Alternatively only allow transfers within a very short period of the event. Anyone with a legitimate reason (giving to a friend etc) can work it out even on the day of the event. But scalpers have to take on a big risk buying up the good seats early, because they have a short window of time within which to secure a sale (buyers won't risk pre-paying, sellers can't risk prospective buyers backing out at the last minute).

Another tactic I've seen when there isn't assigned seating - just different tiers of seating - is to hold back some small portion of tickets to release shortly before the event, devaluing the scalpers' listings.

Online streaming tickets can also help, especially if the fans have enough of an anti-scalper stance. They'd choose one of the endless live streaming tickets over buying from scalpers just to go in-person.

I can only assume that the people flippantly proposing that the solution should be to restrict consumer freedoms don't attend these types of events themselves. Why should we immediately jump to limiting freedoms when we can increase the risk of scalping enough to be beyond the tolerance of most scalpers.

Though this would be mildly annoying for the earnest case (selling a ticket to a friend), it would be the actual solve to the problem.

The parent's suggestion still creates artificial scarcity, which is the real issue: people buying tickets they have no intention of using.

The problem is that the artists, venues, and ticketing companies benefit from this artificial scarcity. So we'll never see it change.

We can agree scalpers are net negative.

And I like your ideas but I don't see why the venues and artists don't want to capture more of what people are willing to pay enabled by what the parent comment suggested.

I wonder if in your system it actually attracts fans or just people that have the time to wait for tickets.

It’s kind of annoying in practice. For example you buy four tickets to go with your friends. But you get sick so you offer your ticket to a different friend instead. Oops that’s not allowed so now no one gets to go? Or you buy tickets as a gift for someone.

There’s a lot of legit reasons to want transfers, outside of scalping.

That's fairly common in Japan: you can't transfer tickets, as they get a name attached at purchase, and many concerts use a lottery system. You register interest in tickets, and if you're selected, you get a window to buy them. No camping out the minute presales open, and the price is the price instead of rent-extracting dynamic bullshit.

Square Enix did that for the Final Fantasy conventions in the US as well (where details of the next FFXIV expansion will be announced later this month), but they added an additional requirement. You have to have an active subscription to the game to even have a chance.

That's too consumer friendly.

doesn't work. the venue/artist/original seller would have a huge liability for refunded value that they don't want to hold

"all seats, including the best seats go to actual fans" is not something solved by your solution

The venue would make less money this way, and preferential seats would be given to whoever managed to get a request in first.

Another option is to just go see live shows at local independent venues instead of letting Live Nation jerk you around.

> Why not just ban the transfer of tickets and allow refunds? You buy a ticket, you show your ID at the door.

Because everyone on the seller side - including artists - make money on this.

If parties other than fans / buyers cared, it would be a solved problem.

The tickets are all electronic now and they can already do it. Most artists don't want them to.

> It should also be said that they could do anything at all to prevent these professional scalpers from scooping up all the tickets at once

Oh they did something about it. The ticket brokers can't scoop up all the tickets because many of the best ones are now only released as "Platinum" tickets at 2-5 times the price.

> including even merely closing those APIs entirely but they continue to do nothing about it.

At the same time I've been bit by a ticket vendor's anti-bot block by simply browsing the site and clicking their own "retry" button.

I'm sure if I'd've written a script, it would not have gotten hit by that garbage.

It's long been speculated that they clandestinely participate in the resale market. If the goal of a business is to maximize profit and they control the market and technology around it, they have everything they need to push prices to the absolute limit that a customer is willing to pay.

Based on what came out during the course of the trial, it would not surprise me at all if they are double-selling tickets.

Or easiest is to require KYC for all the buyers (tie ticket to person instead of allowing bulk purchases) and limit ability to resale at scale. This would easily allow them to blacklist scalpers. It's not like they don't know who you are from the payment information, and tickets are often verified against driver licenses at entry.

Not everything sells out right away, though. I've bought concert tickets on the day of the show more than once. Somehow they still managed to have all the concessions staffed.

But regardless, the formula for decreasing the price could be adjusted. For example, it could be an exponential decay toward the reserve price, with the decay rate set so that most of the decline in price is early.

Or, for shows that are entirely general admission, like festivals, you could use the alternative form of dutch auction: when tickets go on sale, everyone bids what they're willing to pay for some number of tickets. Then the bidding closes (with ample time for planning), and the bids are cleared in descending order of price, and everyone pays the amount of the lowest clearing bid. This method would find a price closer to the true market price of a ticket and discourage speculators.

Our basic findings suggest that the auctions “worked”: price discovery substantially improved; artist revenues roughly doubled versus the ­ fixed-price counterfactual; and, perhaps most importantly, the auctions eliminated or at least substantially reduced potential resale profits for speculators.... And yet, over the decade that has passed since the time of the data, rather than coming into more widespread use, ­ primary-market auctions for event tickets instead disappeared.... We conclude by speculating as to why the auctions failed to take off. As discussed in the introduction....

They don't seem to mention the most obvious reason: the same companies profit from both the primary and secondary market. Why would TicketMaster want to reduce the number of resales when it collects fees on them?

this really seems like a naive question. what about this administration dropping the case seems out of place from the rest of the corruption occurring within it? do you honestly think this administration dropping a case in favor of a powerful business instead of fighting for the consumer as anything other than corrupt?

Bribes, campaign donations, presidential ballrooms. The current administration has settled MANY cases that they'd already won, it's very easy to buy favors now.

No matter what your politics, sooner or later someone you don't agree with will be in charge at the national level.

There are also cases where states take on cases that the national government never pursues in the first case. IIRC, states pursued the tobacco companies when the national government would not (Democrat or Republican).

Of course, it happens in federal courts, so you also need separate and independent branches at the national level. But states that can act independently are important as well.

The problem is that the Department of Justice is part of the Executive Branch, and due to the burgeoning of the Imperial Presidency over the past several decades, that means that as soon as a new President is voted in, he can order the DoJ to change all their priorities to match his.

Our system doesn't have to be this way, even with the federal/state split; it doesn't even have to be this way with the designation of the DoJ as being within the Executive Branch. It's taken a lot of erosion of norms and flagrant breaking of laws to get to the point the US is at now.

The jury in this case is required to rule by preponderance of evidence (= more likely than not given the evidence). One of the economic experts calculated this number as being overcharged based on internal ticketmaster documentation.

Cases aren't always about the actual problem, they're about what you can prove in court.

Back in my day, the federal government would break up monopolies.

I won't go anywhere that wants you to pay with phone period, cause it's just annoying and usually means bad food/service. If they somehow hid this fact until the end and wanted a fee for it, I'd just slap a bill on the table and leave. Don't think that's even a crime.

I think that's exactly the point. They've charged you $2 to process the request. They did that work. Even if you get the money back for the event, they still did the job, so they won't refund the service fee.

And then the restaurant lobby got the CA one rescinded for restaurant junk fees, which were probably the biggest culprit most people encounter day-to-day.

Well, the AGs need "wins" for their campaigns for governors (a common path). Who cares about right and wrong? I totally get it.