Letters to the Editor
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The game's rigged...
I'm not in the business any more but the problem goes deeper than the fact that Ticketmaster is a monopoly. In fact, when I worked for a ticket broker outside Big City, USA, we regularly paid off four or five Ticketmaster franchise owners to save us the good seats when they went on sale. And we were just one tiny little minnow in a sea of bigger brokers.
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The Easiest Way to Beat Scalpers
1. Go to the venue the night of the show.
2. Stand outside the venue and figure out who's scalping what seats.
3. Wait for the concert to start.
4. Miss the first five or ten minutes, which you can hear from outside the venue anyway.
5. Approach a scalper and tell him you'll pay him half-price for his ticket. If you don't want to waste any more time, tell him you'll pay face value.
6. Unless the scalper is a complete idiot, he'll take the deal. Better some money then none at all.
7. Go into the show paying the price you were supposed to, maybe even saving money.
Don't think it can work? I've paid half price for garden seats at the Hollywood Bowl to see Radiohead. All you need is a little patience.
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Or...
Instead of making it so only the very rich can go to shows, or the obsessive nerds who are trained to remember every detail about their current obsession, how about something utterly radical?
Consign the internet to hell. Do not sell tickets online for at least the first 48 hours after they go on sale--maybe make longer waiting periods for bigger shows--but no longer than a week. Make it so the only option IS waiting in line if you want the tickets. That way the diehard fans (or in the case of Hannah Montana, their willing parents) have a fair way to get the tickets, like they used to. They also get the added benefit of the "waiting in line with other diehards experience" that seems to be so popular. And after the allotted time is over, those tickets that did not sell can be put up on the internet.
I know, ignoring the power of the internet--radical, right?
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Go take it up with the RIAA/MPAA
Yeah the same people who spend millions prosecuting people for IP theft - let them sort it out about how these live artists will get paid, that is, if no one can afford to go. I laugh hysterically at this.
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Pittsburgh
With an "H"
Just sayin'
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I'm shocked no one has mentioned this.
State laws banning the re-sale of tickets for more than their face value plus vendor "service fees" (themselves highway robbery), that were actually enforced, would solve the problem without crazy technological solutions that would interfere with gifts, use of season tickets, etc. etc.
Ticket scalpers are the lowest form of humanity, those who prey on the hopes of others. Having waited for hours in many a line myself, or gotten up at crazy hours to sit at my computer, hands shaking, in hopes of getting a middling-fair seat, I loathe them with every fiber of my being.
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Ticket sellers don't care about the audience, just the profit.
Ticketsellers don't care if scalpers make it hard to get tickets at face value - they care about the extra profits these scalpers aren't sharing. This is their sole motive in suing the scalpers.
There's a simple way to kill all scalping. ID only tickets. If your name isn't on the ticket, you can't use it. Most ticketsellers have no interest in this because it costs money out of their pocket to enforce.
If scalpers set up a profit sharing deal with ticketsellers, you'd see what little anti-scalping enforcement their is dry up. Some deals are already possible now, which is why enforcement isn't more aggressive.
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Once Upon a Time, Boys And Girls...
...there were TWO mass ticket sellers. They were called, respectively, BASS and Ticketron. Then one day they decided it would be more profitable to merge and become Ticketmaster. And were they ever right!
So those of you arguing the monopoly angle are absolutely correct. Just don't hold your breath waiting for the Federal Trade Commission to do anything about it.
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If only there were a way
To run those Ticketmaster bastards out of business. Tickets = $60 check. Processing fee = $13 check. Convenience fee = $8.50 check. And I have to pay a 7% sales tax on top of that.
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.
Just mark the REAL goddamn price once in a while, you pirates. I hate all of you and hope you go broke and your kids have to trade sex for food.
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You know Stubhub is no bargain either
Stubhub is a free auction of sorts that just brokers buyers and sellers. But often the prices at Stubhub are far above the price printed on the ticket. It's a place where the pain of prices reaches exactly what people will tolerate. If you enter into that bargain don't complain about it.
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Can your mommy pass this test?
Considering that the only people actually purchasing tickets for Hannah Montana are the parents of 10 year old girls, subjecting them to a test of knowledge about this disney pseudo-star is just adding insult to injury.
As mentioned by others, there are - or used to be - laws against scalping. Enforce them and the problem ends.
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Give them honesty, not $200 tickets
Another "solution", though only in the case of pre-teen and tweener events, is to simply, honestly tell your child "I couldn't get a ticket for this. Too many people wanted them and there were too few tickets. Everybody who wanted one couldn't get one." A ten-year old would certainly understand the basics of that. And would this not be a better lesson for your ten year-old, that sometimes you try and fail anyway, than "given enough money, you can have anything you want?"
I bet most people live by the former principle, not the latter. A ten year-old is, or should be, ready for that reality.
I realize this is not scalper-related per se, but let's use the scalping as a teaching opportunity!
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Slight correction to preceding
"Everybody who wanted one couldn't get one" should have been "Not everybody who wanted one could get one."
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The auction is definitely the way to go.
If this is, as you say, an economic problem, then let's have an economic solution, not a trivia contest that the scalpers will have strong economic incentive to defeat.
Just sell the tickets via silent auction. You don't have to worry about different-priced seats-- just award the best seats to the highest bidders.
This problem has been glaring, and the solution has been obvious, for a long time; is there some legal impediment to selling sports/concert tickets directly via auction?