Defend the indefensible: Ticket touting

au contrairé

on a side note: so it's obvious a few of you have a problem with reselling tickets, which is fair enough. where do you draw the line on that? i mean, what about cds? for example -- the other week i was used cd shopping and i came across a copy of Linkin Park's first EP, which judging by completed auctions ought to sell for about $100 to $150, possibly more. now needless to say, i picked it up and i'll use the money myself to buy music i find interesting.

do any of you resell rare cds/vinyl that you find whilst shopping? and if so, what's the difference between reselling recorded music and tickets to live shows? or say, autographed items? just a thought.

i've got mixed feelings about this in general. i can understand stephen's points -- especially his motivations/budgeting regard music and other responsibilities/etc. (and hey, we shouldn't really be on his back, moralizing about personal shit of his that we really don't have a fucking clue about anyways), and also the point that says "well, the buyer is the one who decides that $120 (or whatever amount) is worth it for the experience of going." i don't really go to live shows, and when i have in the past, i've never paid anything more than $20 or so for a ticket (radiohead a few years back excluded), so i know i'll never be the one desperate enough to drop a few hundred bucks on ticket prices. so it might be harder for me to judge in this case. there's nothing about a $120 ticket that i'd be interested in.

but is it any different than charging $100 or more for an out-of-print album? selling stuff on ebay for hundreds of bucks? i say not at all.

i've been searching for months for affordable copies of wolfgang voigt's GAS albums, and instead see dudes selling them for ridiculous, over-the-top prices. zauberberg was $100 last time i checked. now i'm looking for sun city girls' torch of the mystics, the cheapest copy i see is $225. there's noooo way i'll ever pay this much money for an album, and even if i did i know it'd be my choice to do it. but it still rubs me the wrong way that they're charging that much. help another music fan out, you know? though i can't say that i wouldn't do the same...the money is very hard to pass up, and as said, if there's a demand... it's a tough issue. i guess it just pisses me off wrt out-of-print albums because i'm a lot more interested in those vs. concert tickets.

stephen beat me to it re: reselling cds

subquestion to my last comments: who is more gullible, the person who pays $120 for a white stripes ticket, or the person who pays $150 for a pre-major label Linkin Park release?

TS: out of print CD/vinyl vs. out of print concert tickets

I just think you're a tool for not giving those people their money back when the show was cancelled and being proud of this. But yeah, lol, law of the jungle. You the man.

It's pretty obvious people will pay more for sold out tickets on eBay than the retail price, the problem is people just stacking up on tickets with nothing but the intention to exploit whatever demand. It's not clever, it's just being asshole.

sorry, being an asshole, that is...

To quote the overpraised Maynard James Keenan here: "If I'm the man then you're the man and he's the man as well, so you can point that fucking finger up your ass."

among other reasons, i mainly had a no refunds policy so that when i sold the tickets a few months in advance, i could go ahead and invest the money elsewhere -- and at the time, it went straight into fall tuition for my senior year of college. the last thing i wanted was to have to pull $500 out of my ass if the shows were cancelled (which they were) and fall into a bit of debt because of it.

i might reiterate for you that i stated in plain english, "sorry, no refunds if the show is cancelled." so you're wrong, there was no fucking law of the jungle. it's called a refund policy, my policy was no refunds, and the buyers were aware of that from day 1.

also: yes, i admitted it's an asshole thing to do to resell tickets, and that i don't do it on a regular basis. no i don't condone it and yes i'm guilty of having done it a few times. now get over it already.

It think that stephen - while quite possibly an asshole - is getting a bad rap on this here thread.

people who have $120 to drop on White Stripes tickets are going to emerge from this whole nasty little transaction relatively unscathed.

I like the idea that saying "I'm an asshole" somehow voids anybody else's right to call you an asshole, as if it was so obvious and couldn't we just get over it already? And yet at the same time being really indignant about the asshole-calling and trying to cite all this supply and demand, child support stuff, (except, "not really, I'm totally not broke!" so why bring it up?)... methinks the shady doth protest too much. Short version, it's tough to layer anything on top of "I'm an asshole for doing this" that makes it into a defense of the indefensible. I don't give a shit about concert scalping but this cognitive dissonance business is wack.

Asshole Admits To Being Asshole In Supreme Asshole Move

I'm far too righteous for my own good, only ever looking for face value for tickets I don't need. I'm sure I wouldn't like the people I'm selling to, so I really should just get as much money out of them as possible...

The thing that always comes to my mind in conversations like this and when the government says WHAT TO DO ABOUT TICKET TOUTING is why isn't there any kind of returns policy for unwanted/unneeded tickets? Especially for sellout events. That'd put the (invariably cockney) touts who hang around the venue out of business immediately.

why would a return policy from the concert venue prevent unwanted tickets from selling over face value?

i don't think there's anything particularly assholish about this at all.

the only way to stop this is to put in place some kind of id matching system, so that the person who made the purchase is the ONLY one who can get into the show, more like a "password" than a ticket (every show is all will-call basically). how many smaller venues are going to get with that? or bigger venues for that matter? and then what do you do with someone buying a ticket for a friend, or subbing one person for another at the last minute?

nice how we have a whole thread of dudes calling someone an asshole w/o much thought about how to prevent this supreme asshole move

To reiterate, I don't think ticket-touting makes you an asshole ("I don't give a shit about concert scalping"), but stephen's post above just radiates with asshole attitude, which is what I was calling out.

nice how we have a whole thread of dudes calling someone an asshole w/o much thought about how to prevent this supreme asshole move

Here's an idea: he chooses not to not to be an asshole? That seems like the easiest way to prevent this supreme asshole move.

I'm not suggesting touting should be illegal (although stephen's clause not to refund in the event of a cancellation is about as enforceable as a pre-nup a lot of places). I don't even think it's possible to make it illegal without too much collateral damage (CD selling, etc.). The whole "but how do we ban touting?" thing is a red herring. Not everything that is indefensible should be illegal.

I think this is the bit that is being called assholish:

and i sold each ticket on eBay (within the next 48 hours) for $120 apiece. then the show was cancelled and i got my initial $40 investment back on each ticket, and didn't give refunds to the buyers cause that was my policy as stated in the auctions.

especially if he got the refunds for each ticket and didn't pass on anything to the buyers, which is how this reads (and if so would be beyond assholish, frankly).

Yeah, but the folks agreed to his terms! If I managed to snag tickets to a gig I considered to be THE GIG (which white stripes would never be for me, but to some folks they're like zepplin or somethin'), I'd just roll with it. Plus, who knows that those folks weren't turning around and selling them too? I went to a modest mouse show where I payed triple face value and had like 5 kids following me for blocks trying to outbid each other for my ticket. The value is in the perception. Someone who paid 120 for the tix was probably more upset that they didn't get rocked by the stripes than losing money cuz the shitty drummer girl succumbed to neurosis.

Someone who paid 120 for the tix was probably more upset that they didn't get rocked by the stripes than losing money cuz the shitty drummer girl succumbed to neurosis.

Sure, if I got kicked in the balls and slapped in the face I'd be more upset about the kick in the balls. That doesn't mean I wouldn't care that I was slapped in the face. The cancellation wasn't something stephen could do anything about. The fact that other human beings lost $120 was. That is why he is an asshole, whether it was in the terms or not. There's a reason punitive contract terms like that are often legally unenforceable -- to protect people from assholes. Also, he is even bigger asshole for disingenuously pretending he thinks he an asshole.

note: we're in agreement about the (totally irrelevant) merits of The White Stripes.

especially if he got the refunds for each ticket and didn't pass on anything to the buyers, which is how this reads (and if so would be beyond assholish, frankly).

It was in his terms. Why would he?

This isn't an "is stephen an asshole" thread, its a defend the indefensible thread. Should be more DON'T KNOCK THE HUSTLE pics and stuff.

well, there are two kinds of refunds - he could refund them the $120 they paid him, and get the refund himself from the promoter, and be at 0. or he could get the refund from the promoter, and pass it on to the buyers, who'd each then be $80 down. or he could get the refund from the promoter, not pass it on to the buyers, who are then $120 down. if it's the last of these we're talking about it seems particularly lame to me - if i bought a ticket 2nd hand i'd kinda presume that if it got cancelled it'd be me who'd get the refund by taking the ticket back to the box office.

Yeah, but the folks agreed to his terms!

I've bought $15 computer stuff off ebay with a "we're going to make it so difficult to do anything about it if it doesn't work that you may as well not bother" disclaimer thinking "what are the chances of that? it'll be fine" and was pretty annoyed at myself, them and ebay when it didn't work. I can imagine doing the same for a ticket if I really wanted to go that much and feeling kicked in the teeth if I'd lost $120 in the process.

I'd feel kicked in the teeth if I paid $120 and had to watch the white stripes!

I'd feel kicked in the teeth if I paid $120 and had to watch the white stripes!

OTM

Also, he is even bigger asshole for disingenuously pretending he thinks he an asshole.

i wasn't disingenuously pretending anything; i admitted honestly that it wasn't exactly the nicest thing to do. like others are pointing out, i also fully disclosed my terms to the buyers, who knew before buying that in the case of a cancellation, there was no refund policy. i gave full disclosure in my auction terms, and while it makes me something of an asshole (to some of you) to have those terms in the first place, there's nothing dishonest or wrong about setting terms for an auction, then sticking to them.

speaking for myself, i've bought tickets on craigslist many times with no "refund policy" to speak of -- and been burned once (to see Yo La Tengo earlier this year, actually) -- but you know, i knew what i was getting into and agreed to buy the tickets anyway. and that was that.

This isn't an "is stephen an asshole" thread, its a defend the indefensible thread.

unfortunately ILM doesn't always work as intended -- i replied to the thread with an honest answer, and i get slammed while the thread is derailed entirely in the process. too many people on this thread pretending they haven't ever made a questionable move in their lives, ever.

the whole thing sorta reminds me of this tagline:

http://www.campaignbuttons-etc.com/cause27A.jpg

whoops lemme try that again

http://www.campaignbuttons-etc.com/cause27A.jpg

if i bought a ticket 2nd hand i'd kinda presume that if it got cancelled it'd be me who'd get the refund by taking the ticket back to the box office.

yeah, some venues are starting to do this more. i saw the Smashing Pumpkins a few days ago; the concert was originally postponed about 2 weeks earlier, and if you couldn't attend the rescheduled date, you had to mail in the physical tickets to the box office to receive a refund check mailed back to you. works better for secondhand buyers this way, no doubt.

Yeah, quit trashing Stephen the asshole and trash the real assholes who made him act like a jerk by providing him with a unwise fanbase and then backing out of their shows because the world is a scary place.

Alright, I will now stop making fun of White Stripes. I will now make fun of Stephen for taking his loot from Stripes tickets and spending it on Smashing Pumpkins tickets.

Why is doing this indefensible? Cf. real estate, venture capital, etc. I guess the closest thing to an argument against doing this was above when someone said "help another music fan out, you know?" The idea seems to be that I shouldn't make an *excessive* profit on music-related things. One key here is what counts as "excessive", but that's not the whole matter. It's also the old indie thing of how to mix music with commerce. Probably this "defend the indefensible" would split on those old grounds, if it ever got that far.

too many people on this thread pretending they haven't ever made a questionable move in their lives, ever.

You appear to be confusing someone disagreeing with you and someone saying that they are perfect.

xpost.

Xpost-It is indefensible because people should not take money from gullible folks who will pay too much for a crappy show.

people should not take money from gullible folks who will pay too much for a crappy show.

to a good amount of non-elitist people who don't spend all day on music-related Internet message boards, the White Stripes are the best band in the world right now, and many of them would spend $120 two or three times over for those tickets, if necessary. how are music fans "gullible" for paying for what they enjoy? i.e., just because you're too cool for Jack and Meg doesn't mean everyone else is.

One key here is what counts as "excessive", but that's not the whole matter.

if there's a buyer willingly and knowingly paying a certain amount for a music-related item, whether piece of OOP vinyl or sold-out concert ticket or whatever else, and it makes them happy to buy that item for that price, then i really don't see anything excessive about it.

yeah, I agree, stephen, I didn't mean it was a *good* argument---I was just trying to understand why someone would think there was anything indefensible about this. As far as I can tell, it's a lousy argument. Talk of taking money from the gullible doesn't help, since this is like 99% of what commerce is.

"You are bidding on one ticket to see the legendary My Bloody Valentine. Rare opportunity to see Kevin Shields outside of his house. Go for it!"

This is the kind of touting I can get behind.

but not a rare chance to see Meg White before she goes batshit insane?? she's headed for the same fate as Kevin, you know :-(

Yeah my comment about gullible folks was layered in sarcasm. Hurrah for gullible folks who don't pick up on sarcasm.
I am really just here to take potshots for humor's sake. White Stripes and Smashing Pumpkins make easy targets, the fact that people are nuts for them could not possibly be because of too much hype.
Value is a subjective perception. I can see why people might be miffed because dude on the internet is making the surplus value as his profit versus the band getting their due. But if someone is that hardcore of a fan they should be able to get a ticket before it sells out and then spend the saved money on collectible USB drives. But I can relate, it is fun to throw money around, and I stated above I paid triple for tickets once. For music snob superiority purposes I will state it was Moon and Antarctica lineup modest mouse, not the crappy band that came after!

to a good amount of non-elitist people who don't spend all day on music-related Internet message boards, the White Stripes are the best band in the world right now

I think you're thinking of Nickelback.

fwiw, i'd take the Pumpkins or the Stripes over Modest Mouse (whatever fucking era) any day of the week.

why would a return policy from the concert venue prevent unwanted tickets from selling over face value?

because if you have an unwanted ticket you have to do SOMETHING with it, or you lose out, and since the terms and conditions of tickets usually don't allow you to sell on under any circumstance, why not make a bit of money from it? I don't imagine selling over the odds is something that would particularly cross the minds of people who have unwanted tickets they can return, and besides that, if governments really want to be putting anti-touting laws in place, eliminating the possibility of selling on tickets for legitimate reasons is a good place to start.

I wasn't saying you were an asshole either, btw. Doctor Casino's post just reminded me of that article.

The only way to stop this is to put in place some kind of id matching system, so that the person who made the purchase is the ONLY one who can get into the show, more like a "password" than a ticket (every show is all will-call basically). how many smaller venues are going to get with that? or bigger venues for that matter?

This is what Glastonbury now do (latest version = digital photos on tickets).

However, what Glastonbury is also talking about doing is something I've thought should happen for a while. The concert promoter holds back a certain proportion of tickets (say, 10%) to not go on open sale, but be auctioned through an official channel (in partnership with eBay if that's the most efficient channel). Depending on the event's philosophy, the extra profit this raises can go to charity or wherever.

People can do what they like to others as long as they'd be okay with it being done to themselves...otherwise they're hypocritical assholes who deserve a fall.

That's a direct quote from Kant btw

...if it's the last of these we're talking about it seems particularly lame to me - if i bought a ticket 2nd hand i'd kinda presume that if it got cancelled it'd be me who'd get the refund by taking the ticket back to the box office.

Yes, this urgent and key. You actually took their $40 dollar refund.

This is beyond assholism, and verging on criminal. If it isn't criminal, regulation should be brought in to make it so.

This isn't an "is stephen an asshole" thread

he has a crazy knack of making any thread he appears in one of these though.

On the subject of it being impossible to return unwanted tickets, I've had very good luck in the past (both buying and selling) with this:

http://www.scarletmist.com/default.asp

Yeah scarlet mist I can get behind. But being happy to get tickets off ebay 'cause the show sold out - well perhaps shows wouldn't sell out so fast if people didn't a) buy tickets for the express purpose of touting, which I think is indefensible, or ii) buy "half a dozen for me and my mates and if I can't find five friends who want to go then I'll just shift them on ebay", which never happened before ebay, is now widespread, and is almost as annoying as straightforward honest asshole touting.

he has a crazy knack of making any thread he appears in one of these though.

yeah right, go fuck yourself.

Yes, this urgent and key. You actually took their $40 dollar refund. This is beyond assholism, and verging on criminal. If it isn't criminal, regulation should be brought in to make it so.

Get to know your seller before you buy an item. Here are some simple precautions to help your purchase go smoothly.

Review the seller’s policies

Returns – Examine the seller's return policy carefully before you bid. Contact the seller before you bid with any questions about the return policy. Some questions you might want to ask include:

Does the seller accept returns, or is the item sold "as is"? <-------OMG WAHT R U TALKIN BOUT!!1 ITS CRIMANAL TO SELL UR ITEM ""AS IS"" I BELEIVE :'-(
Under what circumstances can you return the item?
Do you have to return the item to the seller within a certain time period?
What kind of refund does the seller provide?
Who pays for return shipping and handling?
Does the seller charge a restocking fee?

OK never mind, it was because I had it bookmarked.

pretty cool, actually.

trent reznor to fans: yes i know, it sucks:

I assure you nobody in the NIN camp supplies or supports the practice of supplying tickets to these re-sellers because it's not something we morally feel is the right thing to do. We are leaving money on the table here but it's not always about money.
Being completely honest, it IS something I've had to consider. If people are willing to pay a lot of money to sit up front AND ARE GOING TO ANYWAY thanks to the rigged system, why let that money go into the hands of the scalpers? I'm the one busting my ass up there every night. The conclusion really came down to it not feeling like the right thing to do - simple as that.

My guess as to what will eventually happen if / when Live Nation and TicketMaster merges is that they'll move to an auction or market-based pricing scheme - which will simply mean it will cost a lot more to get a good seat for a hot show. They will simply BECOME the scalper, eliminating them from the mix.

Nothing's going to change until the ticketing entity gets serious about stopping the problem - which of course they don't see as a problem.

touting never bothered me as much as booking fees. they're fucked up. seeing people apologise for this but not for regularly using ticketmaster etc ... ehhh

I've done this once but only for a nominal profit. obv ticket brokers in general suck ass.

what's yr experience?

This story is getting a lot of play here in L.A.: https://variety.com/2019/music/news/black-keys-hundreds-turned-away-wiltern-ticketmaster-1203344146/

Honestly, this is the overcorrective reaction that I can't stand. Yeah, the resale industry is fucked, esp with revelations that bands are actually releasing thousands tickets for sale directly to third party resellers. But there are people that pay it - sometimes when I'm traveling for work or pleasure, I'll find out an act is in town that I want to see but the tix are above face value, and I just pay it.

But how is that more fucked than denying people who can't make a show due to some emergency from selling to someone who can? Is this going to endear fans to the band more when buyers got kept out of the show?

Non-transferrable is really fucking stupid and no matter my opinion of scalping, Black Keys are the ones who look like shitheads here. same as when Smashing Pumpkins did the same thing in 1996.

"We wanted to ensure fans got into the venue at the low price we set for them. Instead they didn't get let in at all! but fuck em, they're not true fans!"

You'd think there would be a way to make them digitally transferable but only at the price they were purchased at.

Black Keys are the ones who look like shitheads here

seems it would be fine if ticketmaster had a feature allowing you to return your ticket for face value

the tale of a woman from Boyle Heights who’d spent $700 on three tickets for herself and her two young children and waited in line for two hours, only to be told after finally passing through security that the tickets weren’t valid, sending her back onto the sidewalk with a crying 9-year-old.

lol tbh

if Ticketmaster had a feature allowing you to return tickets, that'd be a step, but there are plenty of people who are paying for the privilege of getting into a sold out event, whether we were too slow to get tickets, or perhaps didn't think they'd be able to go, or traveled somewhere and found the show on their doorstep unexpectedly.

yeah $700 is much more than I'd spend for three tickets to ANYBODY, much less Black Keys, but hey, it's their money. lol @ the idea that anybody in the 3rd party markets was in any way significantly hurt by what the Black Keys did.

plus I mean they used Ticketmaster, how much do they really care about markup

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?