"...how did a secondary broker get 2,000 tickets?"
January 31, 2012 8:59 AM Subscribe

Bruce Springsteen's upcoming tour lands Ticketmaster in hot water. Again.

posted by griphus (52 comments total) 1 user marked this as a favorite

Ehhhhh. I am planning on (finally) seeing Springsteen this year and our onsale is this friday.

I already got grey hairs over the Pulp onsale last week the the Warfield's bullshit ticket service screwed a lot of people out of tickets. They put us in a virtual waiting room and then randomly assigned us places in line under the pretense of fairness, yet still allowed anyone that wanted to to buy 8 tickets. I've been going to shows for a quarter of a century and have been to every kind of club gig, arena show, festival, you name it and I have never, ever, ever once needed 8 tickets for anything. Needless to say, Stubhub has flooded with obscenely priced Pulp tickets 30 seconds after the sellout.

Scalpers are like bike thieves. We should murder one with the disemboweled entrails of the other.
posted by Senor Cardgage at 9:07 AM on January 31 [11 favorites]

Sweet Jesus, when are we going to pass some legislation to prohibit cutesy acronyms on bills?
posted by Faint of Butt at 9:12 AM on January 31 [4 favorites]

Scalping Pulp tickets seems just wrong.
posted by KokuRyu at 9:13 AM on January 31 [1 favorite]

I went in with a bunch of people to get Springsteen tickets last week. Nobody who used Ticketmaster online got a thing, but a couple people tried going to retail outlets--Wal-Mart and Simon malls around here--and had absolutely no trouble getting as many tickets as they wanted.

I had no idea you could even buy tickets in person anymore.
posted by uncleozzy at 9:14 AM on January 31 [1 favorite]

s/$se$e$ ti$/\1ll\2/
posted by Bovine Love at 9:15 AM on January 31 [2 favorites]

.......wat?
posted by Senor Cardgage at 9:16 AM on January 31

Sweet Jesus, when are we going to pass some legislation to prohibit cutesy acronyms on bills?

Curtailing Uninteresting Titles Enforcement Act of 2012, aka CUTE Act?

I've heard it said before that if you don't have a good name or acronym that a bill never becomes law.
posted by Mister Fabulous at 9:16 AM on January 31 [1 favorite]

I have never, ever, ever once needed 8 tickets for anything

For GA tickets, sure, but sometimes you want to sit in an arena section with a bunch of people.
posted by uncleozzy at 9:19 AM on January 31

"Damn and blast Ticketmaster," exclaimed Dirk, the words coming easily from force of habit.

The sad statement, sad because there really isn't a reliable way to circumvent it, is that the resellers wouldn't do this if their marked-up tickets didn't sell consistently.
posted by delfin at 9:20 AM on January 31

This guy also introduced a bill that would create nearly 100 miles of new jogging trails in New Jersey. The Born to Run Act was unfortunately struck down in committee.
posted by dr_dank at 9:21 AM on January 31 [11 favorites]

I mostly go to indie and medium-size shows. It is incredibly common now to make all tickets will-call-only and to require the purchaser to show up with an ID that matches the name on the ticket. Maybe I lack imagination but this seems like the best way to inhibit scalpers (although it is inconvenient for fans).
posted by muddgirl at 9:23 AM on January 31 [3 favorites]

I think this has been linked before, but here is an academic paper co-authored by Alan Krueger, Assistant Treasury Secretary. Part of their data collection was surveying people entering a Bruce Springsteen concert, to see where they had bought their tickets, and how much they had paid (this is from P27 in the PDF)-- 20 to 25% of tickets were bought online through re-sellers/brokers.
posted by cushie at 9:27 AM on January 31

If they want to see tickets only to actual concert goers they can implement an identity system and solve their problem.

I'm just not clear on exactly what's in it for them.

The first time this happened, users were redirected (without notice) to a resale site owned by TicketMaster, so they definitely got a cut of the action that time. So if they were willing to collude blatantly, they're probably willing to do so secretly as well.
posted by griphus at 9:28 AM on January 31 [4 favorites]

Apparently I lost my link to the paper, it's here.
posted by cushie at 9:29 AM on January 31

I used to work in the aftermarket ticket industry, so I can shed some light on the subject, I think.

First off, a single broker isn't buying 2,000 tickets. It's a huge network of interlinked brokers, each of which are buying a handful, at which point they end up in a shared marketplace, each broker showing every broker's inventory. If someone buy's Broker A's ticket from Broker B's site, Broker A gets the bulk of the cost, the inventory aggregation software provider takes a cut, and Broker B gets a small commission as well. That's over-simplified, but you get the idea.

In all honesty, Ticketmaster really doesn't care who buys their tickets. Brokers will sell great seats at inflated cost because people will pay that much more to be 300 feet closer to Springsteen, impress their clients, whatever. Ticketmaster also did not (in my time, I'm years removed from that industry) collude with brokers, and in fact put numerous things in place to keep you from buying massive amounts in bulk. Believe me, 8 tickets was an annoying roadblock more than a lucrative haul.

Sure, those roadblocks were fairly easy to circumvent (that magical elixir of determined software developers and good old Mitnick-esque social engineering), but that's what it was.
posted by phong3d at 9:31 AM on January 31 [2 favorites]

Also, I find it hard to believe how Ticketmaster's servers crash so consistently when high demand concerts go on sale. Do they not have the ability to temporarily scale up their architecture?

It's just more marketing, isn't it? So-and-so's concert is so much in demand that the sales crashed Ticketmonster's servers! The story gets mentioned on the national news and everybody wins.
posted by Faint of Butt at 9:35 AM on January 31 [2 favorites]

Do they not have the ability to temporarily scale up their architecture?

Why would they need to? It's not like people purchasing tickets can go somewhere else, most of the time (for popular shows, if you don't get them the moment they go on sale online, you're not getting them at all.) Outside of the headaches it makes for IT, it's cheaper to not fix it.
posted by griphus at 9:35 AM on January 31 [4 favorites]

I think Ticketmaster actually owns one of the larger ticket brokers. Yeah.

They do - I was not very surprised at all when I heard that news. Ticketmaster's been experimenting with all sorts of different revenue streams though - auctions, fan exchange (basically StubHub), etc. Acquiring a high-profile broker made sense.
posted by phong3d at 9:46 AM on January 31

If someone buy's...

Well, there goes my internet license. Nice knowing you.
posted by phong3d at 9:49 AM on January 31 [2 favorites]

I'll have to wait until the second leg of the tour to worry about this but I'm so far away from a venue (600 miles to the Twin Cities) that my brother will have to buy the tickets and deal with Ticketmaster.

My biggest worry is it is just not going to be the same without the Big Man.
posted by Ber at 9:51 AM on January 31

As a side note the Boston red Sox have limited sales of their lowest priced ticket by requiring the tickeholder present the credit card used to purchase said tickets. So even those bought as gifts cannot be used unless the giftee borrows the gifter's credit card. Massive FAIL.
posted by Gungho at 9:57 AM on January 31

I had no idea you could even buy tickets in person anymore.

I did it once, ten years ago probably. I felt like a chump, because the humans were so slow that even being 10th in line meant you didn't get your tickets for 10 minutes, which is an eternity in tickets sales.
posted by smackfu at 9:57 AM on January 31

Bovine Love: "I don't understand why government interference is required here."

Because Ticketmaster act like an anti-competitive monopoly. Unabashedly so.

They often require venues to exclusively sell tickets through their (absurdly priced) service, and venues that don't like that are either boycotted (given that TM also own the largest promotion and production company), or are purchased outright.

Similarly, if you're an artist looking to tour in large venues, you have no choice but to perform in TM-exclusive, or TM-owned facilities. They control too much of the market. Also, it's presumably cheaper to tour in these facilities if you promote through LiveNation, given that they own the whole nine yards. They've even begun signing artists to be exclusive to LiveNation and TicketMaster for 10-12 year stretches.

Artists who wanted to sell tickets below 'market value' often found that TicketMaster weren't actually offering any tickets to the public, purchasing all the tickets themselves, and then "reselling" them via their 'secondhand' ticketing service, pocketing the difference as profit, and adding even more upcharges along the way.

It's astonishing that these practices have not come under the scrutiny of the DoJ.

This is what drew the ire of Springsteen and the like. Although it sounds like a cliched thing to say, The Boss actually does care about his fanbase, and felt that TicketMaster were unfairly punishing his fans, while also eroding away his public persona (and that of the industry in general). Assuming that Springsteen hasn't strayed too far from his roots, it's also very understandable why he'd be upset that TicketMaster were forcing him to sell expensive tickets (and subsequently eating his profits).
posted by schmod at 9:57 AM on January 31 [6 favorites]

Broadway theater in New York is an interesting experiment in letting original venues do demand pricing, to compete with scalpers. Depending on the show and the time you can pay well above or even below face value on a ticket when buying it directly from the production. There's still scalping, too, and the whole market is quite fluid. It's not perfect but it seems to have worked out fairly well for both the theaters and the theatergoers, particularly for shows that are somewhat popular but not hugely oversold.

I wonder if there's a good analysis written up of the current Broadway market?
posted by Nelson at 9:58 AM on January 31

* Make all concerts will-call by default
* Allow transfer of tickets with personal sworn declaration that tickets are being sold for less than or equal to the price paid for the tickets
* Send the first dozen scalpers to federal prison for five years
* Prepare for 2.0 when scalpers find the loopholes to exploit
posted by Talez at 10:20 AM on January 31 [2 favorites]

Perhaps it is time to start a petition for the Justice Department to investigate Ticketmaster for monopoly practices?
posted by fings at 10:26 AM on January 31

I don't understand why government interference is required here. Acts don't want to sell their tickets for what they are actually worth; ok, I see that and actually kind of admire it. But it isn't societies place to enforce the wishes of The Act. There is no moral principle here, and consumers aren't being mislead or otherwise scammed. If they want to see tickets only to actual concert goers they can implement an identity system and solve their problem. I fail to see why legislation needs to be invoked.
posted by Bovine Love at 9:13 AM on January 31 [1 favorite +] [!]

s/$se$e$ ti$/\1ll\2/
posted by Bovine Love at 9:15 AM on January 31 [2 favorites −] Favorite added! [!]

.......wat?
posted by Senor Cardgage at 9:16 AM on January 31 [+] [!]

Bovine Love's second comment above is a vi command, the substitute command. The general form of this command is

s/string to be found/string to be substituted/

but in this case, there's some clever pattern-matching and re-use going on within the strings.

Reading left to right it says:

s/

which, as mentioned above, means we're going to find something, and then substitute something else in its place. What follows is a pattern that not only finds the the thing-to-be-substituted-for (or source), it also disassembles the string thus found and saves two parts of it (to be referenced later in the thing-to-be-substituted, or target). The pattern looks like this:

$se$e$ ti$

So, it will find a piece of text that reads "see ti" and then extract two substrings and save them as "patterns", like this - substrings to be saved are identified by matched pairs of parentheses which, for technical reasons, each have to be "escaped" by preceding them with backslashes. Thus, we can see there are two patterns here:

se

and

ti

These patterns are "saved" internally by vi for the duration of this command and are simply numbered as pattern 1, pattern 2, etc. This, together with the backslash-as-escape-character idea from before, gives us a clue as to what's going on in the second part of the command:

\1ll\2

You can read that left to right as:

pattern #1
ll
pattern #2

If you recall from the first part, pattern #1 contains the letters "se" and pattern #2 contains the letters " ti" (with the preceding space). Thus, the whole second part reads as:

sell ti

So, in summary, Bovine Love used a vi pattern that found the part in the text containing the string "see ti" and turned it into "sell ti" but did so without having to re-type the letters that were staying the same.

Ta-daa!
posted by kcds at 10:28 AM on January 31 [6 favorites]

But schmod, the legislation does not seem in any way an anti-trust action. If the DoJ initiates anti-trust against TM, I could see that as a possible legitimate action. But this bill does not to that, it just lightly regulates some aspects of the sale, and prohibits secondary market sellers (quite possibly completely unrelated to TM) from buying for a period of time. If the intention is to stop TM from acting like a monopoly, then have at it; show they are behaving badly in an illegal manner, and stop them. From your description, it shouldn't be too hard.

I don't see what this anti-scalping is going to do, other then introduce more laws that are unnecessary. It just looks like reactive pandering populist legislation to me.
posted by Bovine Love at 10:33 AM on January 31

* Make all concerts will-call by default

I've been to a concert like that at MSG, where they swiped your credit card at the gate to let you in.

Also, the pretty popular general admission floor areas are invariably will-call only.
posted by smackfu at 10:37 AM on January 31

I also hate it when I want to go to a concert and the prices are really higher than what I believe it is worth or what I'm willing to pay, but why is ticket "scalping/reselling" treated any different than any other finite numbered commodity out there?

Are they not subject to the same market forces that cause price fluctuations in things like limited edition beanie babies, variant comic book covers, first edition books or designer purses?
posted by stavx at 10:58 AM on January 31

Bovine Love: "But this bill does not to that, it just lightly regulates some aspects of the sale, and prohibits secondary market sellers (quite possibly completely unrelated to TM) from buying for a period of time."

I think the idea is that this prevents TM from 'buying' nearly the entire stock of tickets the instant that they go on sale so that they could be resold through their secondhand channel, which was both unfair to ticket buyers, and 3rd-party secondhand brokers.

The fact that TM participate in both the firsthand and secondhand ticketing market is a huge conflict of interest, and ripe for abuse. I think that the idea of prohibiting all secondhand brokers from purchasing during the first day of the sale is to prevent 3rd-party "contractors" from shilling for TM, and allowing the company to continue its sketchy practices via proxy. It also takes away any advantage that seasoned ticket brokers may have acquired, thanks to their presumably intricate knowledge of TM's systems (which enabled them to somehow manage to scoop up 2,000 tickets after TM's website went down during the Springsteen sale).
posted by schmod at 11:01 AM on January 31

I propose a sliding-scale pricing system for popular concerts:

The first 10% of the tickets available are $500
The next 10% are $300
The next 20% are $250
The next 20% are $150
The next 20% are $100
The final 20% are $50

You want to guarantee a ticket? Buy it right away at the highest price. The band and promoter get the extra money from that premium convenience.
And make the final 40% will-call.
posted by Theta States at 11:08 AM on January 31 [1 favorite]

You ask me, Ticketmaster is blameless. Bands can sell their tickets at their fair value. Bands who want to make shows accessible to fans can impose a positive ID requirement and make tickets non-transferable. Bands who do neither bear all the blame.
posted by MattD at 11:32 AM on January 31

Bands don't set their own ticket prices.
posted by muddgirl at 11:38 AM on January 31 [3 favorites]

schmod - Sometimes you will have brokers who will list tickets they expect to get for any particular show or series of events (hello World Series). I doubt you'll find anyone who will give you hard-and-fast numbers on the speculative/bullshit quotient since any dealer wants to have exclusives or apparent exclusives.

Are they not subject to the same market forces that cause price fluctuations in things like limited edition beanie babies, variant comic book covers, first edition books or designer purses?

stavx They are. Just because a broker lists Dave Matthews tickets for $600 doesn't mean that's what they're getting for them. Anything over face value and fees is above margin (sort of), so once the event is imminent, you may see unsold tickets slide down towards close to list price.
posted by phong3d at 11:39 AM on January 31

Matt, bands can't do anything without Ticketmaster's go-ahead in any Ticketmaster venue. And outside of small, indie places and locations with enough money to hold out, most venues are Ticketmaster venues. They have absolutely no way to enforce anything. And boycotting TM means you're not touring in America (outside of LA and NYC and maybe some other metropolises with an indie scene.)
posted by griphus at 11:40 AM on January 31 [1 favorite]

Again, though, if the core problem is one of anti-trust, it should be tackled as such. Hacking the problem from the side is not good law.
posted by Bovine Love at 11:43 AM on January 31

I suppose when I said "band" I should have made clear that I meant "the ad-hoc business organization of which the band is the face which includes the promoter, sponsor(s), etc." A band popular enough to develop a scalping aftermarket which signs a contract that gives someone else pricing authority has not divested itself of responsibility for ticket prices in any but the most trivial sense.

Also, when people say "bands don't set prices" they are trying to defend high prices by saying the artists are innocent. High prices aren't the issue -- it's artificially low prices which create scalping.

I would be interested to know if Ticketmaster commonly prohibits bands from having ID and non-transferability requirements on some or all tickets. I don't believe this is so, but happy to be educated to the contrary.
posted by MattD at 11:53 AM on January 31

Also, when people say "bands don't set prices" they are trying to defend high prices by saying the artists are innocent. High prices aren't the issue -- it's artificially low prices which create scalping.

No. Prices aren't artificially low. There's high demand and artificial scarcity at any commodity live entertainment event. And then speculators looking to flip cause even higher demand that isn't really there.

Announce a second show for any sellout show and watch scalper prices tumble as they try to unload tickets before they go from "losing a bit of money" to "completely fucked".
posted by Talez at 12:00 PM on January 31 [3 favorites]

I was unable to get tickets via TM for LCD soundsystem at MSG last year, so my friend and I went to get scalped tickets.

We were outside for a long time trying to talk down the price, but all of the dealers were asking the same price. No one would negotiate -- they were either getting the asking price, or they weren't selling. They didn't care either way (so much for the market dictating price).

Eventually, we caved, bought tickets, and wound up sitting next to people who had driven in from far away. They, too, bought scalped tickets but when they tried to get in, the tickets were fake. They were able to buy tickets in our section at the venue after that.
posted by armacy at 12:48 PM on January 31

No tickets. Get in line. Pay at the door. Problem solved.
posted by swift at 12:52 PM on January 31

... they were either getting the asking price, or they weren't selling. They didn't care either way (so much for the market dictating price).

Eventually, we caved, bought tickets, ...

Not to point out the obvious, but to point out the obvious, they appeared to be correct in not negotiating the price, and the market was indeed prepared to pay it. They knew you would pay.
posted by Bovine Love at 12:53 PM on January 31

No tickets. Get in line. Pay at the door. Problem solved.

And just don't go to popular events if you have a job/kids/medical condition that doesn't allow you to line up 12 hours before the gate opens?
posted by Mitheral at 12:56 PM on January 31 [2 favorites]

I was unable to get tickets via TM for LCD soundsystem at MSG last year, so my friend and I went to get scalped tickets.

Not to rub salt in the wound, but didn't they end up announcing a bunch of extra shows because of the scalper problem?

No tickets. Get in line. Pay at the door. Problem solved.

For big shows, people line up for hours to get in with door tickets. I'm pretty sure diehard Bruce Springsteen fans are right up there with Star Wars fans as far as tolerating the elements on a streetcorner for the chance (as opposed to guarantee) of getting a ticket.
posted by griphus at 1:05 PM on January 31

I like what Radiohead does. First, ALL tickets are will-call these days (with a 4-ticket max) . A week or so before the general TM sale, they offer a pre-sale on their website. It makes it much harder to scalp the ticket when it's will-call, and the website sale helps guarantee that 'real' fans will get a proper chance at snagging a ticket as they don't announce what time the website tickets will go on sale. You just have to be a dedicated fan and watch.
posted by Windigo at 1:40 PM on January 31

Trent Reznor solved the scalping problem for his fan club online sales by putting the buyer's name on the ticket, making the tickets will-call only, and having two ID checks on the way into the venue where one of the two (only two tickets could be purchased) people in the party had to have an ID which matched the name on the ticket.

The tickets were also fancy printing, with foil overlays and such. Partly to keep counterfeits from being produced, but also because having a beautiful NIN ticket WITH YOUR NAME ON IT is a pretty fucking cool souvenir of the event.

As far as what's in it for them? Well, what's in it for the artist is a devoted fan base who will turn out for concerts and who know they will be getting good seats if they put a tiny bit of effort into getting them. What's in it for Ticketmaster? Nothing at all. That's why they play these stupid games and screw the consumer they should be most interested in making happy.
posted by hippybear at 6:06 PM on January 31 [2 favorites]

I've never read an explanation of the market dynamics in these situations that totally made sense to me. Yeah, I get that the tickets are underpriced, but does Ticketmaster make any more by selling 2,000 tickets to a single broker than by selling them to 2,000 fans? (i.e. are they taking some kind of kickback or legal quasi-kickback from the brokers?) Or is it that they just figure it costs less to deal with occasional bad PR like this than to implement more secure ordering systems that prevent those early block purchases (or tie each ticket to a picture ID)? I'm totally willing to believe that Ticketmaster is being evil, I'm just not clear on exactly what's in it for them.

What they gain from this is that the brokers are taking on some of the risk. They price the tickets at what they know will make them money (provided they sell at all) and then the brokers are stuck with the inventory.

Further, they know that over time, fans will change their purchasing behavior because they know that shows will be sold out quickly. They will line up to pay the face price until the arena is sold out, instead of waiting until it is convenient to them. It's more of a one-and-done thing for them. If there is tremendous demand, they can add shows. If there is low demand, they can jump-start the PR thing and get the performers out on radio and TV selling tickets well in advance of the show. What they don't want is to have a show that doesn't sell out until the doors open. It makes them nervous.
posted by gjc at 5:17 AM on February 1 [1 favorite]

Wilco recently did a shrinking tour of Chicago, playing a smaller venue each night. Of the five nights, four had a two ticket limit, no physical ticket, must bring a photo ID and the credit card used to purchase the ticket. I managed to get tickets to each night, which I'm sure wouldn't have happened if those restrictions were in place.
posted by borkencode at 9:32 AM on February 1

weren't in place
can someone scalp an edit window?
posted by borkencode at 9:33 AM on February 1

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"...how did a secondary broker get 2,000 tickets?" January 31, 2012 8:59 AM Subscribe

"...how did a secondary broker get 2,000 tickets?"
January 31, 2012 8:59 AM Subscribe