is it time to ban surge pricing for entertainment events?

is it time to ban surge pricing for entertainment events?

Author
Discussion

Police State

Original Poster:

4,127 posts

227 months

Sunday 1st September
quotequote all
Isn't it time to ban surge pricing for entertainment events and undo the previous government 'wrong' that the government did when they reallocated the market from the street spives to the much more sophisticated monopolistic digital spivs and their cohorts?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2kj3742jxwo





Bluevanman

7,879 posts

200 months

Sunday 1st September
quotequote all
Who gets the inflated price,the band or the ticket selling company?

Mr Penguin

2,712 posts

46 months

Sunday 1st September
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No, prices are the best way to balance supply and demand.

EmailAddress

13,567 posts

225 months

Sunday 1st September
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Mr Penguin said:
No, prices are the best way to balance supply and demand.
Doesn't really work digitally though does it.

That's a phrase for limited products on a supply chain.

Mr Penguin

2,712 posts

46 months

Sunday 1st September
quotequote all
EmailAddress said:
Doesn't really work digitally though does it.

That's a phrase for limited products on a supply chain.
Why not?
There are limited products / tickets available.

Rough101

2,296 posts

82 months

Sunday 1st September
quotequote all
The way this will have gone is that a corporate will have said to the boys, here is £XM each for these dates here, we hold all the ticket sales risk, just you get the band back together.

There is a bonus of £XM per extra date you agree to.

Caring artists will look into a bit more to stop fans getting ripped off, e.g. Crowded House, others, e.g. Springsteen just take the money, no questions asked.


The deal AEG put on the table to get Morrisey and Marr back together is pretty much all in the public domain.

More fool anyone who paid £400 to see a band that fizzled out 20 years in a football ground.

towser44

3,666 posts

122 months

Sunday 1st September
quotequote all
There was always going to be a massive demand for Oasis tickets. The problem was, not everyone could buy at the same time due to queuing. If they wanted to charge £300 a ticket, they should have done so at the start, not when countless people had been lucky enough to get in earlier and buy at £150. I'd be pissed off if I got through hours after queuing to find the price had doubled from that had I got through the queue earlier.

Randy Winkman

17,743 posts

196 months

Sunday 1st September
quotequote all
towser44 said:
There was always going to be a massive demand for Oasis tickets. The problem was, not everyone could buy at the same time due to queuing. If they wanted to charge £300 a ticket, they should have done so at the start, not when countless people had been lucky enough to get in earlier and buy at £150. I'd be pissed off if I got through hours after queuing to find the price had doubled from that had I got through the queue earlier.
Cheers. Can anyone explain how the queuing system worked? Pot luck perhaps? Or by giving an advantage to some?

MOBB

3,812 posts

134 months

Sunday 1st September
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Can someone explain how ticket markups work nowadays? Aren’t pretty much all tickets digital now?

I have a sleep token ticket I don’t need and when I went to sell it it said I can only sell it at face value - which is fine but how do people sell popular tickets for big bucks?

2 GKC

2,060 posts

112 months

Sunday 1st September
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They sold old so probably not. I wasn’t prepared to pay the prices, clearly thousands were

ClaphamGT3

11,527 posts

250 months

Sunday 1st September
quotequote all
Police State said:
Isn't it time to ban surge pricing for entertainment events and undo the previous government 'wrong' that the government did when they reallocated the market from the street spives to the much more sophisticated monopolistic digital spivs and their cohorts?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2kj3742jxwo
User name checks out.

Why is this something that needs to be in any way regulated?

It's not like the price isn't clear at the time of purchase. If you're happy with the price at the point of purchase, click "buy now"; if you're not happy, don't. No one is holding a gun to your head and only you know what you think watching a pair of late 50s has-beens get the band back together is worth.

Hoofy

77,492 posts

289 months

Sunday 1st September
quotequote all
Nah, keep it. If people want to swap a house for a ticket that's their choice. It's clearly worth thousands if people are willing to pay thousands. Same goes for that awkward Ferrari GT4 from the 80s that was unloved by everyone and could be bought for just over £10k back in the 90s. I think they're going for £60k now. rofl

towser44

3,666 posts

122 months

Sunday 1st September
quotequote all
Randy Winkman said:
towser44 said:
There was always going to be a massive demand for Oasis tickets. The problem was, not everyone could buy at the same time due to queuing. If they wanted to charge £300 a ticket, they should have done so at the start, not when countless people had been lucky enough to get in earlier and buy at £150. I'd be pissed off if I got through hours after queuing to find the price had doubled from that had I got through the queue earlier.
Cheers. Can anyone explain how the queuing system worked? Pot luck perhaps? Or by giving an advantage to some?
Pot luck. Some started queuing at 7 - 7.30am to get on the sites, someone I know didn't go on the site until 9am and was ahead of people who had started queuing 2 hours earlier. If you googled Oasis Tickets Manchester for example and clicked the link, it bypassed the get on the website queue and went straight onto the actual event queue saving hours!

Rough101

2,296 posts

82 months

Sunday 1st September
quotequote all
ClaphamGT3 said:
It's not like the price isn't clear at the time of purchase. If you're happy with the price at the point of purchase, click "buy now"; if you're not happy, don't. No one is holding a gun to your head and only you know what you think watching a pair of late 50s has-beens get the band back together is worth.
The price was one price when you waited hours in the queue, only to find out that it had tripled when you got to the ‘counter’.

That’s the issue, some will feel compelled to buy after waiting all that time. Had they known they were £400 up front and not £150 I suspect a lot would not have bothered.

ClaphamGT3

11,527 posts

250 months

Sunday 1st September
quotequote all
Rough101 said:
The price was one price when you waited hours in the queue, only to find out that it had tripled when you got to the ‘counter’.

That’s the issue, some will feel compelled to buy after waiting all that time. Had they known they were £400 up front and not £150 I suspect a lot would not have bothered.
Still failing to see why that needs regulation. Nobody was 'compelled' to buy

Hoofy

77,492 posts

289 months

Sunday 1st September
quotequote all
ClaphamGT3 said:
Rough101 said:
The price was one price when you waited hours in the queue, only to find out that it had tripled when you got to the ‘counter’.

That’s the issue, some will feel compelled to buy after waiting all that time. Had they known they were £400 up front and not £150 I suspect a lot would not have bothered.
Still failing to see why that needs regulation. Nobody was 'compelled' to buy
Yep, more fool them. Leave the businesses stuck with £XYZ thouands worth of tickets. That's how you teach them.

Hub

6,574 posts

205 months

Sunday 1st September
quotequote all
Yes, surge pricing is unfair. The price should be the price. It doesn't make much sense that they are concerned about fans getting ripped off by touts on resale sites when they are ripping off the fans in the first place with crazy prices - the Oasis tickets thing was a shambles, there was always going to be very heavy demand.

AdeTuono

7,405 posts

234 months

Sunday 1st September
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It may well be 'supply & demand', but when it's obvious that demand will outstrip supply many times over, I can't see there's any need for it.

As for holding some back, 'just in case'...pull the other one. I preferred the olden days when you bought from a ticket office at face value, with none of this 'booking fee' bks. Just glad there's no-one I'm fussed about seeing any more.

twister

1,496 posts

243 months

Sunday 1st September
quotequote all
ClaphamGT3 said:
Still failing to see why that needs regulation. Nobody was 'compelled' to buy
No, however you seem to be ignoring the personal aspect of this, and assuming that it's literally just like someone choosing to buy or not buy a tin of beans or some other equally ordinary and mundane thing.

Concerts and other big events like this can very easily be literally once in a lifetime things for some people, and if they've decided that they're willing to pay whatever price was *originally* being quoted for tickets, and have then patiently waited in the queue for their chance to actually buy said tickets, just how likely do you think it'd be for them, once they finally reach the front of the queue and are only *then* faced with the prospect of having to pay more than the advertised price, to go "naah, sod that" and walk away?

ClaphamGT3

11,527 posts

250 months

Sunday 1st September
quotequote all
twister said:
No, however you seem to be ignoring the personal aspect of this, and assuming that it's literally just like someone choosing to buy or not buy a tin of beans or some other equally ordinary and mundane thing.

Concerts and other big events like this can very easily be literally once in a lifetime things for some people, and if they've decided that they're willing to pay whatever price was *originally* being quoted for tickets, and have then patiently waited in the queue for their chance to actually buy said tickets, just how likely do you think it'd be for them, once they finally reach the front of the queue and are only *then* faced with the prospect of having to pay more than the advertised price, to go "naah, sod that" and walk away?
That's on the individual, not on the ticket vendor