Entertainment For Lively Minds
Is it wrong to sell tickets for a profit?
Posted by Leedsboy on 20 May 2009 - 9:30am.
The Morrissey thread touches on this but I would be interested to hear the view on whether or not selling your gig tickets at a profit (modest or otherwise) is wrong.
I have never done it (I don't go to that many gigs. If you live in small town Hampshire it's a bit of a faff even before you have to balance work, kids and other commitments). But I have sold a couple of records that have become rare on ebay for a decent (£50) profit without too much turmoil and I'm not sure I can see the difference between the two.
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My problem with this
is the people who set out to do it for profit who have no intention of seeing the gig and clog up the phonelines and web servers and stop people who just want to see the band getting through.
I know it's too late to whinge about capitalism now and there'll be talk of tickets reaching their true value.
If I sell a ticket at a gig I normally do it for face value (including the booking fee!)
lastly you sold your records!!
Oh your going to love this
Yep. I sold my two Keane CD singles on Fierce Panda for £50ish each on eBay. I figured that I have them both on the album and the mix was almost indistinguishable so I'll take the cash.
tee hee
I'm sure moonface would be proud of you his Dad made a killing selling some barns on their estate for coversion sharp "cooky pater.."
What on earth does
someone's parents' business dealings have to do with selling Keane singles? (puzzled)
I like to think Chris is all embracing
in his loathing for Keane. There are probably people who sold Moonface some throat lozenges on his list as well. I say full marks to Chris for his attention to detail.
I feel the same about Morrissey
but I'm not sure I'd go as far as investigating his parents business dealings!
Leisure activities 609 months ago maybe?
I think there's a difference between someone who buys...
tickets purely with the intention of selling them on again for a huge profit (with no intention of going to the gig) and someone who ends up with a spare ticket and then decides to sell it. If in the latter case someone seeks to make a small profit, that is OK as far as I'm concerned. But charging ridiculous sums just doesn't sit right with me.
In the days before Ebay I sometimes found myself with a spare ticket and just gave it to someone who I thought would be grateful. A couple of times I did this in front of ticket touts and the expression on their faces was a joy to behold.
Same at face value
If I've ever sold a ticket outside a venue, I've always made sure that I'm very close to a tout (it's obviously a good pitch because they're professionals) and it is a good feeling when you know they can see their trade being taken from them.
I'm with you
I've given a ticket away for free a couple of times when I had a spare. If i can, I'll ask for the face value but don't ask the £7 booking and posting fee that some ticket agencies incredibly charge. At the end of the day it helps out the band [ numbers wise ] and you can always make a new friend.
No
or yes
I have just bought a ticket on eBay to see Kraftwerk
It was advertised as an 'intimate' gig at Manchester's Velodrome (5,000 tickets sold). Consequently tickets went like hot cakes and I missed out. I checked with the official touts (ViaGoGo and their ilk) and they were selling tickets at an extortionate price, which also conveniently omitted a 'booking fee' of over £40. So I resorted to eBay and, whilst I'm delighted that I managed to get a ticket, it took an awful lot to put in bids that were more than three times the ticket face value (the seller assured me she had a genuine reason for sale and the fact that it was a single ticket maybe supported this).
I have only ever sold a ticket once on eBay. I sold a Glastonbury ticket a few year's back (pre-photo ID) which I advertised at the face value plus my P&P costs. I sold the ticket to a girl who lived relatively locally. When I dropped the ticket off at her workplace she gave me a box of Cadbury's Roses and a kiss as a thank you. I must say that felt pretty good.
On an ebay tip front
have you tried sniping tools. Have a look at Bidnip. http://www.bidnip.com/. It allows you to bid sensibly whilst being offline.
Thanks Lee
It's now in my Bookmarks for future use
Or try
a free service: http://www.auctionstealer.co.uk/home.cfm
Only three bids a week and the bid arrives a few seconds earlier than their paid service but reliable and free.
or, alternatively, just bid what you think
the item is worth to you then don't worry about it until you get a mail from ebay to say if you've won or lost :-)
ah but
sniping means you bid at the last few seconds and so the price will likely be kept lower (especially if there are few bidders).
It's like people who can't be arsed to go to Sotheby's...
...to buy a Picasso, so they hire a flunky to phone their bids in for them. Takes all the fun out of it IMHO. Plus I've been on the receiving end, and it's mighty annoying. At the beginning eBay was a beautifully simple idea that just worked. Then people crawled all over it trying to beat the system. Plus criminals, of course. The result was the massively over-complicated rule-ridden nightmare you see today. Rant over.
I see sniping
as automating the bid process you would do if you were able to not get over excited by the bid process. Nowt wrong with that IMHO.
I see getting over excited
by the bid process as part of the fun of auctions. But maybe that's just me.
Different strokes
I used to get terribly impatient for the auction to end and I would put bids in and just get into a bidding war driving the price up. Great if your selling but rubbish if your buying.
Surely
it just means the price goes up quicker as all the sniping engines kick in then all the proxy bids that ebay have aready taken
Doesn't seem to work that way
I think the truth is that there are only 2 or 3 people bidding on most auctions and when a bid with 6 seconds to go may win it as the others have no time to rebid.
Sorry Lee but I still don't understand...
If I'm willing to pay (say) £100 for an item, then I proxy bid £100 and forget about it.
If the item goes for more than £100 then I wouldn't want to have paid any more anyway so what benefit would it have been to snipe?
If it goes for less than £100 then I'd win it, irrespective of people sniping.
Sorry if I'm being a bit slow!
I'll have a go but this is not an exact science
You are the only person proxy bidding and you put £100 on and the current price is £60. I am the only other bidder and I am prepared to pay up to £95 but I'm bidding along in increments of £5 then I would firt bid at £65 and then carry on until I get to £95 when I would give up and you would buy it for the increment above £95 (say £96).
If you had sniped at £100 rather than proxy bid, when I made my first bid of £65, I would be winning the auction at that point. I would then sit and watch, excitedly, thinking I am less than 20 seconds from getting something for £30 less than I would pay. Then 6 seconds from the end, you snipe kicks in, effectively places a proxy bid of £100 but the other bidder has no time to rebid. Hence you win at the increment above £65 (say £66).
It won't always work but you will never be in a worse place than with a proxy bid and often you would be in a better pace.
Head hurts now. Going for a lay down.
errr...
(boggle) I need to sit down with a pen and paper and go through that when I haven't had a couple of stiff G&Ts :-)
My theory is this
If you put a max bid it still shows up that you're interested [ i.e. number of bidders ]... another prospective bidder will be aware of competition and be more aggressive in bidding [ basic psychology means they may actually over bid just to beat you ]... even if he doesn't match your maximum bid he'll certainly put in another bid thus pushing your bid higher...if he is unaware of your interest he may feel safe and not be inclined to bid at last second ...you put in your max bid at last moment [ there may be several people doing what you are so it will come down to the highest punt at last second....it's a good system also for avoiding yourself getting caught up in a alpha-male bidding war and paying more than you'd normally ]... don't see much wrong in it other than the seller might get burned...but then again he should protect himself with a starting price or reserve.
But if I've proxied (say) £100
then I don't care what my winning price is, as I think the item is worth £100 to me anyway.
If I get it for £99.99 then I'm happy. If it goes for £100.01 then it's more than I would have paid for it anyway.
(am I missing the point somewhere? :-( )
If you got it for £66
would you be less or more happy?
I wouldn't care, as long as I got the item for
a price I thought it was worth. If I wasn't happy to pay £100 then I wouldn't have bid £100 in the first place
Then sniping isn't for you
It's for the people who would be happy to spend a little less than they thought they might have too.
Wrong for who?
Wrong for the promoter to sell them for a profit? Wrong for the artist who has charged £x to appear? Life is full of cases where people sell things that are in short supply for a profit. It might be a Ferrari. It might be the latest Wii. It might be a limited edition anything. It might be a deleted old record. Concert tickets are no different: if demand exceeds supply, some people will cash in. We're basically a community of music lovers on this blog so we probably feel more strongly than most about concert tickets. But the principle is much wider and is really about price regulation and whether or not you can sell something you own.
People who buy tickets online SIMPLY to sell again for profit
are scum for clogging up servers on release date and making it harder than it needs to be for real fans to obtain tickets. I f**king hate these twats more than I hate touts outside venues, at least they made some effort to get out of the house instead of just sitting in front of a computer thinking they are being so cool and entrepreneurial!
They may be scum but...
Part of the trouble is that you and I see tickets as a passport to a gig, others see them as a commodity. In the old days it was hard and cold work to trade in the commodity, now it's easier. At the end of the day, it pains to me to admit it but they are a commodity and the only practical way that the trade will be stopped is for either legislation or for the market to be cut off but the only way to achieve the latter is for everybody to agree not to buy tickets from ebay or the like and that's just not going to happen.
I dont think it is wrong
it is not something I have done however. Generally if I have needed to get rid of a ticket for a gig (inability to get babysitter, wife sick etc) I have invariably ended up giving it away and am happy to do so if it is to someone who will appreciate the gig. Likewise I was given 2 Paul Weller tickets last year by a work colleague who couldnt go. He didnt want any money for them - his thoughts were that I had taken him to various football matches etc - I dont mind reciprocating good deeds and it makes you feel good too. However I accept for some that money is tight and wouldnt criticise them for asking for payment.
You can pick up tickets off Ebay
cheaply the nearer you get to the date and the more desperate those who bought to sell get to shift them. Just like normal touts outside venues really. So it sometimes works in the punters favour.
Sometimes I double book gigs when a better show comes along and if I can't shift it onto a mate or via messageboard then I'll put it up for face value as a 'buy it now'.
what I laugh at is the bare faced cheek of people who buy tickets as soon as the lines open and seconds later put em on Ebay with 'bought tickets but discovered I can no longer attend'. You're kidding no one, sunny jim!
Actually...
The other day I booked tickets for Massive Attack. My mate sat next to me at work asks "Oh, when..." and then goes to point out that that's his wedding day, and that I'm going.
If I was an ebay seller, they'd have been up there 5 minutes after I bought 'em. D'oh.
You should have said
you'll wait until the DVD of his wedding comes out.
Scarlet Mist
is a not for profit ticket selling site.( I think it's one of the sites the word likes ) if you have time to sell a spare ticket and don't want more than face value you can do it there. it's not as convenient or necessarily as quick as Ebay, no paypal set up. Ebay can be quicker. I tend to put any spare tickets I have on ebay for a £5 less than face value, and they invariably get up to cost including charges.
Wrong wrong wrong
...and not in any way the same as selling a rare record at a profit.
However you do it, it's touting and sites like Ebay should not allow sales at more than face value. I'm under no illusion that it would wipe it out but a stand should be made.
If you buy a ticket and then have a genuine reason for selling it on, then just recoup your outlay.
but what's wrong with touting?
It's the old supply & demand thing again isn't it? If the promoter sets the price point too low then the laws of economics will set the market price.
If there are (say) 5,000 tickets on sale, how does that differ from a CD box set limited to 5,000 copies? There's an initial retail price, but then the market sets the price. Why should gig tickets be exempt from this?
In theory, if the promoter does his job right then he'll set the price at exactly the point at which exactly the same number of people want to buy tickets as there are tickets to be sold.
Souvenir vs Commodity
Actually I don't think that there is any difference. It would annoy me if I wanted a limited edition CD box set only to find that someone who didn't want one had bought the last one simply so that they could have some of my money as well. The point here is that I see it as a souvenir and they see it as a commodity, I don't think there'll ever be a consensus about this.
I think the difference is
that most of the 5,000 CD boxes will be around for many years and therefore available if anyone wants them (albeit at an agreed price).
Once the gig has happened you'll never get that exact experience again.