you fraudulently say you paid more than you actually did, they'll raise the premium you pay accordingly, but then they'll only pay out whatever you can prove you paid.

For some quicks examples, say, with a premium of 10%:
- If you paid $300 the premium would be $30. In the case of a claim, you'd have suffered a net loss of $30.
- If you paid $100 the premium would be $10. In the case of a claim, you'd have suffered a net loss of $10.
- If you paid $100 but said $300, the premium would be $30. In the case of a claim, you'd lose the $30 and possibly a lot more (e.g. refusal to pay out even $100, fraud charges, etc.)

You only stand to lose with this sort of fraud.

Re:Not gambling

[registrations_suck]

You do come out ahead. Instead of losing the full ticket price you only lose the price of the insurance policy. There is nothing in the definition of gambling that requires a net gain from the point in time the bet is made.

Then buying a candy bar is gambling, since you spend your $1 and you may or may not like the candy bar. Buying candy bars should be prohibited as illegal gambling.

Re:Not gambling

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm. What about if you bought a ticket for $100 with $10 insurance, and then sold the ticket to someone else for $100? If the star player doesn't play, you get an additional $100. Sounds like gambling to me, and perhaps the birth of another cottage industry wherein I get a group of people together and we run around buying and selling tickets with insurance, and then doing a Nancy Kerrigan on star athletes.

Re:Not gambling

[edtice1559]

This would be true if you didn't still get to watch the game. The amount that puts you ahead is that you still get to watch two professional teams play a sport.

Re:Not gambling

[jbmartin6]

Yes it is a gamble, by definition. Whether everything that is, by definition, gambling either should or was ever intended to be prohibited by law I leave up to individual judgement. I would suggest however, that to say so is pretty absurd.

Re: Not gambling

[edris90]

The gamble that you make when you buy insurance is that the insurance company won't find a way to fuck you and not pay up. So essentially you're betting on are personal arbitration skills, or on those of your lawyer.

Re: Not gambling

[registrations_suck]

Iâ(TM)m sure that if you read the contract you would find that would be fraud.

Re: Not gambling

[Anonymous Coward]

Which part? Clubbing sports stars to claim insurance (assault, not fraud), or buying a ticket and then reselling it (scalping, not fraud)? I'm not sure intrinsically Fansure cares if I bought the ticket to use, give as a gift, or sell - they got their insurance payment either way. As long as I do nothing to alter the odds of payout (the aforementioned clubbing), I think it would be within their terms.

Re: Not gambling

[Cederic]

Indeed. So claim the insurance then sell the ticket.

No fraud.

Re: Not gambling

[registrations_suck]

You know, they are not stupid. You can bet that if you want to file a claim, you have to provide not only proof that you bought a ticket, but prove that it went unused.

By a similar token, if you crash your car and it is totaled out, you donâ(TM)t get to just keep the car. You either sign it over to the insurance company or buy it back at a price they agree to.

Re: Not gambling

[Cederic]

if you crash your car and it is totaled out, you donÃ(TM)t get to just keep the car.

As it happens, often you do. It's not worth the cost of collecting it.

prove that it went unused

They're insuring you against your favourite player not being there. That doesn't stop you going and watching the others. It just means they're recognising the additional value of the premium player, which has indeed been lost.

incentivizing injuring players

[Anonymous Coward]

do they not see how this could be bad news for the players and their entire concept. Especially for some of the higher priced teams out there. sheared

Yup. It's gambling.

[biggaijin]

We don't need a new "company" for this. I'm sure some of the sports books in Las Vegas would cover this sort of a bet already. All you need to do is ask...

Seriously

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, if you are willing to pay $300 to watch a childrenâ(TM)s game than I guess an extra 8% is worth it to avoid becoming a child yourself.

Ahh ... another middle-man business model ...

[Anonymous Coward]

So, the premise here is I'm going to pay more for something which is already overpriced in case my favorite player is injured?

I presume I would need to buy from these people, which will just lead to Ticket Master doing even more anti-consumer bullshit to ensure the people selling the expensive tickets have stock to sell ... just like they do with the scalpers they partner with and help to get tickets before consumers can. Literally Ticket Master helps the bots and resellers get those before we get a chance.

Event tickets are already overpriced, and completely screwed up by the scalpers who work in conjunction with the ticket companies; this will only make it worse.

God I hate this bullshit middle-man model when there is no need for a fucking middle-man except some asshole who feels like he should be getting a cut of the action.

This is just another source of assholes who will take a little cut off the top, and then turn around and sell your information for more money.

The only way to win this game is to say fuck it, and not play. I'm tired of every asshole startup thinking that I in any way want them involved in the transaction.

Fix the fundamental problem with event tickets first, and then talk to me about ticket insurance. Add in another middle-man, and fuck off and don't expect me to buy any more tickets.

Stay at home, watch it on your flat screen tv

[pgmrdlm]

Which gives you a better view of all the action then sitting in the nose bleed section of any arena. Even if you are on the floor, you are going to miss action that occurs at the other end of the court. With TV you don't.

If your favorite player is injured or you get bored. Switch the channel, and watch something else. ANOTHER GAME MAYBE?

Re: Stay at home, watch it on your flat screen tv

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole idea of going to games is to tell people that you went. There should be a service where a person goes to the game, watches it with Google glass, sends the feed to you and ships a momento to you. You get to see the game as if you are there, comment on how expensive everthing is, know things onll people in the crowd know and have something to bring to the office. We will call this company Clonefan.

Scale of things

[DrYak]

The idea with gambling is that you are betting on a thing happening or not happening. And insurance absolutely falls into that.

Note I fully support insurance, but it absolutely has all the markings of gambling.

In theory, the idea behind insurance is socialized cost : spreading the cost of accidents across a wider population.

(Medical insurance: Instead of having a poor random guy victim of a sudden unplanned medical expense they can't afford and having big health and economic repercussion because of that, everyone pays a bit and if the sudden medical untuck lands on you, you don't have to pay extra).

Of course, in practice there's an overlap with gambling somewhere in the middle.

But I have the impression that lots of insurance companies have moved away from the socialized costs and evolved more into gambling, specially trying to maximize *their own* chances of winning.

Re:Scale of things

[JesseMcDonald]

In theory, the idea behind insurance is socialized cost : spreading the cost of accidents across a wider population.

No, that absolutely is not what insurance is about. I can see why you'd think that, because that is what certain politicians are trying to turn medical insurance into, but actual insurance (everything non-medical, basically) involves paying a known amount, the premium, to an insurer in exchange for them taking on risk in your place. In a competitive market, the premium and the risk will have similar expected costs (cost of event times probability of event) with the difference being the insurer's administrative costs, capital expenses, and profit margin. The expected cost is not "socialized": No one buys insurance expecting up front to either subsidize other clients or be subsidized themselves. Everyone pays a premium in line with their own personal degree of risk.

The existence of a risk pool is what makes this a viable business proposition—the individual events may be hard to predict, but when an insurer combines a number of uncorrelated events together they get a fairly predictable aggregate expense, which means they can get by without holding enough capital in reserve to pay out on all their contracts simultaneously. However, that is strictly an internal detail of the insurance business and not a factor in the definition of insurance. It's still insurance even if we're just talking about a contract between two parties with no risk pool.

Re:Scale of things

[hazardPPP]

However, that is strictly an internal detail of the insurance business and not a factor in the definition of insurance. It's still insurance even if we're just talking about a contract between two parties with no risk pool.

No, it is not an "internal detail". It is fundamental. Without that, insurance at scale does not work. I don't know what you're using as the "definition" of insurance but what matters is what insurance is in practice, not how it is defined in a dictionary or textbook.

Insurance companies would not be in business if they sold insurance to only one person, or had a high expectation that they would have to pay out all of their clients. Again this is not a "detail" - it is absolutely, completely fundamental to their business model. Yes, we can have insurance contracts between two parties with no risk pool, but without a risk pool the insurance industry would not exist. This is proven by the fact the insurance companies go bankrupt when things happen that were not accounted for in their risk model, thus causing too many payouts of insurance contracts. Without a risk pool, insurance would be ridiculously expensive to the point that almost no one would purchase it.

Also, in modern insurance there is no such thing as a completely personalized risk assessment. Your risk is partly (sometimes greatly, sometimes almost entirely, depending on the situation) is assessed based on the observed/assessed risk of the group(s) you belong to. For car insurance for example, your age, years of driving experience, sex, make, model and colour of car you drive, and adress have an influence on your premium.

So indeed, mass insurance in practice is indeed a socialization of costs. If 5000 people buy insurance, but only 50 are likely to require a payout in a given period, as a group they can each pay less. This is a fundamental concept that cannot be dismissed as a "detail".

Re:Scale of things

[TXG1112]

"No one buys insurance expecting up front to either subsidize other clients or be subsidized themselves"

The only reason people don't expect this is because they don't understand how insurance actually works. Apparently, you are one of these people.

Re:Scale of things

[Anonymous Coward]

But medical insurance is inherently different from other insurance types due to the fact that the risk of some people was so high that they were deemed uninsurable (sure, some by lifestyle, but others by previous illnesses and still others by familial history). And while you could argue that some houses, like those built on eroding barrier islands, also have been deemed uninsurable, in those instances the government stepped in and provided insurance. For some bizarre reason, this approach has not been used on medically uninsurable people. Hey! Did I just solve healthcare?

CAP: Lovable. Awww. Slashdot! Happy Valentines Day to you too!

Re:Scale of things

[Joe_Dragon]

Well some medically uninsurable people used the government funded jail / prison system for medically needs.

https://www.theatlantic.com/he...

Re:Scale of things

[JesseMcDonald]

Yes, we can have insurance contracts between two parties with no risk pool, but without a risk pool the insurance industry would not exist.

I'm not contesting that, but it's completely irrelevant. For the most part the insurance industry depends on risk pools to control costs. Insurance does not. The context of the comment I was replying to was "In theory, the idea behind insurance...". Not the insurance industry. Critically, without risk pools the insurance industry could not exist as it does now, but it would still be possible to offer insurance at a profit. The cost would be much higher, of course, and it might not be something everyone buys, but you can get custom insurance now for things which don't fit neatly into any large risk pools. The presence or absence of risk pools does not change the nature of the insurance contract.

Your risk is partly (sometimes greatly, sometimes almost entirely, depending on the situation) is assessed based on the observed/assessed risk of the group(s) you belong to.

Naturally. As with most things, the more precisely they want to estimate your personal risk the more it will cost, so they use a reasonable approximation based on a set of factors they can easily measure. That's a far cry from charging everyone the same premiums or ignoring obvious known factors like pre-existing conditions which have a significant effect on expected cost.

If 5000 people buy insurance, but only 50 are likely to require a payout in a given period, as a group they can each pay less.

They're not each paying less. Both the group as a whole and the majority of the individuals in the group paid more, not less, as a result of buying insurance. At best you could say, in hindsight, that the minority who received payouts paid less than they would have without insurance (and thus were not left bankrupt) while the rest paid a bit more due to the premiums. However, when comparing the present cost of insurance against possible future events it's the expected cost of each that matters, and the expected cost of insurance (premiums) is higher than the expected cost of whatever you're insuring against, due to overhead.

You also seem to be assuming that the members of this group all have exactly the same risk profile. If 400 of the 5000 have an estimated 10% chance of requiring a payout and the remaining 4600 have a 0.2% chance, however—and they are all paying the same premiums—then 400 of them are paying less than their expected cost and 4600 are paying more. That is what I would consider "socialization of costs", or equivalently "externalization of costs". It's unsustainable unless you force the second group to participate, since otherwise they would defect and stop subsidizing the first group, at which point the insurer either raises their premiums or goes out of business. Nonetheless, it's the system politicians are currently trying to enforce in place of health insurance.

Getting back to the original topic, none of the above has any bearing on the fact that insurance has all the hallmarks of gambling, just with the intent of reducing your risk, whereas betting at a casino or the race tracks typically means exposing oneself to greater risk. The mechanism is exactly the same. If you're going to ban casino or sports betting in the name of protecting people from themselves, however, you might as well take that to its logical conclusion and ban all activity that involves taking risks...

Re:Scale of things

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, that seems inefficient.

Re:Scale of things

[JesseMcDonald]

The only reason people don't expect this is because they don't understand how insurance actually works.

No, the ones that don't expect subsidies are exactly the ones that do understand how insurance actually works.

If you expect, up front, that you are going to be subsidizing other insurance clients, that means you're over-paying. You should be able to get a better rate from another insurance provider who sets premiums more fairly. So you defect, leaving the first insurer to either raise their rates for their remaining clients to be more in line with their expected costs or else go out of business. (The insurer certainly isn't going to fund any subsidy; they're in this to make a profit.) Competition thus naturally drives the level of subsidy down to zero.

If you're using modern health "insurance" as your model, you should be aware that this has been distorted by politics to the point that it barely resembles insurance at all. It has more in common with a social program (enforced "charity") than any other product commonly referred to as insurance. Key differences include bans on properly assessing risk and using that to determine premiums (e.g. with regard to pre-existing conditions) and mandates for individuals to buy the product whether they want it or not. The point of these rules is to introduce subsidies into a system where they would not exist naturally.

Re:Scale of things

[bws111]

You're not making any sense. Suppose you paid $1K over 10 years for homeowners insurance. Your house burns down, and the insurance company pays $200K to rebuild. Where, exactly, do you think the other $190,000 (the subsidy) came from? From everyone else who paid premiums. Their premiums subsidized your loss. A subsidy of $0 is not insurance, it is a savings account. Why do you think many insurance companies have 'mutual' in the name? You are subsidizing someone else's loss, and they are subsidizing yours. The insurance company is, for a fee, managing the subsidies and nothing else.

Re:Scale of things

[Livius]

No, that absolutely is not what insurance is about.

The word 'insurance' gets misused quite a bit. A scheme that is universal and compulsory would resemble insurance in a lot of ways but fundamentally not be the same thing.

Interestingly, people on all sides seem to prefer misusing terminology to having an honest dialogue.

Re:Scale of things

[Anonymous Coward]

If you expect, up front, that you are going to be subsidizing other insurance clients, that means you're over-paying

Nonsense. When I insure my house against fire, I don't expect to my house to catch fire. I do expect other people's insured houses to catch fire, and that they get covered. And I don't expect a refund for last year, just because my house didn't go on fire (though I might look for a rebate in subsequent claim-free years). That's not "subsidizing" others, it's exactly how the risk pool works.

Re:Scale of things

[Anonymous Coward]

> Where, exactly, do you think the other $190,000 (the subsidy) came from?

From people paying the expected value plus overhead/profit for the insurer, without the risk event happening for them.

What those people paid wasn' t a subsidy beforehand, because it was in-line with the (probability of house burning down x value paid out) x (1 + overhead).

It also isn't a subsidy after the fact, just because we now know which events actually did happen.

what amount of time is considered played?

[Anonymous Coward]

And what if he plays for 30 seconds? This sure seems like gambling to me..

Insurance...

[Anonymous Coward]

You are paying for insurance here. Right?

Yes it's gambling, but not fraud

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see any reason why this would be insurance fraud. You bought the product from the insurance company and used it; you didn't defraud them unless you caused the player to be injured (or in some way knew from insider information that they were going to be injured.)

Re: Yes it's gambling, but not fraud

[Anonymous Coward]

You're seeking reimbursement for harm you haven't suffered. That's a bit like what would happen if you tried to claim auto insurance damages on a car you've sold. You can't do it as you haven't been harmed and doing so would require some measure of fraud.

If be shocked if there wasn't specific language requiring that anybody claiming a payout.

You insensitive clod!

[PPH]

I have a round CRT!

Re:You insensitive clod!

[pgmrdlm]

And to think I have been pricing new t.v.s. I now know what I want, a round crt.

If he doesn't play for ANY reason

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, that sounds great!

Except, wait a minute... if the game starts and my player gets injured in the first 5 seconds of the game, do I get my money back? He DID play for 5 seconds... so... no refund?

Dibs on their furniture

[Anonymous Coward]

Where is this company? I want to put postits on their furniture when their seed money runs out. I will pay an 8% premium to guarantee I get their Hermon Miller chairs.

I want insurance on the premium

[Anonymous Coward]

Can I buy insurance that the premium they give me is less than 8%, or can I buy an option that the premiums for all Steph Currey tickets won't get paid out. Or say I know that he is taking a game off, can I buy an option on the premiums being paid out.

Why is this on Slashdot?

[couchslug]

msmash space filler posts are getting ridiculous.

Not news for nerds, doesn't matter except to jock sniffers, send this shit to sports blogs instead of polluting Slashdot.

Re:Why is this on Slashdot?

[Anonymous Coward]

Get ready for msmash to delete your post.

Garbage. It's just like the scam of insurance

[smooth wombat]

Next to religion, insurance is the biggest scam going, especially health insurance. As one comedian put it:

Insurance companies are like the mafia. It sure would be a shame if something happened to your family.

What this guy is doing is essentially the same thing. He wants you to pay more on the off chance the person you went to see (what about the rest of the team?) isn't there. In both instances, whether the person is there or not, they keep this premium and only pay out in exceptionally rare circumstances.

I'm sure there will be people gullible enough to hand over their money. It's how scams work.

Re:Garbage. It's just like the scam of insurance

[Anonymous Coward]

health insurance (and other types) are only a scam because crooked, greedy companies run the 'game' and partner with equally crooked and even greedier companies (like big pharma).

What in the actual fuck people...

[Anonymous Coward]

Really!

How about you just send me your cash instead - I will do everything in my power to make sure those players stay healthy, I promise!

Smells like

[Anonymous Coward]

Fyre festival to me

ticket insurance bitches

[Anonymous Coward]

More nanny state bullshit for neckbeards , just go stand out front and scalp the ticket if you decide not to go

$400!!!!

[irrational_design]

Please tell me sporting event tickets are not really $400! Is this just for basketball games?

This is a really specific market

[bigdavex]

If I have $400 for a sports ticket, then my time is likely very valuable. How else did I come up with $400 disposable income for an evening's entertainment? Do I really want to screw around with a third party to insure myself against the risk of an injured star? In the unlikely event that I miss out, I'll just buy another ticket.

There's probably more of a market at the low cost tickets. A crappy regional team, whose revenue comes mostly from concessions anyway, could sell tickets that were good until the home team won. Maybe if they just really like beer and hot dogs, spectators could root against the home team if they wanted.
           

Re: This is a really specific market

[edris90]

Everyone's time is equally valuable, as life duration is finite, and the lifespan of a particular person can only be realize in hindsight. Leisure and entertainment activities are just maintenance for your brain. What specific activity you do is not so important eyes finding ways to prevent yourself from being productive so as not to become burnt out. The value of entertainment, is that it presents a acceptable premise to give your body and mind a chance to recover from the stress of being productive. Outside of the specific context of business, value doesn't result to money, value resolves 2 psychological health

Re: This is a really specific market

[bigdavex]

If the value of entertainment is that I'm not working, then it wouldn't matter if my favorite player participated or not.

Re: This is a really specific market

[edris90]

Desire attraction and intrest can be self conditioned. A well developed imagination provides unlimited entertainment throughout life. in the end it all just resolves to what makes your brain release the endorphins. There are more efficient ways to do so to the same or potentially even greater ends.

Re: This is a really specific market

[edris90]

The value of entertainment is the it uses your brain in a different way, generates bursts of endorphin splashes in your brain, that are important to maintain the biochemistry that allows you to be productive. Most value is all in your head. Sure you can go around the world to get next door, but it's important that such things be ridiculed so as not to spread the debilitating mindset.

Not everything needs to be insured

[Macdude]

Not everything needs to be insured, the occasional disappointment is good for you it helps you learn how to manage your actions to maximize benefit to yourself. This is just another step in the movement for no one to be responsible for anything that happens to them.

Reminds me of various stories

[Anonymous Coward]

Reminds of various stories where fans were disappointed:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nba/2016/12/15/lebron-james-no-show-stings-fans-grizzlies-cavaliers/95460652/
https://www.cleveland.com/cavs/index.ssf/2017/03/lebron_james_kyrie_irving_defe.html
https://news.abs-cbn.com/sports/12/15/16/nba-lebron-james-fan-left-disappointed-after-cavs-rest-star

Bad insurance

[gurps_npc]

Insurance is a profitable business. Which means with extended use, you ALWAYS pay more over the long term than you get back. This also means that there are three types of insurance.

1) Free insurance, like warranties. These are more like a guarantee of good service. You don't pay, so whatever you get is worth it.

2) Insurance for emergencies that would break you if you lost, because you need them and could not replace them by the next pay-check. Health, Life, AFLAC, cars, homes, etc. MAYBE even an expensive luxury item like a wedding ring or a TV that is your main/only source of entertainment. These it makes a lot of sense to pay more over time to be sure you have them.

3) Scam insurance for things that would be annoying but not a disaster if you lost them. Things like flight cancellation insurance, phone breakage/loss, pay off your credit card at death, etc. etc. You should be able to pay off those normally anyway or go with a cheaper/without for a month or two. Ccredit bill at death is a clear scam - just get regular life insurance it pays better, with less stupid rules to screw you over.

This clearly falls into scam insurance. If you can't afford to walk away from the tickets if the guy you want to see play is hurt and can't play, then do NOT buy the tickets in the first place.

But that is irrelevant. Only a die hard fan would care that much about particular players and die hard fans buy so many tickets that there is no way they will not end up giving the insurance company more money then they get back. It's like buying 100 TVs that break 10% of the time, then spending an extra 20% to insure that if one breaks, you will get your money back, rather than buying 115 TVs (cheaper and more working TVs)

Insurance isn't Gambling

[rsilvergun]

because you're not expecting to "win". Nobody buys insurance with the intention of using it (except scammers). You buy insurance hoping to never need it.

In fact when insurance companies get to the point when they can be sure people _are_ going to use it they pull out of the market. This happened in Florida where it's impossible in large swaths of the state to get hurricane insurance due to the frequency of claims.

Oh, there's one more time when you'll buy insurance: when you're forced to. Like car insurance or health insurance. Me? I'd like to see Single Payer kill both of those. Car Insurance was made mandatory mostly because of rising medical bills. This is another one of those cases where it's not really gambling anymore since it's pretty much inevitable. You're just letting a company skim 10-20% off you.

Re:Insurance isn't Gambling

[Anonymous Coward]

Car Insurance was made mandatory mostly because of rising medical bills. This is another one of those cases where it's not really gambling anymore since it's pretty much inevitable. You're just letting a company skim 10-20% off you.

What kind of driver are you - using the car insurance is inevitable? You always crash?

You haven't lost $10

[rsilvergun]

you still got to see the game and you did it for $90 bucks off the ticket price.

If you're really clever (well, not that clever) you by the ticket, scalp it, try to guess which player is going to get injured and use that to try to make a killing on the scalped ticket.

It's absolutely gambling in that it can and will be used for exactly that purpose. Walks like a duck, quacks like a duck.

Re: Garbage. It's just like the scam of insurance

[edris90]

Insurance being run as a for-profit business creates an inherent conflict of interest. For the insurance company to do their job properly they need to payout quickly and efficiently so that people's lives are not disrupted unnecessarily. That's why people purchase insurance. But insurance companies and it's benefiting stockholders want free money. Everything above wage costs to maintain operations is there free money. Their profit, the money they did not have to labor to obtain. I have USAA for my auto insurance. since the only stockholders they have are their customers and by becoming a customer you automatically are a stockholder, they pay out all their dividends back to their customers. Gouging extra money represents unnecessary extra accounting to give it back when insurance is run properly. If you want a service run properly you have to cut out profit. As soon as there's free money to be made for the clever and unscrupulous, every piece of shit Saboteur in town flocks to the scene

Part Of The Game

[Anonymous Coward]

So true. Literally, players getting injured? It's always been part of the game. Players getting benched? Always part of the game. Players needing to take time off for family or other reasons? Always part of the game.

So while I guess this provides a service, and in theory could have some value, I personally just don't get this. You get to buy expensive tickets to an optional entertainment, and now you pile on even more expense to ensure you see your favorite player? Except this insurance doesn't actually do that???

Lame!

Dangerous for the players...

[eth1]

1. Buy lots of expensive tickets
2. Buy this "insurance" on the player least likely to miss the game
3. Make sure said player has an "accident"
4. Sell tickets second-hand
5. Profit!

Unapproved vendors are scalpers...

[hiroshimarrow]

An individual is not an approved vendor of the NBA, NFL, NHL, etc. without a license to resale them. This would be considered scalping by the individual and can be pursued. Unless each individual gets a resale license before signing up for the 'insurance' then the Funsurance people are not allowed to purchase the tickets from them.

Shouldn't this be on another site, though? News for Nerds doesn't exactly scream basketball ticket scams.

Re:Unapproved vendors are scalpers...

[Anonymous Coward]

They're not buying your ticket. They're reimbursing you the cost of your ticket that you still can use to attend. Did you even read the summary?

>If he doesn't, you still get to go and enjoy the game, and Fansure will refund you the entire amount of the ticket (but keeps the bit you paid for insurance).

Socialized costs

[DrYak]

No, that absolutely is not what insurance is about. I can see why you'd think that, because that is what certain politicians are trying to turn medical insurance into

I live on the other side of the Atlantic pond (Yes, I know, evil euro-communist...), this is how most of the countries here around handle public healthcare systems.

In a competitive market, the premium and the risk will have similar expected costs (cost of event times probability of event) with the difference being the insurer's administrative costs, capital expenses, and profit margin.

In theory, yes, the market's invisible hand will solve it.
In practice, that way you end up with a bunch of private/for-profit companies which try to maximize their profits: by taking-in only the lowest-possible risk clients and having them pay an as high as possible premium that the market can support.

This ends up putting a lot of rejected people into situation were they can't afford to get sick.

No one buys insurance expecting up front to either subsidize other clients or be subsidized themselves.

That's literally how most social insurance work here around.
(but yeah I know that the political consensus in most of our countries would be flagged has "extremist far-left communist" on your spectrum).

Everyone pays a premium in line with their own personal degree of risk.

The more you seek to personalize the risk, the more you turn an insurance into gambling. Which was the whole subject of this thread.