New York Criminalizes the Use Of Ticket-Buying Bots (engadget.com) 214
An anonymous reader writes: If you failed to get tickets for your favorite band, even though your finger was poised on the "buy" link the instant they went on sale, don't worry -- you never stood a chance. They were probably snapped up by bots that, in one case, bought 1,012 Madison Square Garden U2 tickets in less than a minute. The state of New York has declared that scalpers who use them could get fines and even jail time. "New Yorkers have been dealing with this frustrating ticket buying experience for too long," says state assembly member Marcos Crespie. Using such bots was illegal before, but only brought civil, not criminal sanctions. However, a three-year investigation by NY attorney general Eric. T. Schneiderman found that the practice was so widespread that the state had to take harsher measures. Ticketing outlets and credit card companies revealed that bots scoop up the best seats in seconds, which scalpers then resell at prices many times over face value. Scalpers who exploit such software could now face criminal, class A misdemeanor charges.
But will they pursue charges? (Score:3)
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And what if the sells / buys / servers / etc are not in ny? What about when ticketmaster is scalping its own tickets
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And what if the sells / buys / servers / etc are not in ny? What about when ticketmaster is scalping its own tickets
The one big thing here no one is mentioning so far: how do the scalpers have a market? If people are willing to pay "many times over face value" then the scalpers are just recognizing what the market will bear. These are tickets to shows, not necessities like food and water. If Ticketmaster or whoever really wants to solve this perceived problem, they can implement multiple captchas and call it a day. It's hard to justify having the government make this into a criminal matter when the entire event invo
multiple captchas will not stop all scalpeing (Score:2)
multiple captchas will not stop all scalpeing.
What about 1 time a year event's with an limited number of slots? Where there is an rush to buy where people with bot's or just happen click refresh at just the right time get in?
Locking to name to with no refund and no resell will just lead to people buying and if they can't go then the event having open unused slots or people who feel like why should I get no refund and the event gets to make X2 off one ticket when I give it up?
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The one big thing here no one is mentioning so far: how do the scalpers have a market? If people are willing to pay "many times over face value" then the scalpers are just recognizing what the market will bear.
That's called "economic rent". It has a few impacts.
With the lessened consumer buying power, fewer jobs are available. Tickets become more expensive, and so your average consumer now has less money to spend. That money, when spent on goods, creates a need to produce those goods, which creates employment; when the cost-per-good increases, the proportion of all incomes spent on that good increases, and diverts away from other goods. Because income is both made and spent over time (e.g. per year), the en
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The one big thing here no one is mentioning so far: how do the scalpers have a market? If people are willing to pay "many times over face value" then the scalpers are just recognizing what the market will bear.
Probably because it pisses people off to hell and back. I see a high speed stock situation happening. where scalpers sell to scalpers who then sell to more scalpers and then its scalpers all the way down.
If your free market example is to be adhered to religiously, a whole shitload of people hwo do nothing but buy and resell will make money, but the venue will suffer. After all, the only way to find out what the market will bear is to exceed what it will bear. And everyone has a different max price they w
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They aren't priced at "what the market will bear" but are priced at "what the market will pay" -- there is a difference. Market-clearing price and all that...
Looking at a homogenous sort of "What the market will pay" is a real loser. Because not everyone is going to have the same level of where they cut off. That inevitably leads to less attendance. Now if I have to pay 90 dollars a ticket, I'll think long and hard about what I will go to.
An example - I used to travel to my favorite Hockey team's games many times a year. As the prices increased, I started to go to less and less. At first I spent around the same price on tickets in total. So a while back I mig
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In the past ticketmaster was scalping its own tickets / selling them at non fixed prices based on demand.
Re:But will they pursue charges? (Score:5, Interesting)
Granted this law will do nothing with the biggest offender. Credit card pre-sales. You know, those credit card rewards that guarantee you tickets before anyone else can get them. Or the fact bands themselves may scalp their own tickets.
Your likely hood of getting tickets from the box office are basically nil for a popular show.
Take the Jan 18 Bieber show. Out of 14000 seats, just over 1000 were available for general sale.
6000 went to Amex presales
3000 to Fan Club members
2600 to promotions, guest lists and un-sell-able seats (due to visual obstruction)
900 to other VIP programs
and 500 were scalped by the biebs himself
1001 were sold to the general public.
So yeah, lets blame the scalpers.
Re:But will they pursue charges? (Score:5, Insightful)
In that particular case, I would call that a public service.
Otherwise, scalpers should be scalped.
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Take the Jan 18 @%$&* show.
Speak not her name in here laggard!
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Yes this! I hate how ticketing agents (ticketmaster) do not specify how many seats are actually going to be available for public or semi public consumption Or which seats are available for which grouping.
I have been granted access to tickets from Promoters "preferential presale" before. Been ready to buy right on the minute and had to deal with less than ideal seats, only to find that better ones are for sale come the general public sale. (And vice versa)
I have also found large areas of premium seating rese
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I would too!
Poison is a much better band. ;)
Re:But will they pursue charges? (Score:4)
"Scalping is illegal. End-of."
So? I think this is precisely the sort of thing that should never be "illegal" and is absolutely not a criminal matter.
If the ticket seller has a "terms of service" that re-selling tickets is against their policy, then they can take appropriate civil action against those that break their policy.
I thought the first sale doctrine was pretty strong in the US and most items could be resold without regard.
What is different about ticket sales? Can someone explain it to me?
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IANAL but, if an investigation brings up a potential crime, they may be able to take the money involved in these company's accounts via civil forfeiture. Potentially, that could make investigations not merely inexpensive, but downright profitable to enforcement agencies.
As satisfying s that sounds, civil forfeiture is a cancer that needs to be killed with fire, not expanded to target "People We Don't Like." Two wrongs don't make a right.
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Re:But will they pursue charges? (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes - the companies selling the tickets need to have a financial stake in stopping the bots. Without a financial motive, the ticket sellers will continue to have crappy code. Currently, the incentives are all wrong. The ticket sellers sell tickets quickly and get all their fees under the current system. The bulk scalpers are good business for them, and they have no reason to stop them.
If anything, the ticket sellers should be required to have a system that prevents bulk scalping, with penalties for failing to do this.
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easily exploitable software? (Score:5, Insightful)
I am just trying to understand a little bit about this automated software.
I mean, we have been dealing with automated bots in the online world for a long time.
The general solution is stuff like CAPTCHAs.
Do these types of systems not exist in the ticket buying world?
It sounds like this is just legislation around lazy business practices.
By all means, feel free to point out my logical fallacy.
Re:easily exploitable software? (Score:4, Interesting)
The big two, Live Nation and TicketMaster do have captchas, and they give them several times throughout the buying process. However, it is very easy to fake many of these systems. In addition, at least live nation now offers resale tickets on their own website. That means they are double dipping, the original sale+fees, plus commission+fees on resale tix. The have no incentive to stop this process.
IMHO, that is where the problem lies, not the scalpers. The system as it is is broken, but it is allowed to be broken by the companies that sell tickets as the market operates in their favor.
The only real fix I see to this is to associate a CC or ID with the ticket purchase and require it to be presented with the ticket for admission. This creates a whole host of other issues, such as inability to resale or gift easily, plus longer, slower lines at venues.
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Every single person likes it the way it is, except for the people who complain while paying the scalpers to do it again. That's what it boils down to.
The real "fix" would be an auction system where everyone puts in a bid for whatever they'd pay to see the show and the tickets are sold highest bid first when the bidding ends. Instead of paying the scalper $500 for your $60 ticket, you'd just pay $300 or whatever your bid ends up being. Scalpers could bid too, but then they're stuck with tickets that they
associate a CC or ID with ticket + ticket lottery (Score:2)
associate a CC or ID with ticket + ticket lottery (at least some small events with limited room)
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The only real fix I see to this is to associate a CC or ID with the ticket purchase
Actually that would be pretty good solution. The airlines will have you swipe a CC and enter your destination airport to look up your e-ticket / reservation. Does not have to be the CC used to buy the ticket they are only using it to get your name. Reading mag strips is fast.
For gifting simply supply the name of the recipient when you buy the tickets.
When someone buys a ticket associate a pin with the name send them the pin on the receipt.
So at the show, its swipe + pin. Now TM does not even have to p
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The only real fix I see to this is to associate a CC or ID with the ticket purchase and require it to be presented with the ticket for admission. This creates a whole host of other issues, such as inability to resale or gift easily, plus longer, slower lines at venues.
- Inability of resale: the ticketing venue could easily buy your ticket back at salesprice minus a small fee, or auction it off through their website - with a deadline, of course. Some already do.
- Gift: just say it's a gift when you purchase it. Gift tickets are limited to 1 per creditcard, but don't have to be accompanied by creditcard. Alternatively, you declare who it is meant for at purchase, and an ID or CC has to be brought when converting the gift certificate into a ticket.
Longer, slower lines at ve
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You mean like limiting tickets per transaction to something reasonable like 6 and locking a credit card number for 5 minutes? 5 minutes would be an eternity when whole tours sell out in 10 minutes.
Re:easily exploitable software? (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't even present the captcha until the tickets go on sale. Don't sell a thousand tickets in a single transaction. Each transaction gets a new captcha.
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Re:easily exploitable software? (Score:4, Interesting)
Limit the number of tickets you can buy per transaction.
If you can purchase thousands of tickets on one captcha, it defeats the purpose of the captcha.
Limit it to a max of 5 tickets per transaction, with each transaction requiring a new captcha, and a restriction on purchasing more than 20 tickets per credit card.
That would make a big dent.
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There's a lot of attention on this in Canada recently, where the Tragically Hip final tour sold out before fans could buy the tickets, scalpers got most of them. Its particularly intense in this case since the lead singer has terminal cancer and this is really the last tour.
Re:easily exploitable software? (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason the bots work on these ticket sites is because they are faster than humans. If they had to wait for humans to enter CAPTCHAs, they would lose all their advantage.
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like ticketsnow (owned by Ticketmaster) ?
Solution is SIMPLE. Sell ticket to a person. (Score:4, Insightful)
Require tickets to be tied to a person (first name, last name) when sold. Require that person to have valid ID on arrival. And prosecute anyone caught using fake ID's.
Airplane, boat, and train tickets require the ticket match the person. Any area subject to ticket scalping should require an ID too.
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This!!! And if the buyer does want to sell the ticket, make the buyer sell it back to the venue. I was talking to a friend about this recently with regard to college football tickets. I think this is where it all started because the colleges were complicit with stubhub. The face value of tickets is a joke, as the purchaser pays much more. My friend makes a required donation to the school every year to gain the right to buy a season ticket. The price of the season ticket is peanuts in comparison to the donat
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Actually, a lot more than 50%.
The promoter gets a share of the tickets. The artist gets a share of the tickets. The venue gets a share of tickets. Then credit cards, media, etc get a share of tickets. Etc.
It ends up being anywhere from 66-90% of tickets are sold before the general public gets them
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That's great, until I have something come up that prevents me from attending the event. When that happens, am I required to throw away the tickets? Am I allowed to transfer or sell them to someone else who can go? And if that is allowed, the suggested solution breaks down, because the bot operators just need to provide fake names, then sell the tickets to people who have real names and IDs.
I'm not sure I like tickets being non-refundable and non-transferrable.
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"It depends. The likely result would depend on why you didn't make it. Can verify you had to go to the hospital? Most businesses would give you a refund or credit. Something less drastic? Most businesses would give you a credit."
I really disagree with this idea. Why should someone else be able to arbiter whether my reason for not attending the concert is a "valid excuse"? In a similar way I never tell my boss why I want time off work: if I have leave available then they can either approve or deny my request
New York Comic Con does this - Fan Verification (Score:2)
New York City Comic Con attendees were required to register before purchase, and only registered people could purchase tickets [newyorkcomiccon.com]
Shame they aren't selling VIP tickets any more though.
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The giveaway tickets are not part of the scalped tickets anyway, so no need for a solution there. Yes, these could be sold by anyone, but that's not the issue - they were off the market for normal sales in the first place, so resales for more money have zero impact on the sale of the remaining tickets. The issue is bots quickly buying up all tickets, not resale of tickets that were never going to be sold in the first place.
ooOOOohhh, class A misdemeanors! (Score:2)
it's extortion and theft, how about send those guys upriver for 5 to 20?
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it's extortion and theft, how about send those guys upriver for 5 to 20?
Because the punishment should fit the crime?
Bad for individuals but (Score:4, Interesting)
This is bad for an individual to do but OK for the 2nd hand reselling companies that snap up 100's of prime seats and sell them online for ridiculous amounts. Reselling is OK if you don't do it on the street in front of the venue, where it is considered scalping in many places. I've been to shows where the first 3 or 4 rows were corporate owned seats that rarely fill up, and heard the performers complain about the empty seats and call for the fans to fill them up, stating it gives them energy to have true fans up close vs. wine sipping corporate douche bags sitting on their hands.
https://seatgeek.com/tba/artic... [seatgeek.com].
Why not a reverse auction instead? (Score:5, Insightful)
Tickets get scalped because the price doesn't reflect demand. Instead of impossible to enforce regulations, why don't venues/artists instead change their pricing model?
Something like a reverse auction -- start the ticket process extremely high, like $10,000 per ticket and keep cutting the ticket price by small amounts based on sales volume. If volume remains fairly constant, then the price stays constant. The ticket price will then reflect what people are truly willing to pay, and ticket brokers won't be able to arbitrage the low face price versus the actual demand price.
Brokers can snap up all the $10,000 tickets they want on a day 1 of sales, but it will be both a huge capital outlay and they will not be able to sell many tickets for those prices plus their own profit premium.
You will still run the risk that as volume flags and the price falls, the tickets will hit a threshold where brokers believe they can still bulk purchase tickets, but I'd guess that the risk of being stuck with tickets they can't sell at a high price would be a negative incentive.
The bad thing would be -- well, tickets will be more expensive if you want to go, because you will be paying a higher price. But right now, the price is artificially low and acquiring tickets from the box office is more akin to a lottery than a marketplace.
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Probably a bunch of reasons:
(1) Many of these bands don't need to maximize profit anymore; they want to minimize the risk of having a venue that is not sold out because that makes them look bad. (2) Many of the venues are publicly subsidized and/or at the receiving end of political attention, so it is in their interest to appeal to voters in
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Because fuck capitalism, that's why. Most artists aren't interested in gouging their fans just because their businessman tells them that's the way it should be.
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No, what the artists are interested in is fucking their fans over, by giving away many tickets as favors to the rich, famous, and connected, and watching a feeding frenzy over the remaining tickets. It makes those "artists" feel powerful and important.
Re:Why not a reverse auction instead? (Score:5, Informative)
Tickets get scalped because the price doesn't meet demand? What fantasyland do you live in?
Tickets get scalped because someone got there first, bought all the tickets, and resells them.
Tickets get scalped because demand exceeds supply and the demand price (what people are willing to pay to see the event) exceeds the face price.
When was the last time you went to a concert for which there were expensive scalped tickets available but where the venue was half-empty? Probably never, because most scalped tickets get sold to people willing to pay the price to see the event. They may think they had to pay too much, but obviously they made a decision that they were willing to pay the price to see the event.
The marketplace (the universe of ticket buyers and sellers) have decided that the price to see an in-demand concert is higher (in many cases, much higher) than the price printed on the ticket.
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The demand exceeds supply because the scalpers use automation to suck up all the supply and prevent normal people from buying at regular prices.
Re:Why not a reverse auction instead? (Score:4, Insightful)
Scalpers will only do that if the price is below market equilibrium, because otherwise there's no profit to be made. So root cause of demand exceeding supply is the low, below-market-equilibrium price.
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No, whoever's selling the tickets at such deflated prices is ripping off the performers and creating ideal conditions for scalping.
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So concerts would never sell out ahead of time? There's enough seats in the venue or enough performances for everyone who wants to attend? Supply and demand are in perfect balance?
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I do think the idea of a reverse auction would work very well to eliminate scalpers. It would probably in the long run lower the prices of tickets for many of these events.
The fact of the matter is that event planners LIKE these bots purchasing tickets. They like "selling out" minutes(or seconds) after the ticke
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The marketplace (the universe of ticket buyers and sellers) have decided that the price to see an in-demand concert is higher (in many cases, much higher) than the price printed on the ticket.
...which would seem to imply that the performers and producers are gullible fools, missing out on the bounty they could reap by doing what the Invisible Hand says to do. Occam might think it more likely the producers are pretending to work at reasonable prices but getting a cut from scalpers who take the blame for ripping off the public -- in return for dipping their beaks.
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"Artificial scarcity" is a meaningless concept. The scalpers simply try to price tickets rationally because the original seller isn't doing so.
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Especially if it's a cold rainy day AND the concert / game is about to start (or has started).
I've bought many a Knick ticket at less than face value. I've bought some good concert tickets at below face value at numerous venues? Why? Because supply was greater than demand.
There are many good solutions out there - from lottery, to auction to combinations of the two.
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Despite decades of complaints about ticket scalping, artists and/or venue don't change their pricing policies.
It wouldn't surprise me at all if both were making money on the back end -- and possibly avoiding taxes or other financial scrutiny -- by scalping tickets. Concert tickets represent an asset easily exchanged for cash and one for which artists or venues can give away, write off as expense, yet sell for untraceable cash.
Fixing collusion by venues and artists is probably really hard, since they can "s
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Ticket lottery system is needed (Score:2)
Ticket lottery system is needed
A system like that is more fair / get's rid of the rush to buy with sites some times lagging out / crashing also helps people in different times zones have a fair chance at getting tickets.
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Just increase the number of bots and you still have the majority of bots being the "lottery winners".
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If someone's willing to pay $300 for something, you have no right to get it for $30.
Seriously?
Where I come from, that is called getting a good deal. No harm in that.
The thing is, the venue or the performer/artist are the ones setting the price. If they set it at $30 it doesn't matter if someone is willing to spend $300. You absolutely do have a RIGHT to get it for the price offered as long as there is availability (all the tickets aren't sold)... --- right here is where the dilemma exists
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If the band is willing to sell the ticket for $30 so their fans can enjoy their show, then certainly the fan deserves that ticket for $30. If a bully was willing to punch the music fan in the gut and steal his ticket, by your simplistic logic, the fan, doesn't deserve the ticket. So let's extrapolate.
So the music fan gets gut punched and has his ticket stolen. He then gets up kills the gut puncher and can go to the show, and deserves to go because he wanted it more.
Legislation isn't the answer - economics is (Score:5, Insightful)
Concert tickets are a luxury good, not a basic good to which citizens have some unalienable right.
They should thus be treated like any other luxury good - i.e. let the vendor raise prices until demand reduces to match supply.
If scalpers are able to resell tickets for "many times" their face value, then the original ticket vendor should have sold them at "many times" their face value. I'm sure the State would appreciate the extra tax revenue.
But doesn't this mean only rich folk get to go to concerts? Yes, but only rich folk get to drive Ferraris or buy Rolex watches, and no-one complains.
Or have a secret auction. Let everyone bid whatever amount they're prepared to pay, subject to a public minimum. The amount you bid is then deducted from your credit card, to discourage time-wasters When the auction closes, the winning x bids get allocated tickets, and the losing bids get refunded.
But doesn't this mean I might end up paying more than the dude in the seat beside me? Yes, which is why you should only bid what you're prepared to pay, i.e. what you believe the concert to be worth.
Scalpers won't be able to resell tickets in this system, since anyone prepared to pay an inflated price (higher than the scalper paid) would have had the opportunity to legitimately bid that higher amount during the auction, and in doing so would have been allocated a ticket ahead of the scalper.
Re:Legislation isn't the answer - economics is (Score:5, Interesting)
About your sig... [OT] (Score:5, Interesting)
Only if you presume that a teleporter reconstructs you out of subatomic material available at the destination. If instead, the your quantum wave function were to be directly manipulated so that the probability of the collection of particles that represents you is reduced at one location while being increased at another location (subject only to uncertainty principles that are unavoidable at quantum levels), then you are not killed at your old location at all, as the probability of you being at the original location drops to zero (while the probability of you being somewhere else is 1 minus that probability), you would quite literally cease to be there in any way, and would simultaneously materialize at your destination. The "you" at the destination is not a copy of you, any more than a particle that has experienced quantum tunnelling is a copy of what it was before it tunnelled. Of course, the practical limitation on distance that this is liable to ever be achieved over is small enough that it would probably always be more efficient to simply walk.
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One hurdle that would need to be overcome is the speed at which your quantum wave function were manipulated. Every living cell of your body contains thousands of enzymes catalyzing hundreds, thousands, or even millions of reactions per second. Failure to suspend, or nearly suspend, molecular and atomic motion prior to manipulating the quantum wave function would result in massive cellular disruption, not just in enzymatic activity, but structurally, as proteins would undergo conformational changes if a bind
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That's great if you're a ticket reseller (Score:2)
Class A misdemeanor? Eek. (Score:2)
I'm sure these guys are quaking all the way to the bank.
"High Frequency Trading" (Score:5, Insightful)
Limit re-sales (Score:3, Interesting)
If you really want to slow down wholesale scalpers, tie at least 1 ticket in each purchase to a real person and don't allow any one person to buy more than 10 tickets per purchase without registering as a "group purchase."
The other tickets can have names assigned to them or not at the time of purchase as the buyer sees fit. The original purchaser can assign names to the unnamed tickets any time up to the event or they can be left un-assigned as "bearer tickets."
However:
* "Unnamed/bearer" tickets are not valid until at least one "named" ticket has entered the event.
* Once a name is assigned to a ticket, the name can be only be changed with a time-consuming phone call, paper-mail, or in-person visit that would include some form of identity verification. The venue can (and probably will) limit the number of such changes to a few dozen per year per person to curb abuse.
In exchange for making it somewhat harder for "Average Joe" ticket-buyers to re-sell their tickets, venues and authorized ticketing agents like Ticketmaster would promise to buy back tickets for a full refund for the ticket price and the convenience charge up to, say, a week before the event and refund the full price of the ticket up to a day before the event, subject to limits to prevent abuse.
Tickets sold to registered groups would come under different rules.
This system is NOT designed to stop or even put much of a road-block in the way of small-time scalpers or people who resell their season tickets. It's designed to increase the cost of doing business for organizations who buy and resell hundreds or thousands of tickets per year and who are determined to "beat the system" by
* Forcing them to have lots of different "buyers" with lots of different credit card numbers so their high activity won't be flagged
* Forcing them to assign a name to at least one out of every 10 tickets
* Forcing them to make sure at least 1 of every 10 tickets is represented by a warm body who shows up at the event before the other 9 people in that "ticket group" do
This will make large-scale scalping non-cost-effective for events where the secondary-price of the ticket isn't a whole lot more than the face value of the ticket. Since the non-mass-ticket-buying public can get a full refund, they won't have an incentive to sell tickets to scalpers at anything less than face value.
Wholesale ticket-buying by scalpers will still be an issue for high-demand events. For those events, either a ticket lottery with every ticket having a name on it and a full refund may be the only way to ensure the general public can get tickets at reasonable prices. Alternatively, a dutch auction wouldn't save ticket-buyers any money but at least the ticket revenue would go back to the venue and those running the event rather than to scalpers.
Auction (Score:2)
The authorities don't really want to "solve" this problem. There are many solutions for managing bots, such as CAPTCHAs and order limits.
One real solution is to auction off every ticket. The auction would begin as early as possible, and continue until the event begins. As soon as a ticket is bid for (requiring an escrow) the auction for that ticket would continue for another hour. If, at the end of that hour, no one else has bid, it goes to the last bidder. If someone else has bid, then it goes to them. The
if ever (Score:2)
How often does this actually happen? (Score:2, Interesting)
If anyone could make a consistent profit by speculative buying of tickets for resale, obviously the event operator would be first to adjust ticket prices to match the established new market. This is really about a graft-ridden city making a perfectly normal market activity, reselling tickets people can't use, illegal by giving it an ugly name like 'scalping'.
Meanwhile here in Arizona, it's legal to resell any event or game ticket, right up to the Super Bowl. Reselling is done openly outside stadiums to acco
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Just make sure that re-sale is not valid, anyone showing up at concert with a ticket need to prove that they purchased it through a valid channel by also presenting the credit card used for the purchase.
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When I went to AC/DC last September, I had to pick up the tickets at the venue, and show the credit card I'd used. When I went to Rush last September I had to bring along a print out of my receipt. The only concert last year that I could just bring my tickets to was King Crimson, but that was a small venue (3,000 seat) concert, with its own ticket sales so it wasn't through Ticketmaster.
But really, even the scalpers are a small part of the problem. It's Ticketmaster, with its "affiliates" (read wholly-owned
Re:Gratuitous Admonishment (Score:5, Funny)
At AC/DC I saw scalpers trying to hawk tickets that I know were about $90 for $50 or $60. In other words, they were taking a big hit.
Well, sure, they lose $40 per ticket. But they make up for it in volume.
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Re:Gratuitous Admonishment (Score:4, Insightful)
There's no need to do anything to prevent almost all resales other than to simply auction the tickets in the first place. When the highest bidder has bought the ticket there isn't much room left for increasing the price for a scalper's profit.
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I don't even think the credit card thing is necessary. You could probably even allow people to list like 5 names (or even 10 or 100) at the time of purchase (so you can have people as backups in case you can't go for some reason.
And people would need to show some form of ID that matches one of the names on the ticket to use it.
You could even allow refunds for people that need to get their money back if they can't use the ticket. All you need to do is prevent tickets from being transferable to people not n
Re: Gratuitous Admonishment (Score:2)
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> No, the solution here is to make penalties so severe that people won't choose to profit-seek by skirting the law.
I think that's horrible. Why not use technology? I bet most of these ticket buying web sites have their own roll-your-own garbage Captcha. They don't care because they get the same amount of money of their tickets are bought by bots or real people. In fact, it can be their advantage to have bots buy out all the tickets. They get an instant "sold out" show and they no longer have a risk for u
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That would cover Chrome only if you are
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They should be required to include all fees in the price of the ticket as well. It is outright fraud to advertise a ticket price that you cannot buy without fees tacked on. A mandatory fee is part of the cost of a ticket. A "convenience fee" is part of the cost of a ticket unless you can get it cheaper by being inconvenient.
Re:Ticketmaster (Score:5, Informative)
They should be required to include all fees in the price of the ticket as well. It is outright fraud to advertise a ticket price that you cannot buy without fees tacked on. A mandatory fee is part of the cost of a ticket. A "convenience fee" is part of the cost of a ticket unless you can get it cheaper by being inconvenient.
This right here. I recently went to a concert as a special treat and thought the ticket was advertised to be something like $45 for a seat it came out closer to $65 after Ticketmaster and the venue added all their outrageous fees, and if you're taking friends with you it adds up real fast.
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This is the right answer. What the scalpers are doing is engaging in arbitrage and fixing the shortage which was caused by the original sellers setting the price below market equilibrium. Selling the tickets on eBay would significantly reduce the amount of profit a scalper could make.
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Be careful, some laws says something like "It is Illegal for anyone to ... " and some say "It is Illegal for anyone in the United States to ... " , so you might want to consult an Attorney for specific guidance.
Re:What's Next.... (Score:4, Interesting)
A couple of benefits - liquidity and parity (Score:2)
> Considering HFT does nothing for the company who's stocks are being traded
There are some problems with high-frequency trading, so don't misunderstand what I'm about to say. I'm NOT saying "HFT is great."
A more liquid asset is more valuable than an otherwise equalivent illiquid asset. HFT increases the liquidity of the stock, and therefore its value (slightly).
Also, investors don't like illogical markets. If the stock of company A and company B are both $100, and a mutual fund is equally invested in
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HFT increases the liquidity of the stock, and therefore its value (slightly).
The way I understand it, this isn't and can't possibly be true.
HFT "works" by creating both buy and sell orders for stocks and commodities at the same time, and either completing those transactions or canceling the buy/sell orders and posting new ones based on new information, often several times per second.
If the HFT system ever completes a buy/sell order, it only holds the stocks it trades for typically less than a second, meaning there must be a matched bid to buy and a request to sell that stock within
That's a trader, not an investor (Score:2)
> And no, _some_ investors love illogical markets. It lets them take their rakeoff from the rubes.
You're speaking of TRADERS, not investors. Investors like stable and logical markets.
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What?
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