Comment by its_ethan
2 years ago
> Buying something at a low price and selling it at a high price is arbitrage 101 and is free money.
A bit of a nit pick, but this isn't "free money" unless you have a guarantee that someone will actually buy at the higher price. You could buy low, be unable to sell, and end up eating the "buy low" cost.
> sell tickets at their actual market price
How do you know what their actual market price is? You have to open it up to a market, where supply/demand get to play out.
IIRC some ticketing company tried doing something to this effect by scaling prices in realtime based on how many people were also trying to buy. I believe it was widely criticized as unfair/exploitive.
So you're back to square one then, where you have to set some price.
I mean, it may very well have been criticized, but how is it any less fair than the alternative? As for being exploitative, that's kind of the point. The company figures for most shows it's leaving money on the table for scalpers to take. The other side of it is that if a show bombs the ticket prices can be reduced to encourage people to come.
To be honest, it seems overall a better solution.