Alternatively only allow transfers within a very short period of the event. Anyone with a legitimate reason (giving to a friend etc) can work it out even on the day of the event. But scalpers have to take on a big risk buying up the good seats early, because they have a short window of time within which to secure a sale (buyers won't risk pre-paying, sellers can't risk prospective buyers backing out at the last minute).

Another tactic I've seen when there isn't assigned seating - just different tiers of seating - is to hold back some small portion of tickets to release shortly before the event, devaluing the scalpers' listings.

Online streaming tickets can also help, especially if the fans have enough of an anti-scalper stance. They'd choose one of the endless live streaming tickets over buying from scalpers just to go in-person.

I can only assume that the people flippantly proposing that the solution should be to restrict consumer freedoms don't attend these types of events themselves. Why should we immediately jump to limiting freedoms when we can increase the risk of scalping enough to be beyond the tolerance of most scalpers.

It’s kind of annoying in practice. For example you buy four tickets to go with your friends. But you get sick so you offer your ticket to a different friend instead. Oops that’s not allowed so now no one gets to go? Or you buy tickets as a gift for someone.

There’s a lot of legit reasons to want transfers, outside of scalping.

Though this would be mildly annoying for the earnest case (selling a ticket to a friend), it would be the actual solve to the problem.

The parent's suggestion still creates artificial scarcity, which is the real issue: people buying tickets they have no intention of using.

The problem is that the artists, venues, and ticketing companies benefit from this artificial scarcity. So we'll never see it change.

That's fairly common in Japan: you can't transfer tickets, as they get a name attached at purchase, and many concerts use a lottery system. You register interest in tickets, and if you're selected, you get a window to buy them. No camping out the minute presales open, and the price is the price instead of rent-extracting dynamic bullshit.

Square Enix did that for the Final Fantasy conventions in the US as well (where details of the next FFXIV expansion will be announced later this month), but they added an additional requirement. You have to have an active subscription to the game to even have a chance.

Scalping only exists because there's a difference between what the tickets cost and what the fans value them at.

For popular shows, there are more people who want to see the show than there are tickets available, so you need to pick a strategy for deciding who's going to go.. Ticket sellers have to balance lost profits from lower prices, prices being too high and the show not selling out, and fans being furious at the artist for making the tickets unaffordable for most of the true fanbase.

Dynamic pricing (airline style) and auction-based systems basically ensure that only the rich can attend. Scalping is a way to do price discrimination / progressive pricing. If you're a true fan, you know when the ticket sale will happen ahead of time, and you snatch the tickets quickly. If you're not, but are rich enough not to care, you have to buy from a scalper. Like all discounting and price discrimination strategies, it sometimes backfires; if you're a true fan attending your mother's funeral when the sale opens, you'll have to pay the rich person's price.

You can also see scalpers as being awarded by capitalism for taking risks. They make sure the show sells out and the artist is happy, even if fan interest is lower than expected. In such a case, they take on the losses, if all goes well, they take some of the profits from the sales.

doesn't work. the venue/artist/original seller would have a huge liability for refunded value that they don't want to hold

"all seats, including the best seats go to actual fans" is not something solved by your solution

We can agree scalpers are net negative.

And I like your ideas but I don't see why the venues and artists don't want to capture more of what people are willing to pay enabled by what the parent comment suggested.

I wonder if in your system it actually attracts fans or just people that have the time to wait for tickets.

> Why not just ban the transfer of tickets and allow refunds?

There are laws against transfer bans. Also, people don't like being required to provide identity information just to buy a ticket to a live event, and venues HATE enforcing identity checks.

...and you'd be surprised how often you can get a refund on tickets just by asking your venue for a refund.

> First choice in seats goes to the most passionate and attentive fans.

Now you've opened the debate about how to determine which fans are the most passionate and attentive... ;-) Ticketmaster has a service for this that attempts to address this called Verified Fan.

The venue would make less money this way, and preferential seats would be given to whoever managed to get a request in first.

That's too consumer friendly.

Another option is to just go see live shows at local independent venues instead of letting Live Nation jerk you around.

this is the way

The tickets are all electronic now and they can already do it. Most artists don't want them to.

> Why not just ban the transfer of tickets and allow refunds? You buy a ticket, you show your ID at the door.

Because everyone on the seller side - including artists - make money on this.

If parties other than fans / buyers cared, it would be a solved problem.