Anti-Scalping

Robert Miller,Yes, I have a 1994 Harley Davidson. I had to pay list price for a used one in 1995 that had 12,000 miles on it.My friend at the local HD dieharslep found the bike for me. Even he could not get a new one for me. The dieharslep doled out its fixed allotment of the next year’s bikes by lottery. I drew a high number in a public drawing. Some dealers had waiting lists, but that did not work out too well because some people magically moved up the list faster than others and painted all the dealers as shady.Although manufacturers could charge whatever they wanted to charge, HD twisted dealer arms not to do so. It sure made the dieharslep mad when a lottery winner loaded a new bike on a trailer to sell for above MSRP–it couldn’t have any miles on it or the value dropped. I guess that could be termed motorcycle scalping :)HD eventually fixed the supply problem by opening another assembly plant, and the company is still doing very well. I wish I had bought HD stock instead of GM, but you can’t win them all.

That's a good point Benjamin, and I had the same thought, although the question should probably be "are we anarchists?" I agree that the venue should have some control over what happens to their tickets and if they only let in the person that originally bought the ticket that should be up to them. However, to maintain a free market, controls, regulations and dispute resolution systems are necessary. We would not permit the venue to say that only white people are allowed to attend, or that they will beat up anyone that attends that is not the original ticket holder. I assume that what is really going on here is that the government has been enforcing the 'no scalping rules' and the legislature wants to stop that.On a purely philosophical level, I never understood what the problem is with scalping – all the arguments against it seem completely nonsensical. Mark, your analogy to Opec is actually too weak – Springsteen has more control over what people pay for the tickets because he not only controls the supply, but also the initial price. One argument I have heard is that the baseball team or rock star is losing potential revenue because of scalpers, but that makes no sense because the team or star could just charge more per ticket!Another problem often cited is counterfeit tickets, but caveat emptor! If you don't want to risk counterfeits, take the time and effort to buy the original ticket. If you want to pay someone else a premium to wait in line for you, or go online at the right time (called scalping), then you should be able to do so.

I agree that it isn’t fair for real fans to get shut out of shows. It’s all about greed. I know people who put in for lottery tickets with the sould intent on selling them on ebay. I also know people who are really bummed out because they didn’t get tickets for shows they were looking forward to. It would love to see someone coordinate with phish ticketing and start their own ticketing distribution. Have some kind of monitoring for ticketing resale and flag ticket numbers sold for more than face. Then people would know when they are scanned at the show, they would not be allowed entry. Obviously I wouldn’t want innocent fans to be screwed, but with enough warning and time, the message would get through. Or have law enforcement prosecute these scalpers. Put forth some effort to clean the situation up. Scalping is still illegal, right? Just my opions.

The problem is that they laid off all but a handful of people when they quit in 2004. In fact, they slowly disbanded their organization starting at the hiatus in 2000 with the outsourcing of Dry Goods and Tickets by Mail.The other problem is that most venues and promoters have affiliation with Ticketmaster or Live Nation. Pearl Jam found this out the hard way when they boycotted TM. It actually upset some of their fans because they had to play smaller venues and fewer shows, making it much more difficult to find tickets.Phish could go the non-transferable ticket route, requiring the purchaser to be present for entry. That would upset people trading tickets or people who have plans that change, but it would prevent scalpers from buying tickets because most of them don’t want to go.The original PTBM system would be a step in the right direction, but it doesn’t answer the Ticketmaster/Live Nation issues.

Robert Miller,Yes, I have a 1994 Harley Davidson. I had to pay list price for a used one in 1995 that had 12,000 miles on it.My friend at the local HD dealership found the bike for me. Even he could not get a new one for me. The dealership doled out its fixed allotment of the next year's bikes by lottery. I drew a high number in a public drawing. Some dealers had waiting lists, but that did not work out too well because some people magically moved up the list faster than others and painted all the dealers as shady.Although manufacturers could charge whatever they wanted to charge, HD twisted dealer arms not to do so. It sure made the dealership mad when a lottery winner loaded a new bike on a trailer to sell for above MSRP–it couldn't have any miles on it or the value dropped. I guess that could be termed motorcycle scalping :)HD eventually fixed the supply problem by opening another assembly plant, and the company is still doing very well. I wish I had bought HD stock instead of GM, but you can’t win them all.

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Looks great – shame about their publicity thuogh. They don’t seem to have a website! Castlepalooza was the same the first year it ran and it was almost a disaster. Hope Birr can get it together, it’s a great venue, better than Castlepalooza as it’s right in Birr town.

Very true! Makes a change to see sonoeme spell it out like that. 🙂