In a bizarre and poorly reasoned editorial, the Boston Globe comes out in favor of the state House’s scalping legalization bill. Employing an odd sort of fearmongering and weird insinuation, the Globe glosses over the fact that it will apparently still be criminal to resell your own tickets “in the shadow of Fenway Park” (so if it’s a slow day for the BPD or ISD, they can harass, confiscate the tickets of, or arrest people who are “scalping” outside the park), but it will now be completely acceptable for corporations to make millions doing the exact same thing. The editors do a bit of “concern trolling” in their nod to consumers who pine for the days when games were accessible to those of modest means:
“It’s understandable that senators are nostalgic for the days when a parent could take a family to a game or show for a reasonable amount. But some people these days have enough disposable income to pay a fortune to attend a game or show. If they can’t get tickets through a licensed agency, they’ll buy them on Craigslist or eBay – businesses outside of Massachusetts that are difficult for state government to regulate…”
“Some people these days?” Who, the Globe editors? Perhaps the whole editorial was merely an attempt to counter Sabutai’s accusation of a conflict of interest between the Globe’s owners and the breathless reportage on the DiMasi/Vitale lobbying scandal.
To me, the legislation just sounds like a “selective decriminalization” pushed through by AceTicket and SuperScalp, Inc., not to “protect consumers”, but to protect the bottom line and ensure that corporate scalpers avoid prosecution, while still leaving the little guy (which could be you, if you happen to end up with some extra tickets) vulnerable to arrest or other unpleasantness.
I’m somewhat indifferent as to what the scalping laws should be: no surcharge, up to $x, up to y%, whatever. But, the laws should be the same for everyone.
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p>If there is to be two sets of laws, then you require any business or person who does more $z of business in a year to have a license. No big whoop.
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p>P.S. Any “fees” higher than the actual rate of postage should be included in the limit. None of this “it’s not scalping — it’s just a $12 handling fee per order, $8 handling fee per ticket, $22 shipping order/pick up surcharge, $6 envelope charge, $3.50 order placement fee” nonsense.
You’re right, Farnkoff, I can’t find a coherent line of argument in that entire editorial. The Globe editorial ends with the statements that it’s in the “public interest” to legalize ticket re-selling, but that reads as an unfounded assertion, not a conclusion to any argument put forth.
This is the worst mealy mouthed nonsense I’ve seen from the Globe since they endorsed … oh, never mind that for now. Too bad they don’t have cojones like the owner of the Pats who says that only they have the right to resell their tickets. It’s their product, they are responsible for it and they should make/lose money from these sales.
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p>Some states like Florida actually do have ticket resales limitations similar to the Morrissey proposal. Other states (through activist AG offices) have been investigating the use of software programs by resellers to scoop up massive quantities of seats.
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p>My modest suggestion is a 5-10% fee on ticket resales (capped, of course) with the monies going to fund school sports in needy communities. These programs are often the first cut, might as well soak up a few dollars to sustain them.
Why should there be a restriction on the resale of tickets when there aren’t on virtually any other good on the market? Price fixing doesn’t work and it’s stupid.
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p>2. There’s little/no competition. If you want to go see this guy in concert, there’s no other product you can consume that meets that want/desire/need.
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p>3. Few goods on the market other than tickets are worth $0 at a very specific time and date.
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p>4. Counterfeiting is a very real concern with tickets, and it isn’t so much for most other goods.
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p>I don’t know if there should be a restriction or not, but tickets are so different from most other goods in our economy that simply arguing that they should be treated like all other goods doesn’t make much sense to me.
Like any product with limited or fixed supply, the answer’s a Dutch auction: Offer all seats at a very high price well in advance and sell them on a first-come, first-serve basis.
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p>Then as the event gets closer, lower the price.
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p>Presto. No scalpers. And, all the profits go to the producer of the event.
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p>The reason there’s no dutch auction is i) there’s an absurd regulatory structure of brokers, insider traders who have early access; and ii) the statute that criminalizes the poor patron who has tickets that he wishes to get rid of but can’t legally sell for its true value.
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p>You want to fix ticket scalping, the first thing the government should realize is that calping is inevitable.
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p>Recognize that it’s inevitable and legalize it, THEN the producers will quickly figure out that the dutch auction is the only way to keep the profits. THEN, you’ll have an efficient market for tickets.
There are states where scalping is legal, and we haven’t seen dutch auctions arrive.
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p>In fact, there are even more efficient auctions than dutch auctions given that there are multiple seats each with different value to different customers, and each customer might be willing to bid on multiple seat tuples but only want to win one seat tuple.
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p>Trouble with this kind of auction? The computational power required is massive, so dutch auctions remain the best suboptimal method.
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p>But my point remains: in some states scalping is legal, and we haven’t seen dutch auctions arrive a decade after ebay introduced the concept to the general public. So… why hasn’t it happened gary?
First, does happen. American Express has bought out theatres for performances and offered them at fixed and descending prices; Also, ticketmaster buys blocks and frequently holds dutch auctions.. Also, you frequently see the Lakers holding Dutch auctions for some of the ritzy seats.
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p>Second, it doesn’t take much computer power at all. Dutch auction predate computers by many years. Just set the initial price absurdly high and slowly drop it when people stop buying at the absurdly high price (Sounds like the way Apple sells it’s new products).
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p>But you’re right it’s not common. It’s their choice, but for the producers, I think it’s a delimma. On one hand, Promoters don’t like scalpers taking their profits without their permission, on the other hand they don’t like the idea of being portrayed as selling only to the wealthy, which is what the initial prices in a Dutch auction seem to indicate.
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p>The result, as with many statutes is Bootleggers and Baptists: promoters and ticket brokeres are the Bootleggers, not wanting scalpers to get their profits. The Baptists are the politicians claiming that their brokerage, anti-scalping scheme reduces counterfeiting and consumer fraud.
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p>Give me a break, you seriously think there a counterfeiting problem in the Massachusetts entertainment business?! Besides, I’m pretty sure there are laws against counterfeiting, no?
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p>There’s no scalping laws in California and Nevada and society seems not to have crumbled. Entertainment thrives.
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p>But here in Mass like a bunch of other states, in response to ticket brokers and monied interests, Politicians pass ham-handed laws, police waste their time and ours, citizens are turned into criminals and scalping continues.
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p>Dutch auctions don’t take much computing power, and I never claimed they did. I pointed out that dutch auctions are a suboptimal auction system, but that the most optimal [which is an Integer Programming model involving potentially 100,000s of variables and 100,000 of cross constraints] is too computationally expensive, which is why Dutch auctions remain the multi-item auction of choice.
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p>There’s laws against scalping too, doesn’t mean that it doesn’t happen or that those laws are effectively being enforced. You’ve set up a straw man though. I never claimed it was a problem, merely that counterfeiting for tickets is a legitimate possibility and makes tickets a very different kind of good than Subaru SUVs or Swingline Staplers or Strawberry Shortcake dolls.
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p>You claim
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p>but then readily agree that, even in places where it’s legal to scalp,
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p>So what’s the deal?
We do not have taxpayer-built stadiums here as in Baltimore, for example, but public money has gone into infrastructure support, etc for most of our pro teams — traffic improvements, street closings, etc. So there is a “public interest” involved.
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p>Hey, if you want government out of your lives, stop taking the mortgage interest deduction, tell farmers to stop taking subsidies, don’t invest in life sciences, etc etc.