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In defence of scalpers
By RickMeasham | October 20, 2007
Around the world there is outrage and condemnation of the practice of scalping: purchasing event tickets when you have no intention of going to the event. Instead you intend to sell the tickets at an inflated price once the event sells out.
Here in Australia, and I read in the USA and other countries too, there are attempts at legislation aimed at stopping the practice for at least some events, and always there is an uproar on talk radio when an event such as the AFL Grand Final sells out and there are tickets on eBay.
Yet, we claim to be a free market economy.
If I purchase anything other than an event ticket, my right to sell it on is never restricted unless I have a monopoly on all such items or if I collude with other sellers so together we form a monopoly. If I do no collude, then we just shrug and call it a free market economy.
Take a random product: Milk. How much is it worth? What the market will pay. Nobody will stop me purchasing milk for $2.20 at the supermarket then going door to door looking for someone who just put the kettle on and realized they’d run out and selling it to them for $4.00.
You’ll argue that milk isn’t a limited item. The person I sold it to can go back to the supermarket at buy their own for $2.20. But the supermarket has already practiced the dark art of a free market economy. And they do, along with other retailers, own the entire fresh milk market. So how did they set their price? They charge whatever you will pay. Next week they’ll put it up 10 cents, see what it does to their sales and drop it back down five*. Not because it became any more scarce, but because they know that those who want milk enough, will pay $2.25.
So back to event tickets. If an act sells tickets to their event for $80 and I manage to purchase two tickets, why am I not allowed to sell those tickets for whatever price the market will pay?
* This is a marketing trick to increase the price of something: inflate it beyond what you really want, then reduce the price to a ‘happy medium’. All of a sudden your customers love you for reducing the price of their milk by five cents.
Topics: Issues | 1 Comment »
October 22nd, 2007 at 9:50 am
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