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CAPTCHAs are over (in ticketing)

(behind.pretix.eu)
204 points pabs3 | 1 comments | 25 May 25 00:37 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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frabcus ◴[25 May 25 01:51 UTC] No.44084957[source]▶
The option that strikes me as missing, is making users pay a cost before they are randomly entered in a lottery for the ticket.

So, for example, everyone pays $0.01 on their credit card, or does a holding charge on their credit card, or registers their identity. All in a 5 minute (or 1 day!) window. And then after the window, tickets are randomly distributed amongst every card which so registered.

You could check multiple things - phone and card and Government ID if necessary (lowering the privacy).

This also feels fairer and less stressful - instead of a lottery based on your internet access, or ability to run lots of browsers at once.

This feels harder for scalpers to do to me, as they need more fake identities, but I'd be curious about the actual ratios when trying it. What goes wrong?

Another one I predict is that you can't buy digitally. For examples, the Lewes fireworks display you have to buy tickets in person in a bookshop in Lewes. Doesn't help if you make a digital ticketing system though!

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londons_explore ◴[25 May 25 03:03 UTC] No.44085215[source]▶
I suspect the key thing is that the industry really wants scalpers, but must appear to act against them.
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londons_explore ◴[25 May 25 04:33 UTC] No.44085545[source]▶
Actual cash income the moment the tickets go on sale.

Removes all the uncertainty and risk and puts it on the scalpers.

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lurk2 ◴[25 May 25 21:02 UTC] No.44091087[source]▶
This was my theory but there is a problem with it: Unless there is a constant churn of scalpers failing to turn a profit, the scalpers are presumably selling off their tickets at a profit. This means the market demand from individual purchasers exists, and the ticket sellers are just leaving money on the table by not raising their prices.
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1. structural ◴[25 May 25 22:01 UTC] No.44091601{3}[source]▶
1. The initial price of the ticket serves as advertisement to get more people interested in the event than if it was advertised at the scalped price. Some fraction of the people will end up paying the higher price anyways, even if it was more than they intended to spend. The chance of "getting lucky" and getting a ticket at the low initial price is a powerful draw, especially if each buyer gets lucky a few times.

2. Are you sure the scalpers and the agency selling the original tickets are independent? Even if they are on paper, in many locations there is evidence of a local cartel.

3. The initial sales provide revenue up front to pay for the costs of the event, vendors, etc. This reduces the amount of cash reserves the seller needs, sometimes very dramatically.

4. Many scalped sales (used to be, not as much anymore) were cash transactions. This used to be used as a pretty significant tax dodge: Sell tickets for $50 face value to your affiliated scalper, pay tax on this sale, scalper sells tickets for $200 and does not pay tax on this secondary sale, or underreports the number of secondary tickets sold. Lots of shenanigans here to make your profitable scalping business look like it's making a small loss on paper.

5. Especially in the context of a local or regional cartel, each ticket sale represents the opportunity to move capital between entities. Physical tickets can be an effective vehicle for small-medium scale money laundering: Dirty money/entity buys the tickets, clean entity resells them.

Basically as soon as you drop the assumption that the ticket sellers and scalpers aren't related in some way, there are a lot more profitable reasons for the ticket sellers to "leave money on the table".