Comment by xp84
2 years ago
People will scream (including in this thread) that it’s “unfair” that ‘only the wealthy can afford them then’ but their beef is with scarcity and thus with reality. It’s always “unfair” to the 10,001st person who wants to attend the concert with 10,000 capacity. Today it’s a weird lottery with 6 different fan and credit-cardmember presales, which each sell out immediately, and the “backstop” at the end which is the ability to buy expensive scalped tickets.
There are finite tickets but unbounded demand. A lottery means you can slightly adjust the distribution of poor vs rich, but in practice today it still advantages those comfortable enough to sit around refreshing their computers at the right moment, instead of working. And lots of opportunists will snap up those tickets you are hoping poor people will get, to sell them to the wealthy.
In my opinion for in-demand shows it should just be a Dutch auction (all of the highest 10,000 bids win, awarded at some fixed cutoff date before the event). If not enough bids are received, the concert isn’t sold out, so then the rest go on sale for the lowest bid.
A dutch auction is really hard because different tickets have different prices, different people have different requirements about where they want to sit (a committed disabled fan may be willing to pay any price, but they can't do standing only) and there are many different price tiers.
A better idea is an airline-style dynamic pricing system that considers different variables, current demand, projected demand, type of seat etc. If it looks like the show is about to begin and there are still lots of tickets left unsold, be like Ryanair and sell them at a massive discount. If there are more people on your page than there are seats available, make the price go up until that changes.
The simplest way of implementing dynamic pricing is a resale market, where the price of tickets changes based on supply and demand.
Sure, it perfectly sets the market clearing price at all times, but it has the inefficiency that the performer can end up with only a fraction of the total amount the attendees are willing to pay. All those middlemen add value not in a way that feels fair, like collecting a percentage fee. Rather, they get all the upside whenever popular shows sell out. I can see why artists don't like that.