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CAPTCHAs are over (in ticketing)

(behind.pretix.eu)
204 points pabs3 | 3 comments | 25 May 25 00:37 UTC | HN request time: 0.625s | 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. nothrabannosir ◴[25 May 25 22:49 UTC] No.44091982[source]▶
It's a hedge. Performers are not in the business of optimizing ROI, they're in the business of performing. Scalpers provide a service: guaranteed income for a fee. There are many analogous examples in other markets where both parties happily take their respective sides of this deal, even though technically one of them is leaving money on the table.

Then there is the slightly more insidious incentive: selling out quickly is in and of itself valuable for a performer: it makes them look popular and exclusive. That alone might just make it worth it altogether.

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2. lurk2 ◴[26 May 25 04:42 UTC] No.44094038[source]▶
> Performers are not in the business of optimizing ROI, they're in the business of performing.

I have to disagree; performers are absolutely in the business of optimization. Bo Burnham was singing about metrification destroying art 10 years ago. Every standup comic is using social media as a sales funnel to figure out exactly which cities they have an audience in. Even if the performers themselves are not concerned with gaming these numbers, they almost always have someone working for them who does.

So I still don’t quite understand why the scalpers are the ones getting to eat the free lunch.

> selling out quickly is in and of itself valuable for a performer

This one seems like a more likely explanation, but the pattern with a lot of these ticket sales is that the demand is already there organically without scalpers entering the equation. I don’t really follow the space so I really don’t know, but I’d imagine the shows that get targeted the most are the performers who were going to be playing a sold out show regardless of the scalpers.

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3. nothrabannosir ◴[26 May 25 05:50 UTC] No.44094355[source]▶
hedging is a tried and true financial strategy. Transpose this to any producer of commodities and it becomes the most normal thing in the world to take guaranteed cash at a discount for guaranteed delivery of the product. It’s the exact same thing.