Letters to the Editor
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auction
There ought to be a way to create an online auction for tickets. Some sort of dutch auction where each quality level of ticket prices out at the minimum price that clears out the bids at that level.
A big problem is, what if I'm willing to pay $100 for class B tickets but only $75 for class C if I don't get B?
The best solution to that I can think of is to permit multiple class level bids per bid, with an auto-skip-down auction. So I could put a bid in at $100 for class B, $75 for class C, and $50 for class D tix. If the price for B clears at $110, my bid automatically skips down to $75 on C. If C clears at $70, I get class C tickets for $70. Or you could choose auto-skip-up - if you want the cheapest but if you lose on those you'll take the next level for more (this seems a little less likely). So in the example above, if class D clears at $55 but class C clears at $70 you'd get your class B's at $70.
Anyone buying after the price setting date would pay the price that was set at auction.
The beauty of it is, the artist gets control and the artist gets the money. If there are enough people willing to spend $2000 for the front row at a Barbra Streisand concert, she gets the whole $2k per. Even better, she doesn't have to declare "I think my tickets are worth $2k", the market tells her what they're worth.
Scalpers profit margins go WAY down, most of them probably go out of business.
With the whole thing computerized, you can get down to really fine level discrimination on blocks for pricing - you could each of the first 5 rows up as separate classes, for instance, or separate out the center of the front row as a separate class. You could set separate rules for different seat classes, like auction the floor but flat price the rest, or set minimums or maximums on any class of seats. Would the artist prefer to fill the house if he's got to give away the nosebleed seats? Just make sure there's no minimum on any of the seats and if nobody bids $$ for them, people who bid $0 might get them. If the price for top level tickets goes up so high that an artist feels guilty about it (it could happen! Maybe for Springsteen.) the artist could reserve blocks for other distribution methods - maybe personally choosing from people who submit fan letters or something. The options are endless.
I thought of this years ago and tried to think of a way to make a business of it but I don't have the connections. If you make a zillion dollars off my idea, promise me two front row seats the next time Springsteen is in Seattle.