Posted on 10/23/2007 5:33:39 AM PDT by suspects
There are people paying $250 this week for Hannah Montana concert tickets with a face value of 25 bucks. For those of you not blessed with 13-year-old daughters who watch the Disney Channel, Hannah Montana is a fictional pop star played by the daughter of Billy Ray Cyrus - also known as the Achy-Breaky Heart guy.
Anyone who’d pay 10 times face value for tickets to watch a cable TV actress sing bad pop music for pre-teens is a dope who shouldn’t have access to a checkbook without adult supervision.
On the other hand, there are people prepared to pay $500 to sit in the worst seats at Fenway Park [map] tomorrow night to watch a game they could see on HDTV for free. That person can be reached in care of this column. ASAP.
No questions asked.
How much is a ticket worth? Like everything else in life, it’s worth what a willing buyer will pay for it. Regardless of whether the state of Massachusetts likes it.
This is why so-called ticket scalping is illegal. The Legislature sees happy buyers doing business with contented sellers and concludes that something terrible must be happening:
“All these people, happily doing business and making money without government supervision? Where the hell do they think they are - New Hampshire?”
This is why the term “scalping” is so ludicrous. When I pay you $200 for Springsteen tickets, I’m getting something I want more than I want the 200 bucks. You’re getting something you want more than the tickets - my money. Who’s getting “scalped” here?
Scalping only makes sense if I’m being forced to pay for something I don’t want - say, like Deval Patrick’s drapes. But nobody’s putting the governor behind bars. Yet.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.bostonherald.com ...
Don't go. My kids love Hannah Montana.
Until you get organizations that buy up hundreds, or thousands, of tickets to an event with the sole intention of jacking up the prices far beyond their original sale price. Trust me, it happens - and it is the regular Joe who is left out in the cold.
So does my youngest daughter and frankly, I’d much rather have her wanting to listen to Hannah Montana than three quarters of the other skanks out on the radio now.
“Until you get organizations that buy up hundreds, or thousands, of tickets...”
Yeah that sucks. So don’t allow it. Only sales of 10 (or whatever) to each individual. Stores with limited-stock items do it all the time.
-—then the original promoter of the event was too stupid to know the value of the merchandise—
“My kids love Hannah Montana.”
I’ve caught that show while switching channels a few times. Looks like good clean family entertainment.
That is only possible if the tickets are priced at far less than what the market will bear. The surest way to put the predatory scalpers out of business is to (1) increase ticket prices, (2) book larger venues and (3) add more shows.
Doesn't work. Here in Toronto the ticket agents limit sales to 4 per buyer, so the scalpers pay people to line up and buy the limit. I did that a couple of times in my younger days- spent the night waiting for the agency to open, bought four Paul Simon tickets and made $100. There were about two hundred people in line and only one person was actually planning to attend the show.
Wow. That’s not cool. I had no idea they went to such lengths.
You should have seen the high pitched whine here in MPLS over scalped Hannah Montana tickets. It’s legal here (newly) and this was their chance to bitch.
I still think it’s more women buyers who have never bought tickets regularly in their life for sports, concerts, you name it, that are now being exposed to how ticket markets work.
Plus Chicks read newspapers, and Dudes rule the web :) (except here of course)
The only reason State’s do not like “scalpers” is because they cant track the sale and tax it.
Bingo!
In 1996 I tried to get tickets to see the NY Rangers in the Eastern Confrence Finals. The tickets, for four potential games, were to go on sale at 9 AM and unless you had season tickets the only way to purchase them would be to buy them directly at the box office as Madison Square Garden. Well, I got to MSG the night before at around 6 PM and waited. When I got there there were only about 50-60 people ahead of me so I was in good shape. By 9 PM that night there had to be at least 500-600 people in line.
Well, 9 AM comes and the ticket office opens. A grand total of three people went up to the ticket window before MSG officials informed those of us waiting that the entire series was sold out. Yeah, I have a very big problem with scalpers since 99% of the time they are NOT just some guys who happen to have a couple of extra tickets they aren’t using and want to get rid of.
Actually, the promoter is often a party to some of the scalping. Having worked in the concert biz for almost 25 years, I’ve seen almost every trick, even played some of them myself.
The way performance contracts work, the Artist, not only gets a set fee, but often gets a certain % on the back side of the final door, net net profit. A promoter can get more out of the backside if they sell a block, at retail, to an outside “entity(ies),” then that entity can in turn wait until tickets dry up and bam. The promoter can either be a direct shareholder in the “entity,” or they can just get a commission/kickback on the deal. The beauty is that they can pocket a large % without having to cut in the artist.
I used to occasionally game the system at some shows that I provided production at. If I saw that the show was likely to sell out, some of us would pool our money and buy up twenty or so tickets and hire one of the loaders to scalp them in the parking lot for two to four times our cost, depending on the demand. Many promoters do exactly the same thing—I’ve personally witnessed very well and nationally known promoters doing it.
—see post #8—
I think ("guess" would be a better word) the key to scalping is to understand that the asset becomes virtually worthless at a set time. The scalper may be sitting in the catbird seat for a while, but if he doesn't move product he ends up with expensive cardboard in his hands.
I am not good at all at poker. But lots of life is a poker game, I think.
I also wondered is there was a workable analogy between scalpers and traders on the NYSE floor. Traders are said to make an orderly market. I guess that means they help sort out the people who really really want to won XYZ or a ticket to the Dylan concert from those who don't. I don't know.
I thought the economy was in shambles? How are parents paying for these tickets? I keep reading stories in the MSM about kids with no insurance, not being able to educate the kids, schools falling apart, but this story is about parents paying $250 for their children to be entertained?
Is this in the same country of the MSM claiming the economy is ready to collapse?
I would seriously laugh if it wasn’t so pathetic.
It’s done that way on the internet as well. People are paid by these scalpers to keep on clicking till they buy tickets. Some of these “brokers” have special software that allows them to hack into the website and buy up tickets ahead of the ordinary chump. Even if the tickets are limited to 4 per person — if you have a hundred people going in and buying up 4 tickets each or whatever, you have 400 tickets you can sell for some really inflated prices.
And believe me, people will pay big bucks particularly for major artists, shows and games. Once I got the bright idea of seeing the Rolling Stones and Dave Matthews Band in concert - the ticket sales were already over, so I wanted to see what was available via these “brokers.” The CHEAPEST seat was $400. The best seats cost thousands.
As long as these “brokers” have a market, that is, chumps wililng to pay big bucks, they will always be around.
All that money to watch a some chick with a famous daddy lip-sync a song using a digitized voice
If she even shows up. It’s a fictionalized character. Anyone can play that part.
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