What is Digg?29 Comments
- johnoneal, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13does it hurt to be that stupid?
- dtfinch, on 10/12/2007, -3/+13Scalpers ensure that you can get a ticket, if you want it enough. Their presence is a natural reaction to the failure of the market (the ticket booth) to price tickets appropriate to avoid running out of seats. If they fixed this, they'd not only eliminate the scalpers but they'd also maximize their revenue.
- Ghazi, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Nice theory but it doesn't work that way... Why do you think people are willing to pay more? A $100 ticket may seem like a fair price to you, but not to a soccer fan from South America who wants to go see his national team compete. There are strict rules and regulations that not only guarantee a fair distibution of these tickets but also help avoid the greedy scalpers. Just because there are a few suckers out there that are willing to pay an outrageously high price for a 2-hour event, it does not mean we should set the rules around their stupidity. Just like because some other suckers are reading spam emails and buying from spammers, it does not make spam OK.
- mirunit, on 10/12/2007, -3/+9What does GWB have to do with anything - this is in Germany and therfore he would have no jurisdiction. Why even post a stupid comment like this. In response to the topic I think these tickets are a cool idea to control scalping and scamming.
- OneZeroZeroOne, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Well, there's something wrong with them when they do things like buy up dozens or hundreds of tickets so that no one else has a chance to get them at a "reasonable" price.
Same thing with xboxes: I get my hands on 2, and my girlfriend gets 2, and my mom gets 2, I buy 4 with my grandparents' credit cards, and my buddy that doesn't play video games buys a couple for me. Then I sell all 12 for double or triple the price because there were hundreds of other jerks like me who bought 12+ xboxes with the sole purpose of creating (or helping to create) a supply shortage to drive up the demand and price. - kc0re, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4The Masters Golf Tournament in Augusta, Georgia has been doing this for several years. Albeit, not "Chips" but they have bar codes on them, when you enter the gates they are scanned (each time), if it is found out that you bought your ticket from an agency other than the Golf Course itself, you will be ejected from the grounds, ticket confiscated, and whomenever ORIGINALLY bought the ticket will never be able to buy tickets again.
- ndm007, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"Anyone have a pic?"
Umm, perhaps: http://cgi.ebay.com/2-WORLD-CUP-TICKETS-2006-IRAN-V-ANGOLA-CAT-1-ROW-1_W0QQitemZ6627414273QQcategoryZ16122QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem#ebayphotohosting - fartingbob, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2" 'The days of a ticket tout standing in the shadows are so far gone,' said Jerry McGrath, legal counsel for UEFA"
Really? Has this guy ever been to a sporting or music event? They are still alive and kicking, i can assure you.. - ownedbytheman, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2That's all well and good unless you are in line behind the scalper that buys the last 50 seats for the gate price only to turn around and offer them to you for more.
I feel that the purchaser of the ticket should be the only one allowed to use the ticket. Perhaps a cottage industry of "performance insurance" will spring up just like we have travel insurance for those un-transferrable airline tickets etc. - fartingbob, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Well most ticket serivces limit you to 6 tickets going to the same address or using the same credit card. Sure, it doesnt prevent people from getting friends to buy more for them, but it does make it more difficult.
Anyway, i agree with others. If you can afford to buy lots of tickets upfront, then you should be able to do whatever you want with them. They cant prove that you didnt purchase 20 tickets for a organised group of people to go, only for that to break down and you left with 20 empty seats. Why sporting tickets should be treated differently from any other product you can buy and then sell on i dont know. - The_Decryptor, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"Fine, then the system could allow for returns/refunds"
The article states there is a officially sanctioned site/system for selling/trading your tickets. - Ghazi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@koktakee
The last world cup was watched by an accumulated audience of close to 40 billion people around the world, for almost 30 days staright. This makes soccer, the most watched single sports event in the world not surpassed even by the Olympics. Soccer is bigger than baseball, football and basketball COMBINED. So if anyone of us is stupid (or maybe just ignoant) it's YOU my friend! - ccordero, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1You can see some of those tickets
here
http://flickr.com/photos/charliux/139259034/
and here
http://flickr.com/photos/charliux/139259027/ - ownedbytheman, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@sancho: Fine, then the system could allow for returns/refunds. You could do this up to x days before an event. Those returned tickets then become part of a "last minute" pool released for sale within the same x days of the event.
Unless the purchaser == attender and this is mandated and checked, scalping won't go away.
Of course, the real group hurt by this are the people who send "someone" to get tickets for themselves and all x people in their peer group. I don't have a smart idea for that situation. - merkle, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Anyone have a pic?
- DetroitTigers, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2There is nothing wrong with scalpers. It is a simple case of supply and demand.
- medieval, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@kc0re: This is a totally different situation than the Masters. The Masters has no restriction on who you can give your tickets to as long you don't scalp them. Here, FIFA is attempting to restrict who you can give your tickets to, even if you want to give them to someone for free. They are trying to police who can use the ticket, regardless of whether they bought it on the secondary market. They are trying to tie the ticket to a particular passport number and are asserting that only that person or relatives can use the ticket.
The Masters does not care who you got your ticket from or who is using any particular ticket. Anyone can use an authentic Masters ticket if legitimately obtained, and whether a ticket is bought on the secondary market is something for which they have no real mechanism for enforcement. The bar codes on Masters tickets are scanned at the gates merely to check authenticity. If authentic, anyone can use a ticket. If it is found that the ticket you possess was originally purchased from someone other than the tournament, then that is by definition a counterfeit ticket and now you have problems. - mv10, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Old.. Ive had these tickets for US games since January
- anonymonk, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1owned, as far as I know, you can have someone buy tickets for you and your group for the world cup... so long as he provides ID information for every ticket holder. At least that's how it worked for us when we bought them a couple of months ago.
- joelito, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2Since It seems that nobody RTFA
This seems to be a special case situation where you don't want the hooligans from a team mixing with the hooligans of the other team. You know, to prevent a riot or something. The problem is that scalpers make it hard to control this
http://pubs.acs.org/cen/science/8122/8122sci1page1.html - jeblis, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1How can it be a "world cup" if is doesn't take place in the U.S.?
- cBennett, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1So what does this mean for ticket prices?
You could argue that as a result of tickets losing their liquidity, that ticket prices will fall as people will be hesitant to purchase tickets for fear of not being able to sell if they are unable to attend the venue.
Or this could mean an increase in ticket prices. Assuming that the large black market that normal tickets create would vanish then the market price/equilibrium would shift, towards higher prices as direct demand, from the ticket booth's perspective, increases. Basic economics tells you that if you have a increase in demand for a particular good that the price will rise until demand equals supply. - alastair, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Yeah, I blogged about the RFID tag on my ticket 2 weeks ago:
http://www.liquidx.net/blog/2006/04/26/world-cup-tickets-arrived/ - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0The problem is with the system for buying tickets... it is a bloody mess. I have been trying for months to get tickets and it is one of the most frustrating endeavor I have ever attempted.
First off, currently there are three groups of tickets, each with their own unique process for purchasing. They are tickets to the same games in the same sections, the differences are arbitrary. There are Conditional Tickets, Resale Tickets and New Tickets.
Conditional tickets, you sign up for in a queue. They take your money and if you don't get any tickets, they refund you.
Resale tickets are posted as the are sold back to FIFA. This could be at any time of the day or night. I have bots pinging the site for the game I want and have been watching it non-stop for months.
Then there are a batch of New Tickets that they release in bulk. I don't know where they came from, but they have a different page.
To top it all off, if you do see a ticket offered, it is impossible to actually purchase it. You simply get a message that the ticket portal is busy and to try again later. I have only once reached a page where I entered my information and then I was informed the tickets were no longer available. I have spent tens of thousands of dollars worth of time trying to get these tickets, and ticket for a low demand game (Czech Rep. v Ghana) with no luck.
In Short, if anyone has any hints on getting through this system, please post it here. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1damn!
- rickalty, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0I think if you want to call something a "non-event", the first place prize MUST go to the so-called "World Series" of baseball.
I've always loved that name - the championship of a single closed league from one country (OK, with a token two teams from Canada) having the effrontery to call itself a "World Series"....... it would be funnier if it wasn't so pathetic.
Of course, it doesn't really matter since no-one else in the world except Japan and a few places in Latin America ever even bothers watching baseball.
Richard - sancho, on 10/12/2007, -3/+0I think we're erring on the wrong side, though. If I buy tickets and then can't go for some reason, why should I be screwed out of my money? I should be able to sell my ticket.
The way to combat this should be to minimize how many tickets you can buy, not prohibit after-market sales. - koktakee, on 10/12/2007, -12/+3"Just because there are a few suckers out there that are willing to pay an outrageously high price for a 2-hour event, it does not mean we should set the rules around their stupidity."
Calling soccer an "event" may be the real example of stupidity, LOL. Non-event if ever one there was... - pype, on 10/12/2007, -33/+3Since he knows nothing of football - GWB will assume these are somehow related to terrorism and ban the World Cup.
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