Defend the indefensible: Ticket touting

I assume the venue is LiveNation/Ticketmaster only, so they probably didn’t have a choice there.

Seems like if a band does their best to make sure True Fans have the best shot at buying tix (maybe release the code via email right before they go on sale?), then if some fans end up reselling, that’s the breaks.

the other thing, the article made it sound like if you sent a ticket barcode from one phone to another, i.e. someone buying the ticket as a gift, it would also not be honored, the software would recognize it and disallow the scan?

Right, seems it’s a “dynamic barcode”

the argument between stephen and everybody else upthread is always entertaining

The most depressing result of the consolidated, decentralized ticket scalping operations is sitting in the near-premium area in a large seated venue only to have the seats near you stay empty throughout the entire show when they were sold out online.

he went on to post as ilxor, iirc?

If they're purely interested in making sure tix only wind up in the hands of 'true fans', seems like the lower the ticket price the less likely that is, tbh. If theyre interested in keeping ticket prices low by stopping scalping that's commendable, but the whole idea hinges the nontransferability being super clear to everyone right upfront, so that resellers don't bother buying tix in the first place. If you hide that feature in the fine print it defeats the whole purpose.

i just did this with madonna tickets. I bought some for us, and then 4 additional on another night, and resold them on stubhub for enough to cover the cost of all the tickets. yeah I suppose that was kind of shitty but whatever.

honestly anyone who pays to see madonna deserves to get ripped off.

rude

Just try to understand, she's given all she can

It's starting to get that the efforts to combat 'scalping' are making legit "I can't go" resale more difficult.

I have a ticket to a small club show I can't go to Sunday that I'm trying to sell. These are harder to sell on StubHub, since they're GA shows, so you pretty much have to sell at a loss to move them (plus you lose fees). But in this case, I had no choice - the show wasn't listed, it takes days to get a new show added, and this particular promoter actually calls Stubhub to take his shows down from being listed. Craigslist is useless as nobody looks on CL for small events like this. I've tried with no success multiple times.

So I go to the event page to offer the ticket, under face value, and make very clear that I'm not one of the 3 million bots offering tickets. The promoters know me, I go to a billion of their shows. The page is moderated to cut out the bots offering tix. Today, I find out they didn't approve my post so it never went up.

so now outside of posting it for sale on my own FB page, which will have less success than it would have on the event page itself due to the algorithms, I have no real options to sell, even at a loss. It's an Eventbrite ticket, they have no marketplace of their own.

I could ask for a refund but it seems stupid - meh.

it seems less stupid than spending days to sell it at a loss

right, cos making zero money back is better than making some money back. good tip!

literally think you just pop up to be really fucking annoying sometimes

nevermind, I misread you completely. sorry.

:)

https://variety.com/2020/biz/news/pearl-jam-congressmen-boss-ticket-reform-act-flawed-1203506450/

https://variety.com/2020/biz/news/pearl-jam-congressman-rejects-boss-ticket-reform-1203508207/

Don’t know more than what’s in this articles, but not sure I get Pearl Jam’s position here... “Non-transferable ticketing” is not good, right?

(for the reasons discussed this thread, beginning last September)

it's inconvenient, sure, but it also really helps defend from scalping surely?

I'm sure it does, but it also seems "anti-consumer," steers folks toward buying that "ticket insurance" offered at check-out (b/c what other recourse will you have if you can't go?), etc. It's a tricky problem for sure.

Trying to read more about the bill... the Springsteen focus in the bill's name & PR is so perfectly Jersey: https://pascrell.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=3931

This seems like a basic rundown of the bill's provisions: https://pascrell.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=3377

There are legit sanctioned ways to resell tix like Ticketmaster Resale Marketplace but then these services will set a minimum price for your tickets sometimes that is too high to garner interest.

For a sold out event, you're golden, but if it's not, you just want to recover *something*.

People will just start demanding refunds and attempting chargebacks as even ticket insurance can only be used in specific instances. Illness, you're good. Laid off, you're good. Work demands you work on a day you weren't previously scheduled? Out of luck. Someone dies but they weren't a member of your immediate family or going to the show with you? Out of luck. And the insurance inflates the already bloated sale prices of many tickets.

The resale sites aren't the primary issue as much as a symptom. The primary issue is that third parties also seem to acquire large allotments of tickets with only resale as an intent. Sometimes even Ticketmaster has promoted this.

I admit I don't know how to stop that but while making tickets non transferable might curb scalping, it just about guarantees empty seats in the house, and that many people who didn't want to pay another $20 for ticket insurance, or who missed for a non-covered reason will take a bath on it. And possibly stop attending.

And how would gifts work?