10 Reasons Why Fans Shouldn’t Hate Ticket Brokers
- Ticket brokers provide a service for those who are unable or unavailable to buy their own tickets. But like any other service providers, does anyone really expect them to do this for free? Travel agents arrange vacations for their customers, and part of their profit is gained from the time and effort spent organizing the travel plans.
- Supply and demand - brokers have something the public wants, so they should be able to charge whatever someone is willing to pay for it. If 50-yard line tickets to the Super Bowl were auctioned off on Ebay at face value, there would be a guaranteed bidding war. Supply and demand will ensure those tickets are worth more than the purchase price.
- I bought something at wholesale cost, now I am marking it up to make a profit. Newsflash: This is what every business across North America does. Fans only get upset at ticket brokers because it is well known how much the tickets cost. If they only knew how much markup their was on products they buy everyday, they would get outraged at that too.
- Ticket brokers charge what people are willing to pay. Don’t call us greedy because we are charging too much. Trust me, if no one was buying our tickets, we would lower the price. But the fact is, there are some rich people out there and they don’t have a problem paying that price for tickets so why wouldn’t we sell to them?
- The majority of brokers buy tickets the same way everyone else does. They log on to Ticket master at 10:00 a.m. using their credit card to buy them just like any other regular fan. So that means that anyone with a computer and a credit card can technically enter this business. (I realize some brokers use spinners or other illegal software programs to
gain unfair access to tickets, but this is not a problem with scalping, it’s a problem with fraud.) - As with any other industry, there will always be those who will search for loopholes and use underhanded tactics to gain their profits, but this isn’t the norm in the ticket broker business, it’s the exception. Most laundry mats aren’t drug fronts (unless you live where I do!) and most ticket brokers aren’t evil, shifty-eyed bottom feeders like everyone makes them out to be.
- Ticket brokers have gained a bad rep from selling fake tickets outside the venue before a show, but that doesn’t mean every broker is a criminal. Again, this isn’t a problem with scalping; it’s a problem with fraud.
- Don’t buy into the idea that Ticketmaster hates ticket brokers. Publicly, they want to appear as though they’re on the fan’s side, but in reality, Ticketmaster loves ticket brokers. At the end of the day, they don’t care who buys their tickets, they care that the tickets get sold and get sold quickly. So, if brokers can help an event sell out faster; believe me, Ticketmaster is only too happy for that to happen.
- If you want to go to a high profile event and sit in the first five rows, then be prepared to pay brokers prices or spend a lot of your own time trying to get tickets yourself. If you aren’t prepared to pay an inflated price, it’s guaranteed someone else will, and that’s why brokers exist.
- And lastly, there are just too many people benefiting from inflated ticket prices to care that some bitter fan searching for a bargain is unhappy. Who are the happy ones you ask? Well...
- The promoters are happy because the event gets sold out
- Ticketmaster is happy because they’ve sold more tickets and get convenience fees.
- The venue is happy because more food and beer is sold.
- The artist or team is happy because a higher attendance means more money in their pocket.
- Ticket brokers are happy because they just sold tickets for more than what they paid for them.
2 comments:
10 answers that explain why people do hate ticket brokers:
1. Ticket brokers provide a service to help people solve a problem that they created. People have to buy from brokers because tickets sell out so quickly. Tickets sell out so quickly because brokers buy up such a high proportion of the original tickets.
2. Normal rules of supply and demand are distored when demand is only so high because brokers have purposefully shortened the supply. As above, brokers solve a problem that wouldn't exist if they hadn't created it.
3. Ticket brokering is not analogous to the normal selling of products.
I have to buy an iPod from a store because I can't buy it direct from Apple's manufacturers. However, in the case of tickets, in theory I can buy direct from the box office. The only reason that might not be possible is because of ticket brokers shortening the supply.
Tickets are also different from other products in their number. iPods are, for all intents and purposes, limitless - nobody can rip you off reselling one at an inflated price, because there are always going to be more at the store they bought it from at the original price. Tickets are limited in number which means re-sellers can buy up more tickets, shorten the supply, thereby creating the demand that allows them to hike prices.
4. People may be willing to be ripped off, but it doesn't mean they should be. Hiked prices mean less well off fans can not afford to see their favourite bands/events while corporate entertaining budgets can easily stretch to the inflated prices asked.
5. Fair enough. It is the users of illegal spinners and CAPTCHA readers able to buy up greater numbers of tickets who are the biggest problem. However, anyone who buys a ticket specifically with the intention of selling it on is preventing a genuine fan from getting to that ticket in the first place at the intended price.
6. No 6?
7. Historically this is true, but now brokers have a bad reputation because they are seen as the cause of the under-five-minute sell outs of every major entertainment event that a genuine fan wants to get a ticket to.
8. I don't. Ticketmaster's mark ups from the original ticket prices are almost (but not quite) as much of a rip off as brokers'.
9. Of course you should expect to pay more for the best seats at an event, but that doesn't mean you should expect to pay more to a needless middleman who has already bought them at that higher price and is selling them on at a still higher price.
10. Many people also benefit from the selling of drugs, it doesn't make them a good thing. I'm not equating the casual exploitation of ticket brockering with the callous profiteering of drug dealing, I just want to point out the flaw in your logic that just because it benefits some people it can't be wrong.
Nicely said Tim.
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