Comment by raincole
3 days ago
I agree with the libertarians on this. Scalping isn't an issue. People who are willing to pay more for tickets should get them. Concert tickets are not basic needs like housing or food.
If there is room for arbitrage (which is what scalping really is) then the tickets are too cheap in the first place.
I agree with supply and demand dictating the price on scarce items. I don’t agree with letting middlemen butt in and drive the price up by exacerbating the scarcity, and making a profit with no value add to the market.
> no value add to the market.
Markets are more efficient than you give them credit for. If there was no value-add it wouldn't happen. The value-add is that the scalpers take the risk and hassle off of the artist/venue. They can instantly sell out and then get back to worrying about the actual performance. Selling the tickets at their fair market value initially sounds good in theory, but then you have to spend weeks and months trying to get them sold, which is not a core competency a musical artist really wants to have. It is advantageous to underprice and know that you are sold out upfront and let someone else deal with the slog.
It's much the same as why wholesalers sell to Walmart for pennies on the dollar instead of trying to capture the retail market themselves. Selling direct to retail seems like a good idea... until you have to do it and realize you'd rather get back to what it is you're actually good at producing.
Yeah, it's just arbitrage.
They're just profiting from the difference between the cost of the item and what people are willing to pay for an item. Simple market economics, right?
As should be obvious: Since it can be explained by capitalism and we even have a nice neat concise word with which to describe it, then there's nothing to hate there. /s
> It's much the same as why wholesalers sell to Walmart for pennies on the dollar instead of trying to capture the retail market themselves. Selling direct to retail sounds good... until you have to do it and realize you'd rather get back to what it is you're actually good at.
It is not the same. Unlike Wal-Mart, scalpers do not buy truckloads of tickets at wholesale prices. They instead buy truckloads of tickets at retail prices -- and then increase the price even more.
And unlike a manufacturer like Proctor & Gamble (with zero or very limited direct-to-consumer sales), the combination of venue, artist, and ticket broker (eg Ticketmaster) is already equipped to handle direct consumer sales. They're quite good at doing so and their entire business model revolves around maintaining this ability.
The scalper is just an added, unnecessary layer. If scalpers somehow disappeared completely today, then yesterday's sell-out shows will still be sell-out shows tomorrow.
Scalpers provide zero value to the transaction.
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