CAPTCHAs are over (in ticketing)

I can’t claim I’m the first one to think about this, but every time Ticketmaster shows up on HN I keep coming back to this idea:

Sell the tickets with regressive price based on time. Sales starts say 2 months before event, initial price is truly exorbitant, say one million dollars. Price decreases linearly down to zero (or true cost price). At any point, people can see current price and the seats left.

Now every potential spectator is playing a game of chicken: the more you wait, the lower the price, but also lower are the chances that you’ll have a ticket. That would capture precisely the maximum amount of dollars that each person is willing to pay for it.

This idea sounds extremely greedy, because it is, so I can’t fathom that no one ever pitched this in a Ticketmaster board meeting.

My idea, however, was a bit less greedy. Once you sold the last ticket, that would be your actual (and fair) price-per-ticket for the concert, and everyone would be refunded the difference. You’ll never know how low it will go, so you shouldn’t overpay and hope it will lower later. I’m pretty sure Ticketmaster will skip this last part if they decide to implement this.

There are multiple issues with my idea, it’s elitist, promotes financial risks on cohorts poorly capable to bear them, etc etc, but it will definitely fix the scalpers problem. Pick your poison.

The scalper problem is a mispricing problem: Scalpers are just arbitrageurs because ticket prices are artificially very low.

If you want to fix that, you need to ask yourself "why are ticket prices artificially very low?" first. The answer probably isn't "artists/venues like leaving money on the table".

Ticket sales companies and scalpers are holding the bag for everyone else.

It is extremely convenient for artists, promoters and venues that ticketing sites will tack on a bunch of extra fees, take the blame for pushing up the price of tickets, then share out most of that extra cash to everyone else in the chain.

Scalpers are effectively providing financing for the rest of the industry - it's obviously preferable to get paid for the entire tour on the day it's announced, rather than having to bear the cashflow risks yourself. There is of course absolutely nothing stopping a promoter from reserving some proportion of tickets to be sold directly to secondary resellers at substantially above face value, or on an agreed profit-sharing basis.

> it's obviously preferable to get paid for the entire tour on the day it's announced

it's only obvious to "private equity" type people.

There is energy in the concerts - and a lot of people go to live shows for that. Otherwise, one would listen to the recording / watch music videos instead - it is cheaper and the seats are nicer too.

If the seats are half-empty, or only full of people who are ready to pay exorbitant prices, that energy is reduced... people like concerts less, and eventually those concerts are not sold out anymore.

So giving up (or even worse, cooperating) to scalpers is like selling your business to private equity - you get some money, they get some money, and your customers/fans are f*d.

>> it's obviously preferable to get paid for the entire tour on the day it's announced

> it's only obvious to "private equity" type people.

No, it's obvious. Anyone that has to choose between getting $100 right now or $100 trickled in over months would opt for it right now for many reasons (inflation, the ability it invest it, the ability to use if it needed for unexpected situation, etc).

Wanting events to be populated by people that are primed for an experience and part of that priming bing they don't feel like it was too expensive to go might be another thing the artist or venue wants to encourage.

You can combine these things and make specific trade offs, but that doesn't mean all other things being equal that it's not entirely obvious that you should prefer money now to later.

> So giving up (or even worse, cooperating) to scalpers is like selling your business to private equity - you get some money, they get some money, and your customers/fans are fd.

It depends, probably a whole lot more than you think. Sometimes fans like to know they can go to an event if they care enough. In a world without resale markets that would be entirely dependent on the artist deciding to play more shows, because once tickets are sold they're gone. Secondary markets provide liquidity.

Also, sometimes tickets are available for cheaper* on secondary markets than they were on the initial sale (and this was true even before Ticketmaster started changing prices as the sales went on). That's because brokers take on risk buy buying for an event when it's not entirely sure it will still have demand when it's the event date.

For example, I just went to Stubhub (because I'm not sure Ticketmaster's own exchange will allow you to list for less than sale price) and looked for events starting soon. I found a rock concert in Napa where the Orchestra tickets are cheaper on Stubhub ($94 for two) than on Ticketmaster ($115.40 for two). There are plenty of tickets still on Ticketmaster, and some brokers just want to but their losses.[1][2]

There are plenty of ways to look at reselling to make it seem horrible or to make it seem beneficial. It's neither, it's just a normal function of markets, and the more people try to prevent it the more weird problems we'll have. Want to fix ticket prices? Convince artists to take on risk by playing larger venues (which they might not sell out) or add dates (meanind some days might not sell out). Artists don't want to take on that risk, so we have resellers and higher ticket prices.

1: https://www.stubhub.com/zepparella-napa-tickets-5-31-2025/ev...

2: https://www.ticketmaster.com/zepparella-the-led-zeppelin-pow...

> No, it's obvious. Anyone that has to choose between getting $100 right now or $100 trickled in over months would opt for it right now for many reasons (inflation, the ability it invest it, the ability to use if it needed for unexpected situation, etc).

I disagree? Even if your conclusion is somehow true, it seems in no way obvious, and so far as I can the reasoning doesn't make sense. You've left out two crucial factors:

- The assumption that it's $100 now vs. $100 later just seems unfounded. What if it's $100 now vs. $110 later? The payer is can factor in the time value of money, inflation, etc. just like you do; why would they completely ignore that and blindly pay the same amount they would at two different points in time?

- We're not talking about free money, we're talking about payment in exchange for work. You're taking out a loan that comes with obligations. You're going to have to pay it back if for whatever reason you can't do the work. Generally, the earlier you take the loan, the more unpredictable and thus the larger that risk is. Of course details matter here but it's not at all obvious ASAP is the optimal policy. And I don't know about you, but I sure as heck don't enjoy being perpetually in debt to someone. I'm not saying it's bad if you're fine with it, I'm saying it doesn't seem remotely true that everyone is fine with it.