Let them all tout

[addedentry]

It is clear that many die-hard fans are willing to pay high prices to share the same air as their heroes. The result is that many of the most popular events are selling out more quickly than ever, and, all too often, it is the genuine fans who are being squeezed out.
[The Guardian on touting, 21 June]

Die-hard fans spoiling it for genuine fans there

Comments

[uitlander]

What on earth is wrong with tickets costing what the market will bear?

Blatant profiteering by third parties always leaves a bad taste in the mouth. Plus pushing up the prices beyond those originally set by an event organiser makes it inaccessible on grounds of cost to many, again leaving a bad taste.

[addedentry]

See the_elyan's comment below.

[the_elyan]

I agree - as long as demand exceeds supply (see eg the Glastonbury tickets scramble), and there is no way to prove that a buyer is "a genuine fan" rather than an evil money-grubbing schemer, I think it's as good as way for the system to work as any. The fundamental problem is that we have a vestigial but still incredibly strong dislike in this country of the idea that anyone is Making Money at the expense of The People. In fact, it's unavoidable now, not just because of Ebay, but because of the generalease of communications between people who don't know each other, as well as people who do. That particular genie is well out of its bottle, and up and dancing

[the_elyan]

Actually, I'm wrong, on that you can stop this happening, by selling tickets by lottery, photo ID, not giving out the actual tickets, etc etc. But if you do that, to take the Glastonbury exmaple:

if you have 250,000 people chasing 110,000 tickets, all of whom actually want to go, a lot of people are still going to be disappointed (and even without the buy-to-resell crowd, demand usually outstrips supply),. And the people who are going to be disppointed are disappointed whatever happens to the tickets they didn't get (other than the argument of "But we could go if you had a thousand pounds to pay on Ebay").

Also, you end up spending money and effort policing a system which does little except forec people to keep money in their pockets which they would otherwise spend (but see earlier comment about where that money could go).

[addedentry]

You're the only commenter to mention that the venue, and indeed the performer, miss out on the extra profit they could have had; and as you say, that can be dealt with through official touting, sorry, resale. Venues could easily buy back and resell tickets for oversubscribed events if they chose.

[bateleur]

What on earth is wrong with tickets costing what the market will bear?

There speaks a man who can afford the resulting prices. I would have thought the problem was obvious?

[barnacle]

I would have thought the leg-pulling was obvious too.

[bateleur]

Maybe it ought to be, but the recent fashion for economic theory amongst the educated left wing has left me completely unable to tell the difference.

[addedentry]

Sometimes I'm faux-naive, but this time there's nothing faux about it.

[oldbloke]

It's not a proper free market. The touts introduce an artificial shortage.
To make the problem plain, imagine the extreme case where the touts buy all the tickets.
The simple fact is, the touts are an entirely unnecessary extra layer. If they weren't there, everybody who bought a ticket would get it at the price set by the venue.
Make it like airplanes: put the end-user's name on the ticket, and check ID at time of use. That'll sort it. And a ballot for anything over-subscribed.

[addedentry]

If the touts buy all the tickets, surely that's exactly when a proper free market ensues!

[megadog]

The Guardian being a fetid socialist asswipe of a 'newspaper', anything where people make free and informed choices on how to spend their own wealth is always going to be fundamentally wrong in their eyes.

No doubt they'd prefer all tickets were to be sold through a State-run ticket agency which means-tests all ticket-purchasers and imposes an extra-specially-high rate on the evil capitalists who earn more than £20,000, while giving out free tickets to the 'unwaged', asylum-seekers etc.

I would argue that if touts are able to command such high prices then the people responsible for setting the initial ticket-price must have been 'underselling' the act/event in question.

[oldbloke]

You're trying to apply the economics of a market with competition to one where there isn't any: after the initial phone rush when they first go on sale (effectively a ballot), the touts have all the remaining available tickets. It's not a market, it's a ransom demand.
If you want a proper free-market way to sell gig tickets, put them all on ebay, separate auction for every one (maybe do some proportion as blocks of 2,3,4 - 4's probably enough), strictly one purchase per customer and no resale.

[addedentry]

Individual auctions would work very well, I agree, though I don't see why reselling need be prohibited. But auctions wouldn't make tickets any more affordable for 'genuine fans'.

[addedentry]

free and informed choices on how to spend

Die-hard fans could boycott touts. But they don't. Funny, that.