Comment by 317070

3 days ago

Named tickets, like airplane seats?

Sorry, I only thought about this for 5 seconds, but there are markets where scalping doesn't cause issues. We could look at those.

This is the answer, Ive seen it in practice. You just have to show id at the door when your ticket/QR gets scanned as normal, and the names have to match. Obviously only works for over 18 events though, unless you purposely sell under and over 18 tickets seperately.

On the other hand, airplane ticketing is also notorious for stuff like overbooking flights with the assumption people won't show up and then in the rare circumstances where too many do show up, forcing people to give up their seats (in some cases even by force). I don't disagree with your thinking, but I'm hesitant to consider "what airplane tickets do" a good model for just about anything.

Still have the issue of transferring tickets to friends or such if you can't make it. Axios and some providers handle this.

  • Anything requiring transferring "to friends" will be attempted to be used for scalping of course.

    I suppose if we're requiring showing ID to attend anyway, it's not a lot worse to add an online ID verification step in order to be allowed to be a "sender" in the transfer system, and an identity is only allowed to have like 5 distinct "friends" in a rolling 12-month window.

    Part of me thinks that Ticketmaster/Live Nation probably makes so much money from their own in-house scalping operation that they don't want to fix any kind of scalping problems for fear they would be somehow obligated to not participate themselves.

    • > Part of me thinks that Ticketmaster/Live Nation probably makes so much money from their own in-house scalping operation that they don't want to fix any kind of scalping problems for fear they would be somehow obligated to not participate themselves.

      My dad used to joke about how many signs he'd say at baseball games saying scalping is against the rules but somehow hearing loads of StubHub ads whenever he would listen to a game on the radio.

  • Transferring tickets to friends is functionally indistinguishable from scalping

    • The problem with scalping is scale. A single person reselling a single ticket is completely fine, because that is not a viable business model for enough people to distort the market. Just limit the number of tickets someone can buy to 3-5.

      3 replies →

  • Would need to provide a decent refund system alongside named tickets, offering quick and easy refunds for maybe 10% cancellation fee.

  • Handle it the same way airlines do. If you think you might not be able to go, then pay extra for a refundable ticket.

My first thought is a bunch of 12 year old girls that want to see Taylor Swift. They won't have national IDs. On the other hand, how does it work for children's airline tickets? Again, they won't have national IDs, but we know that children fly all the time -- with and without their parents.

This is how all the big video game conventions do things to prevent it, it’s very effective.

Some festivals work just like that, you upload some ID when buying your ticket which they see when you enter the venue. Feels really nice and stress free.