Let's say you're an artist who wants to stick it to the ticket scalpers. I'm with you! Would the following concert sales method work?

Sell all/most/premium tickets by auction. But not an auction in the traditional sense. Hold a single-bid auction.

When the tickets go on sale, the artist tells everyone that wants to buy a ticket(s) to place a bid in the amount of an acceptable price. This goes on for a period of days. At the expiration date, the tickets are doled out in descending price.

Does this make sense? Have you heard of anyone doing this? Do you think that this method would make ticket scalpers obsolete?

If Prince did it for an arena concert, what would you bid per ticket?

Sounds confusing.

JuliePurplehead said:

Yeah, let me explain a little more.

Let's say Prince is playing a 12,000 seat arena. He decides to sell the best 5,000 tickets in this auction. The best seats are pre-defined. It generally includes the floor seats and the lowest rows in in the stands.

So there are 5,000 tickets that are in the auction. At the appointed time, everyone who wants to sit in those seats places a non-refundable offer. You pay as much as you want.

The auction ends, and all the offers are sorted in descending order. Whoever offered the most gets the best seats. Then, whoever offered the second-most gets the next-best seats. In the event of a tie price, whoever placed the offer first gets the best seats for that price.

Whatever seats are not sold in this manner go on sale to the public.

Theoretically, all the best seats are going for the highest possible price. This means that scalpers aren't going to bid, because there's no profit margin for them.

Make sense?

Yeah, but whats to stop the touts buying them this way and then selling them higher than they paid?

I think its good when they dop a fan pre-sale of the best tickets.. but that doesn't always happen. I've been to events where they have that goldne circle thing and always managed to get in there as I've been on the presale email. I think that's pretty fair as the real core fans get a good ticket

Also that means its fans pricing fans out of the market. I was perfectly happy with 31.21, but Joe Bloggs next to me would have paid £250 for VIP tickets and pushing the ticket prices up.

RodeoSchro said:

Oh sure it makes perfect sense and in some way it could be deemed fair. Maybe in a money talks and bulls**t walks sort of way. The biggest problem I could forsee would be...

HOW THE HELL AM I GONNA GET FRONT ROW TIX TO THAT SHOW!!!!

Your theory, although valid, would perpetuate the fact that only the very wealthy would be able to compete for and afford those best seats. So, it's a crap idea. Besides, we alll know that it's better to eat the Rich!

I say maximum of two tix per person, Pic ID required at pickup or IP addy logged at time of purchase (or both).

My

I thought the way Prince did it at the ONA Tour in the UK worked. Only a tiny amount of scalpers where there and most didnt manage 2 sell the tickets as all had tickets.

ladymisskat said:

My system stops them. What happens is that the actual consumer pays the same price for those tickets as they would pay a tout (or ticket scalper). So there's no mark-up for the scalper; therefore, there's no incentive for the scalper to buy any tickets.

The market price has already been paid for them.

ladymisskat said:

Well, right now we have SCALPERS pricing fans out of the market.

The way tickets are sold now does not reflect the true market value for the best tickets. Therefore, a secondary market is going to spring up and set that value.

What's wrong about that right now is that the scalpers are cheats. They have tricks and schemes to get all the best tickets, leaving very few for us.

My system acknowledges the facts of supply and demand while making scalping a thing of the past.

RenHoek said:

You make a good point. I used to be a ticket scalping supporter, back in the day when you had to wait in line to buy tickets. In those days, there was no way I was going to camp out for hours, just to get good seats. So, I was happy (sort of) to pay a scalper his premium in exchange for me not having to miss work while waiting in line.

But those days are over. The internet has made waitin in line a thing of the past. So now, the scalpers aren't saving any time for me. And worse, although we're supposed to be competing fairly for tickets, the scalpers have figured out how to rig the game.

I'm all for the theory of artists retaining those front row tickets and making them available only to fans, but in reality, that's not possible. The ticket scalpers will just join the fan clubs, and then you and I are behind the 8-ball again.

ladymisskat said:

Yep thats the best idea selling the best ones to dedicated fans on the site who are members. The worst thing about people paying lots, is sometimes they aren't fans who have forked out lots to see their fav artist but rich people who just go to 'talked about' events. When I went to O2 on 6th Sep I was in B2 near stage and god the people were dull and drunk there, sat down a few of them too!

i think the best way would be to have photo ID on the tickets like they did for glastonbury it basically solves the problem of scalpers because it removes the ability to sell them on the only problem with that is with anyone who cant get to the concert for honest reasons and is selling on at the normal face value

also it would be lovely to have the best tickets sold in advance through the fansite (3121.com?) so the fans managed to get the best seats and wouldnt have to worry about checking ticketmaster constantly to see if better tickets become available

b3xy said:

I agree and it would be best on 3121 as at least you'd know you'd have a fan next to you who was at least interested in Prince