Please read my posts before claiming that I ever said that I have an inalienable right to cheap access. If I can’t get/afford a ticket to something so be it. It won’t ruin my world. It has everything to do with the rights of the performers who obviously don’t want tickets to their events to be priced so that only people with alot of money can afford to see them, thus alienating a large part of their audience. It’s how they wish to market themselves and their product (talent) and is the reason why they contract vendors to sell tickets at a certain price.
Performers have no inalienable rights to have their tickets not resold. Writers have MSRPs on books. If the first print 200 years from now becomes a collectors edition, am I not allowed to sell it higher (or even 2 days later)? Barry Bonds’ record HR baseball MSRP is at retail $4.99 but goes for $750k because it’s part of history (big event—just like a concert). If performers were that worried about keeping pricing down they would do more tours in the same cities.
Actually, concert ticket prices are set the same way that any other retail product is priced. Their ultimate goal is to sell out all venues at the highest price that the market will bear. Normally, a tour needs to sell close to 90% of the seats in order to break even.