Well, we got a lot farther in this thread than I thought before it turned into a bitchfest.

LOL, tonight friend calls me up and asks if I want to get pre-sale tickets ($50+10) with him to Arcade Fire at Shrine Auditorium in L.A. for Friday, Oct. 8. Tickets officially go on sale this Friday. I said yeah.

He got the tickets and the seats are probably in the bottom 30% of all possible--the place seats 6k. Could probably sell them at a profit though (we won't).

My biggest pet peeve:
People who are dead-wrong but are convinced they are right.

I'm going to return to the thread tomorrow morning and answer the rest of these questions, and will try to resist wasting more time on replies like this. Thanks to everyone for the discussion.

Only thing I got from this thread is that ticketmaster sucks, specifically in two ways:

1. "first come first serve" online selling benefits powerusers: you should get entered into a random place in line instead
2. New paperless ticket / "reselling fee" policy: instead, an auction system should be used to sell premium seats, with the proceeds benefiting the artist

A local radio station (kroq) releases a set of presale tix for the Arcade Fire tomorrow at 10am. Any chance these will be any better than the "late" amex tickets we got. Official onsale is Friday, but I'm guessing they won't have many left to sell

The band is preforming thurs and fri, and i imagine everyone wants fri. Latecomers will prob mainly get thurs tix.

Expected Value as measured in dollars is not the same as Expected Utility. I highly doubt you are increasing the Expected Utility of these events, and you are most likely decreasing them. Tearing up all but one ticket to the World Series and selling it to Bill Gates for $100 million if he wanted to pay it may make him smile. Distributing those tickets to 40,000 fans will inarguably bring them greater combined joy. I would argue there is a high degree of correlation between those who are clicking at their computer to get tickets and the amount of utility received from those tickets. Just because they need to pay rent instead of the market clearing price does not mean they would not have extracted much greater utility from the the ticket than your eventual customer.

You may say this disconnect between Expected Value as measured in dollars and Expected Utility is true of many goods and services, but the stadiums and venues built to host these events are usually publically funded with the justification being that it will bring happiness to the entire community. You have essentially extracted all of the utility from these community projects from the poor to lower middle class, probably made it smaller, and then distributed it to the rich for your own profit. Yeah being one small cog in this process is hardly a sin, but there is a reason many states and municipalities have attempted to ban scalping, and its not because they like eliminating useful and beneficial services.

ya and everyone would be happier if they could buy an iphone for 1 dollar but apple hates poor people

you're right - it's because they don't understand basic economics.

i don't have any good questions, but aside from the people who don't understand how prices work, this has been a good thread.

So by your logic, the reason it's illegal to sell Cocaine is b/c law makers don't understand basic economics?

Translation;

Rather then trying to to justify or explain my actions, I'm going to avoid criticism and go on pretending like I'm offering some noble service.

I'm not complaining b/c I can't buy an Iphone for $1.

But if I'm in line like everyone else, and the first guy in line buys every Iphone available, then turns around in line and sell those Iphones to everyone inline for like 4x the price, I'm going to be pretty upset, and rightfully so.

But I guess that first guy in line is a great service provider to the rest of us right?

Thankfully edge stopped. EfromPegTown has been infracted for severely tarding up a perfectly good ask me thread. Now... Back to questions pls tks.

Translation: Don't aks questions people don't want to answer?

wat

Now that this thread is getting back on track... anymore good stories like the ones from that interesting article you linked? Ever have anyone threaten you? Ever hire a bunch of homeless guys to stand in line to pull tickets for you? Stuff like that.

What did you think about the Cubs starting their own secondary distribution company awhile back? Do you think pro teams will resort to this in the future for high value seats?

I worked for a broker in Chicago in the mid to late 90's for awhile. I had a trick for buying tickets to concerts. Whenever a big rock band was coming to town i would go to a mall (i think it used to be JC Penny or Carsons that had the TM outlets back then but I'm not positive) in a predominantly black area and generally be one of about 6 people in line repeatedly buying the max 4 or 8. I didn't have enough capital to really profit from this since i was high school age so i convinced a broker i had a hookup and he would literally give me a wad of cash to go pull tickets for him. I also did deliveries for him on occasion. Was a sweet way to get tickets to shows and make extra money. Too many people must of bragged about it because after a couple of really good years the lines just kept getting longer.

Damn, good idea.