Ticket Sales

© 2016, 2018, R. W.C. Stevens

  Is there a better way to handle what is now on-line sale of sports- and concert-tickets? What about a reverse auction? This is raised as an open topic. All are welcome to find faults with the following, to propose improvements and refinements, and even to make radically different suggestions.

  At present, only a relative few lucky buyers, who log in at just the right moment, can purchase ‘reasonably priced’ tickets. Many of the tickets, which are renowned for being ‘sold-out in minutes’, are purchased by software specialized for ticket-buying, acting for entrepreneurs who buy, with the explicit intent to resell after the primary ticket-sale is sold-out, at ‘the price the market will bear’. At present, all, except the noted few lucky buyers, will have to pay after-market prices for tickets; and no-one associated with the event* sees any revenue from the difference between first-market price and after-market price.

  Under a reverse auction (handled akin to a Dutch Clock Auction; but modified for selling the multitude of lots available), ticket sales would open at a ridiculously high price. At the opening price, no sales would be expected – but those who wanted, and could afford, could buy – and initially they would have available to them very good seats† to choose amongst. Bots (as the software packages mentioned earlier are known) might buy some, but the available mark-up at time of re-sale would be low, or more likely negative (as long as ‘ridiculously high’ was indeed that).

  Under this proposal, over the ensuing hours and days of ticket sales, the price for the tickets would decline. Sales would be expected; The best seats would be purchased, and lesser-valued seats would be sold at lesser values. The suggestion here is that two lines be pre-defined on a ‘price versus time’ graph, and the current price would be kept somewhere between those lines. This graph would be public knowledge; however the exact path between these two lines that the declining price would follow, would be based on a random-number generator. When, and by how much, the next price-drop would be, would, within limits, be unpredictable.

  Perhaps, following the economics law of supply and demand, ticket sales could run out of tickets before the price came down to the old ‘nominal’ price. That only goes to justify one point the re-sellers make to justify their actions – the tickets, in this case, would have been under-priced. Covering the alternate contingency, that of low price and no-buyers, there is nothing to prevent the ‘price versus time’ graph from levelling out at a non-zero minimum-bid price. Also permitted could be a price-rise associated with the transition from ‘on-line sales’ to ‘counter-sales at the venue, on the day of the event’ (although, in this latter instance, there would be a market niche for re-sellers/scalpers). If that price rise were small, then re-sellers could be discouraged.

  There would still have to be the option to buy several seats together (for ‘family and friends’ seating). A seat-rating system should still be retained, as a rough guide to those unfamiliar with the venue in determining which of the remaining seats were the best. The buying process would still need to be time-limited, so a person could not dither too long over which seats to purchase, and even whether to purchase (since a decision to not purchase could expose, after a randomly timed price-drop, a block of higher-valued‡ seats; a situation a bot could easily be programmed to first create, and then to take advantage of).

  Yes, there could still be bots trying to buy tickets, but the attack rate would be slower. Just as with the fans, the bots would have to be weighing ‘Buy Now, when these good seats are available, but at a high price -or- Buy Later, when the price is lower and the selection is poorer.’ But, with the opening price being appropriately high and declining at a reasonable rate, one can hope for a fair chance for real people to buy seats at the prices they are willing to pay. One can also hope that, with a slower attack rate, bot-blocker software could be more effective.

  Shift-workers, who could not go on-line to purchase tickets when sales opened, would not be out of luck in purchasing tickets, since the declining-price sale could be programmed to span several days.

  Moreover, under this proposal the revenue generated from primary ticket sales would be higher, and could end up where it belongs – in the hands of the venue, promoters, performers, designated charities, etc. The potential for revenue from secondary-resale of tickets would be lower, and perhaps the scalpers could be almost totally frustrated and discouraged.

  Furthermore, another phenomenon one sees would probably be abated: That of people first buying tickets in the cheap-section, and then trying for better seats; and, on being successful, subsequently selling the first lot of seats on the after-market, perhaps at a mark-up so high that they come out, financially, with a profit; but meanwhile – buying twice as many tickets as they want – and preventing tickets from being available for others to buy in the primary sale.

* ‘No-one associated with the event’: No-one, unless they are operating with their ‘fingers in both pies’, and thereby have a [perceivable] conflict of interest.

† This idea does nothing to address the fact that best seats are allocated, even before sales open, to the players (for their friends), to concert and venue supporters, etc.

‡ ‘Higher-valued’: Valued for their position, but in this instance (following a price-drop), now available at a lower price.

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