Wednesday, June 01, 2016

How to end ticket scalping with two simple rules

1. All venues must allow purchasers to return tickets for a full refund.
2. All venues must maintain a waiting list of people who would like to buy any tickets might get returned.

So if you're a regular person who finds yourself unable to attend the event you bought a ticket for, you can get your money back no problem. And if you're a regular person who was signed in with the fan presale code and pressing refresh right at 10:00 but still didn't get through, you will be automatically put in line for any tickets that might become available.

This creates a situation where there is no legitimate resale market, since anyone who has experienced a perfectly innocent change of plans can simply return their tickets to the venue for a full refund.

It also creates, at a minimum, a strong disincentive to buy from resellers at inflated prices until very shortly before the event.  If you aren't able to get through for the presale and instead get waitlisted, you aren't going to go running straight to stubhub. You're going to wait at least a few weeks and see if you get tickets through the waitlist.  People might still want to buy from resellers if they haven't gotten waitlist tickets and the event is just days or hours away, but resellers might also be incentivized to return their unsold tickets to the box office for a refund so they don't have to eat the cost.

They could just introduce these rules and see what happens, or they could get more proactive and add a rule that selling tickets by any means other than through the venue is prohibited.  (They could also write an exception saying that a person who is attending the event can sell the other tickets they purchased in the same block at face value, to permit situations where each member of a group pays for their own tickets, but one person makes the actual purchase so everyone can sit together).

But, regardless of the enforcement details, these two simple rules - both of which could be executed automatically by a computer program - would create a situation where legitimate ticketholders have no reason to resell and where it's far easier for legitimate customers to carry out the scalper boycott that those in the know seem to agree is necessary to once again make it feasible for people who actually want to see the show to be able to buy tickets.

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