I smell pussy

Stub Hub does not set prices, they take a percentage for their costs and profit when a ticket is listed and sold. The market sets the price.

@birmy said:

Stub Hub does not set prices, they take a percentage for their costs and profit when a ticket is listed and sold. The market sets the price.

The market that _they themselves_ create by being allowed, by law, to sell a certain number of tickets from one entity (Tm) to another (Sh).

And don't gimme that supply and demand shit either, or I'll supply you with a knuckle sandwich and demand that you eat it.

/jk, bnr

Ok, I get it.

Then what is it called when Ticketmaster immediately sells a portion of their tickets to StubHub, which the tickets then in turn go to the customer creating the market and the profits of the twice-sold tickets go right back to Ticketmaster? What's the name for that?

I agree the ticket system is broken but some fans seem to have no understanding of the fact that some of us would still get shut out even if it was perfect

If 50,000 people try to buy an item of which only 20,000 exist 30,000 people will be left out. Pretty simple actually.

Face it just because you want something REALLY bad doesn't mean your going to get it.

@PhishDicks said:

The answer to that is bigger venues.

Do you really want to go see phish on NYE in a 90,000 seat football stadium in the South? I don't.

Why can't people just deal with getting shut out?

You can't always get what you want....

@careful_w_that_axe_Miller said:

Just tell md its ok that I'm spending $370 on tickets for one show please

its not

@PhishDicks said:

I realize it's nice to see phish at a small venue but the demand for a New Years phish show is too damn high for MSG. Trust me, I think it awesome that phish is playing New Years at one of the best venues and cities in the world but come on. With the passion that phans have for phish it's tough not to be a little upset.

I get it but if you scored tix would you feel the same way? Im not trying to be a dick there is no magic venue that would make all fans happy.

If you want something bad enough, you will pay for it, the ugly truth. $$$ is the differentiating factor, not everyone is on a level playing field. Its life. Unfair. That's why you go to school, get a good job and bust your ass, so that you can afford to go to the things that you can get for face and those special things you need to pay more for.

A phish show, any show, is worth face and fees to me, that's it.
Phish can set their price and I'll gladly pay it, given the opportunity. But I'm not lining some shithead's pockets for the privilege to see them.

Edit: And I guess I'll go with the government's interpretation on this, even though I don't agree with it - said shithead can be an individual or a corporation.

@forbin1 said:

Maybe we can get @stubhub to chime in?

@johnnyd said:

A phish show, any show, is worth face and fees to me, that's it.
Phish can set their price and I'll gladly pay it, given the opportunity. But I'm not lining some shithead's pockets for the privilege to see them.

Edit: And I guess I'll go with the government's interpretation on this, even though I don't agree with it - said shithead can be an individual or a corporation.

Aside: I actually didn't mean to set off a thread on the horrors of Stubhub--I was mostly interested in the changing way that tickets are controlled and distributed across the board. I'm put off by all of it, and I should add that I don't consider the band itself to have entirely clean hands. They're in bed with a mega-agency, working through Live Nation, Ticketmaster, and so on. Sorry to be an old-timer, but I miss the old mail order system, done best by the GD--though I suppose that wasn't perfect either.

Anyway, I'm thinking about what @johnnyd said, which I agree with. I remember reading an article in the New Yorker a couple years ago about the expansion of the secondary market, and it argued that one of the causes is that often the initial face-value ticket prices are much too low compared to their market value. I think that the example was Bruce Springsteen. He was charging $50 for a ticket that was worth $300. The problem, as we all know and as the article pointed out, is that when tickets are re-sold, none of that money goes to the band. In a sense, then, by pricing the tickets too low to begin with, one could argue that both the fans and the band suffers; the big money is made by agencies, websites, and scalpers. So would it make more sense to charge more for the tickets upfront, something closer to the real market value? Would this cause demand to go down? Or would we rather have what amounts to artificially low prices--low in relation to the market--and hope to either get tickets through the lottery or some other angle ... in which case maybe we should just ignore Stubhub and, as others have said here, just accept it if we get shut out.

The only two times during 3.0 that I've seen a successful control on scalping were Telluride and Essex. The first, as everyone remembers, had all kinds of restrictions, and basically made re-selling impossible. Essex seemed more engineered, but it made it a very local audience. I should probably add that I benefitted from the local-bias of tickets sales in Essex, but got shut out of Telluride--and I even had a plane ticket and hotel room..... grrr....

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/16/arts/music/string-cheese-incident-takes-on-ticketmaster.html

An idea

My only problem with sites like stubhub, is that there have been proven instances that TM has sold tickets directly to ticket resellers. Some of the resellers even have huge binders full of credit cards they use to buy tickets. I have no problem with scalpers besides the fact that they are shitheads that use shitty tactics. I cant agree with people who bypass captchas/ bot farms/other underhanded tactics. Thats not a Fair Market, thats mob tactics.

@talkinghead - Yeah, I agree with what you're saying. A couple points:
From the beginning, phish had their thing where they kept all ticket prices equal. Its only been recent that the lawns are more than the pavs, I think. And its certainly well different than any other act that sells out sheds and arenas in that any ticket in the house is roughly the same amount of money.

So to me, that is Phish signalling (if not outright saying) that they want the tickets to be equally affordable - that any fan should have an equal chance at a really good seat. Of course this doesnt mean that everyone can have a great seat to every show, but they want an equality of opportunity. This perception is what makes the idea of scalping phish tickets so offensive to me, whilst I couldn't care less if tickets get scalped for the superbowl or other concerts or whatever.

Given human nature and supply and demand and the situation as it is, a solution proposed by @wrinkledraisin, what, 2 yrs ago now? makes a lot of sense.

The band should do some research into the aftermarkets, see what tickets are actually going for. How many people are willing to pay how much for a given show. And price a certain number of tickets accordingly (definitely leaving a good number of good seats in the current pricing model.) They don't have to keep the windfall, they can donate it to charity. Or they can keep it. Whatever. But this will absorb the demand for people that are willing to pay premium prices for the tickets.

To me, this makes a ton of sense. As long as a significant portion of the fanbase is not on board with sticking to face, might as well have the band (or their chosen charities) reap the benefits.

tickets have been scalped since the time there were gatherings that a price need to be paid to join in. There is no solution to scalping, because no matter what you do to fix it, they (the scalpers) will find a way around it.
I have no beef with scalping/scalpers. I have used stub hub when there was a must see show and i could not get tickets...but this is not the norm....just like this NYE run, I am just not going....didnt even try...
I have had luck with the lottery for every phish show i have attended with the exception of 12/29/2011.

if you dont like scalping, dont buy from them...but be aware...thousand of people do it for every single Phish show....even ones that are not sold out....

@frump said:

i can justify $280/NYE well spent.

historical year, historical band, and Obama.

Wait you are justifying feeding the scalper market because of Obama?