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Originally Posted by schuylerjoy
I'm not neutral because I invest time and effort to get great seats and I still fail because others purchase tickets to events for the sole purpose of resale. Ticket scalping may be legal (at least, if the tickets are transferable), but that doesn't mean it is ethical. To quote a friend, "It's basically using someone else's talent, without their permission, for your own profit."
If an artist wanted to charge $200, $500, $700 for a ticket for someone to witness their art, then they would do so. And then I could choose whether or not to pay. They should profit from the sale of their goods, not "brokers."
I'm assuming that most people on this board are hard core Damien fans. And...as far as I can tell, many of them got crappy seats even though they tried very hard to get good ones and it means a lot to them. So, I am disgusted by the "bots" or people who make a living out of preventing actual, passionate fans from seeing the artists they love in the seats they deserve to have.
I guess you could argue that those willing to dish out the big bucks are the ones who *really* love the artists, but nope, that's not the case. Some of us don't have the bucks to dish.
No worries, you don't need to explain your case. I fully understand the perspective of those who are "neutral" on scalping. But, I am still disgusted by it, just like a lot of other legal practices.
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This is all just some sort of bizarro world nonsense. "Tickets" are a license to enter a property for a specific period of time. It is property and it is transferable. There is nothing unethical about that.
Whether or not you "really love" the artist has no value in determining whether you are entitled to see that artist perform. It's a very simple, fair process: You go to a designated place at a designated time and the first person there gets to buy tickets. If they sell out before you get to the front of the line, you don't get tickets. There is nothing more fair and ethical than that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by glo32
I think it would be neutral if a scalper got online and tried to buy tickets like all of us do - F5 F5 F5 until you finally get a ticket, buy it, pay it, and then buy more of them in the same way.
The main problem is that most of the scalpers have dozens, hundreds of tickets. How is it possible for a show that solds out in seconds (ie. the Whelans one) or in minutes (like the latest European shows)?
It's not possible.
They have another method of buying tickets, that's for sure. Some illegal method - either they have deals with employees at ticketmaster or whatever.
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It really very rarely works that way, and definitely not for Damien.
If you could show me a link of that, I'd be able to specifically explain. But more likely than not, what you are seeing, is a ticket network. "Joe's Tickets" in NYC is part of a nationwide group of ticket brokers who all use the same software that creates a real-time inventory network.
Joe's Tickets has four tickets he wants to sell for $100. If you call Joe's Tickets, he will sell those four seats to you. Pete's Tickets is also in the network, and also has four seats to that show, and also wants to sell his tickets for $100. Both Pete and Joe enter their tickets into the network inventory.
What happens next is that Joe's inventory now shows 8 tickets. His four that he wants to sell for $100, and Pete's four which Joe will sell for, say, $150. And vice versa for Pete. Also, Kevin's Tickets didn't buy any inventory for this event, but he sees both Joe's and Pete's tickets in his network inventory, and he'll sell those tickets all for $150, too.
If you buy all eight tickets from Joe's, he then pulls his four from the ticket network system because they are no longer available, then he calls Pete's and tells Pete's he just sold their four tickets. Pete's ships their tickets to Joe's, and Joe's sends Pete's $400 (4 x $100, while keeping the $50 markup as his profit). And, again, vice versa.
Now, extrapolate this out over all the brokers in the region/country. If 50 brokers bought 4 tickets each that's 200 seats on the network, there are hundreds and hundreds of brokers in the ticket network. And each of those are all showing 200 tickets in their inventory.
Also, the easiest way to get tickets is to go to the Box Office at the onsale date. No one does that anymore. I've never gone to a box office and not gotten tickets. For big events, brokers just send four people to the box office. There's like two or three employees of the brokers company, so right there they can pick up like 10 or 20 tickets by being the first in line. If you pick a venue and go to their onsale dates, you will see the same 5-10 people there for almost every single show.
For crazy big gigs like Bruce Springsteen or something, brokers will hire people to get there the night before and wait in line. That's why venues started doing lotteries in person for sales that big, so people would stop lining up the night before. So brokers started hiring more people to show up that morning and get a shot in the lottery to stack their odds of getting tickets.
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Originally Posted by citlali
I am sure that if this reach Damien's ears, he might be willing to do something to try to resolve it, or at least he will try it. There must be a way to resolve this.
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LOL.
Damien sold out an April show in November because of resellers. He has his money six months in advance and has now transferred all the risk onto the resellers to find buyers. All artists LOVE ticket resellers.
That's why sports teams/leagues have all created their own resale networks. They actively market this fact in their season-ticket promotional materials. They want you to buy a 41 ticket plan to the NBA and then take on the risk yourself to find buys for the 35 seats you don't want at a profit, because they get the money and no risk left.