Quote:
Originally Posted by Guncho
100% paperless with the ability to resell, but at face value only.
Agree or disagree?
I think my last paragraph made it clear I disagree. What happens to the seller who values unloading his tickets quickly rather than waiting for a buyer willing to pay face value? And what's to stop TM from marketing their unsold supply of tickets ahead of the tickets trying to sell on the secondary market? Clearly it would be more profitable to sell tickets that nobody holds yet ahead of facilitating the transfer of tickets between two other parties.
If your answer is "allow ticketholders to resell their tickets for less than face value but not more than" then TM is creating a situation where their unsold supply of tickets is always going to be the most expensive option. Nobody would buy directly from TM unless supply on the secondary market is exhausted. Unless TM is willing to give up their own profits for the benefit of the fans (and I don't believe this is the case), TM will be forced to raise the price of tickets. The biggest fans who want to purchase tickets as soon as they go on sale would have to pay artificially high prices buying from TM. As tickets become available for sale on the secondary market, you'll see a wider range of prices, anywhere from the inflated face value price to an actual fair market price. This looks familiar. This looks exactly like the pricing of the free market system available today. The people who most desire the tickets will pay a premium price for them. The people who prefer a cheaper price will wait and hope that a lower price become available in the secondary market. The only difference is you've replaced a large pool of competing scalpers with essentially a single scalper who's got the market cornered. Not only that, but this single scalper happens to own every ticket before they even go on sale, so while a fan today might be able to buy a face value ticket if they're quick enough, a fan in this new system wouldn't have that chance.
Since you seem more concerned with concerts I won't even talk much about sporting events which opens up a whole new can of worms. Most tickets are sold through season ticket packages with face value for each event being equal. When they're resold on the secondary market, preseason games will never sell for face value, and the big rivalry games are worth much more than their face value. That would create a mess with this "Only sell tickets at face value" rule.
So which part do you disagree with? Do you think those ticket prices for the Neil Young concerts I posted earlier are unfair? Do you disagree with my theory of how a market monopolized by a for-profit business would turn out? If you have a logical argument to present I'd be more than happy to consider it with an open mind, but it seems to me like your hatred of ticket scalpers just runs so deep that you're willfully blind to how the system actually works, to the point where you're just making up figures to support your position.