Scalpers Not Evil, or, Your Lack of an Efficient Market Is Not My Problem at sablog.com

Scalpers Not Evil, or, Your Lack of an Efficient Market Is Not My Problem

Written by Shanti A. Braford November 21st, 2007in Linkfest.

The normally cogent Jeff Atwood from Coding Horror writes in a recent piece on CAPTCHAs:

Not that they don’t deserve it– scalpers are evil, profiteering bastards, to be sure.

I won’t pick on Jeff here but rather that kind of thinking, which I’ve found is quite common, even among those who aren’t socialists/communists.

The clear problem with the sale of popular concert tickets, is that market demand far outpaces supply from the “approved” source of the tickets, which usually (as commenters have pointed out in the thread), is a monopoly itself.

Hanson Mmmbop

Quite frankly, it baffles me that people consider this evil. I buy a ticket for a hanson concert for $60; you’re telling me it’s evil to resell that for $120?!?

It’s evil not to allow me that right. Scalpers simply take it to the next level. By the way — all these people who are complaining about scalpers, where are they exactly on Saturday morning @ 10am when these tickets go on sale?

Oh that’s right, it’s easier to whine about market economics a week before the concert than to, you know, get out of their soccer mom SUV and wait patiently like the rest of us who buy tickets the morning they go on sale.

Lenin Red

The answer is simple — Ticketmaster and all major ticket sellers need to switch to auction-based systems. Extract the latent value from the tickets and let the artist / ticket broker reap the rewards rather than the scalpers.

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4 Responses to “Scalpers Not Evil, or, Your Lack of an Efficient Market Is Not My Problem”

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1 Charles on Nov 24th, 2007 at 11:56 pm

I’m 100% with you on this, and frankly I am astonished that the ticket sellers havn’t tried it. It would work both ways too…those artists who can’t sell out a show at $x might be able to sell it out at something less than the usual price. Set a reserve if you must, but let the market do the rest.
2 Shanti A. Braford on Nov 25th, 2007 at 12:07 am

Charles, yup. I know Madonna doesn’t really need an extra $60 million on top of her already $60 million in concert revenue, but maybe some up and coming bands could benefit from this instead of the scalpers.

I still don’t see it happening anytime soon though… =)
3 billswift on Dec 10th, 2007 at 2:39 pm

Actually, a Dutch auction, where prices start out high but get lower as the date of the performance approaches to get rid of leftover tickets would probably work better for large shows.
4 Shanti A. Braford on Dec 10th, 2007 at 3:14 pm

billswift — good point. the dutch are so clever, what with their auctions & legalized marijuana laws!!