Comment by seandoe
3 days ago
It seems like a step in the right direction to combat scalpers.
I've wondered though... Why not have a non-transferrable ticket system? If you can't go then you return your tickets to the pool and if they sell you get your money back.
Non-transferable tickets suck for their own reasons.
Someone in a group gets sick or otherwise can't make it? Their seat is now either empty, or their ticket goes back to the pool. They can't give that ticket to someone else.
That's a big deal for a whole slew of reasons. Let's pick just one reason and run with it.
Five 11-year-old-ish girls want to go see Olivia Rodrigo. These kids haven't ever even been inside an arena before and aren't experienced enough to go on their own, and the tickets are expensive. One of the moms of the group decides that she'll take them all. No problem, right?
Except: This mom gets sick. She can't go.
And she can't just give her ticket to one of the other moms or dads because it is non-transferable. And the kids still aren't big enough to turn loose in a crowd without an adult.
The end result of this is stupid: "Sorry, kids. None of you get to go to the concert that you already have a ticket for. Life is hard."
This is a pretty niche problem compared to the every-ticket-of-every-big-show scalper problem. This affects <1% of ticket buyers. Scalpers currently affect 100%. Seems like a pretty reasonable trade-off.
Also, solvable. Everyone needs an ID that matches ticket or to be accompanied by someone with an ID that matches a ticket purchased in the same transaction (cap number of non-ID tickets per ID ticket, don't let people appearing over 30 in on a non-ID ticket). Then, when buying tickets, allow specifying a named alternate for each ID ticket in case the person can't make it.
That's one problem.
I can think of many other instances of other problems.
If you cannot do so, then you aren't really following along very well.
The UK is proposing a law that will make it illegal to resell a ticket for greater than the face value.
That honestly seems like a very pragmatic solution to me.
I don't know how naive the actual wording is, but fighting these kind of resells is an arms race.
If for instance they allow reselling the ticket at the same price, processing fees could be exempted from that calculation. So charging the nominal price, but with enormous fees that go to the seller's pocket in a roundabout way will work.
If processing fees are caped, the seller can request payment through a middle item that is nominally valued the same as the ticket but can actually be paid for more.
Or the reseller will accept generous tips in exchange for the ticket at the nominal price. etc. etc.
As long as there's someone willing to pay, money will find the way to the reseller.
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Ireland has this and honestly I hate it now. It's impossible to get tickets unless you win the lottery to buy them when they first go on sale. Paying a premium to buy them on the second hand market sucked, but at least I could make that calculation and decide which bands I was willing to pay to actually see. Now, I can't see any of the big bands anymore. I just wish they'd reserve like 1/3 of the tickets for an auction system or something.
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Seems like that would be an easy thing to bypass. Include a free ticket with some overpriced merchandise. £600 for a T-shirt, but you get a free ticket with it.
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So the scalpers will move to the black market and consumers will lose all existing protections? Nice!
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"Great news, gentlemen! We've made [drugs/gambling/guns/scalping] illegal! That problem is solved!"
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Then allow resale through the platform at the original purchase price.
You still have no scalping, but you recover the ability to back out due to unforeseen events
If there were a caveat for something like that, like say, "adult supervision for minors is required. Transfer between legal guardians is permitted, provided they can prove ..." or some kind of language like that.
Are there other common cases that would apply? I assume there are probably some other situations, but I can't think of what they might be. I also find it hard to understand why a little bit of leeway couldn't be baked into the language of the transferable nature under certain circumstances. Presumably the venue wants people to have a good time so they will want to come back again and again, right?
Perhaps something as easy as "If one friend can't make it, you can give it to a different friend." Then, at the door, the guards can look at the ID of someone and ask basic questions; "What is (person)'s name? What town does (person) live in?" Etc.
So how do those rules work, exactly?
How do we even prove that the kids are kids? How do we prove that the kids even exist?
> or some kind of language like that.
There's nothing accomplished here but handwaving and added burden.
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> Perhaps something as easy as "If one friend can't make it, you can give it to a different friend." Then, at the door, the guards can look at the ID of someone and ask basic questions; "What is (person)'s name? What town does (person) live in?" Etc.
In this second scenario, scalping goes like this: "For sale: Two tickets to $hot_show. Entry instructions provided upon delivery."
And then the buyer buys the tickets at whatever that price is, and goes to the show. They give their ID, the "guards" ask them basic questions, and they answer those questions. After that, they get turned loose inside like every other concert-goer.
This is just handwaving and extra burden, as well.
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Unless... unless we make it totally Gestapo-like. Because the best part of going to see a show is the lengthy interrogation that happens beforehand. (If the goal is to make shows less popular, then this is a sure-fire way to improve that metric!)
An actual transfer is needed when selling to someone you don't know/trust. But for the moms in your example, handing over the ticket just means temporarily handing over the account: share the password (assuming no password reuse habits), send over the MFA OTP, whatever it takes.
It's not ideal, but it avoids the scalping that comes from more streamlined transfers; scalpers can't easily sell burner accounts if account creation needs a non-VoIP phone number or similar.
That doesn't work, either. We can't assume that mom-passwords aren't being reused. We can't assume that mom-phones are secure. We can't assume that the requisite moms are even aware of the same kinds of things that we here on HN are aware of.
We can't assume anything, except this promotes a new friction.
But even then: So we're letting anyone in with a valid ticket-holding account on a pocket supercomputer, without verifying that they are who they say they are?
Great! This means that the scalpers have moved on from just selling tickets, and pivot over to selling entire ticket-holding accounts.
(This is just more theatrical burden.)
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That doesn't solve anything, you can just create event-specific accounts as a scalper (which you can reset after the event has happened).
Non-transferable tickets are bound to a specific name iiuc.
Tough fucking luck. I missed out on Alive 2007 because I was too young, on Lady Gaga because my partner got sick and we had to resell the tickets (at the exact same price we bought them for. And someone else bought them for that exact same price). Will I ever see Muse? Fuck if I know.
> The end result of this is stupid: "Sorry, kids. None of you get to go to the concert that you already have a ticket for. Life is hard."
Life is hard and they missed Olivia Rodrigo. The kids will survive through it, I promise. It's life, they'll see another concert. Most children in the world do not go to see concerts at 11 either.
Understood: Kids aren't important.
Or perhaps: The suffering is the point.
Copy! Over!
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How is this different from, let's say, plane tickets?
And nobody says that tickets must not be cancelable. Just no reselling on your own.
Let's not make air travel the customer experience bar for anything please
What seperates _your_ tickets from any other returned ticket?
Wouldn't a proportional return not be better?