Why Are So Few Tickets Being Scalped

[Shambala]

Kujo, scalpers hang from the teat of other's accomplishments. They are just middlemen with a desk and a phone.

[Stephendragonfly]

Since playawawa's account has been suspended I guess its too late to tell him to read the actual contractual terms he implicitly agreed to in buying a ticket that include
"Burning Man retains the right to cancel, rescind or revoke any ticket purchases at any time prior to delivery of the actual tickets to the purchaser, for any reason whatsoever at Burning Man’s sole discretion. If anyone purchases a Burning Man ticket with the express intention of reselling it for above face value, or attempts to sell or sells a ticket for above face value, Burning Man has the absolute right, in its sole discretion, to cancel any such ticket order cancelled without advance notice."

I don't think he was really a scalper, just a jerk.

[poplopo]

There is no way that one guy got twelve tickets. I would guess that playawaya planned to scalp but got maybe one ticket and is worried that people are going to be really good about not supporting scalpers, so came onto the board to try to scare people.

[lemur]

There is no way that one guy got twelve tickets. I would guess that playawaya planned to scalp but got maybe one ticket and is worried that people are going to be really good about not supporting scalpers, so came onto the board to try to scare people.

twelve doesnt seem out of the realm of possibility

there were 4 max tickets per entry in the pre-sale..

and 2 max in the open sale..

thatd only be 4 entries total, if yer lucky!

[CornMan]

There's one listing on StubHub with a quantity of 48 tickets at $2,499 apiece.

[theCryptofishist]

There is no way that one guy got twelve tickets. I would guess that playawaya planned to scalp but got maybe one ticket and is worried that people are going to be really good about not supporting scalpers, so came onto the board to try to scare people.

twelve doesnt seem out of the realm of possibility

there were 4 max tickets per entry in the pre-sale..

and 2 max in the open sale..

thatd only be 4 entries total, if yer lucky!

Could be three, if three entries won in the pre-sale.

HOwever, I have to question why the fuck I'm spending time thinking that up. I mean, really!

[theCryptofishist]

There's one listing on StubHub with a quantity of 48 tickets at $2,499 apiece.

I'd be surprised if there's even one there. Maybe it's a way of finding out what the market is like. Getting emails from people offering less, and guestimating the market from that.

(Good old Fishy, always trying to find a rational reason for bizarre behavior...Even though she knows better.)

[pink]

Did the org get the link info befor you removed it? Douchebags like him deserve to have any and all tix revoked. Especially if they claim to be a burner.

[AntiM]

Did the org get the link info befor you removed it? Douchebags like him deserve to have any and all tix revoked. Especially if they claim to be a burner.

Trilo was very thorough. He always is.

[vargaso]

Well it looks like activity on StubHub has increased in the past few days, I may have to amend my previous amendment and go with the belief that scalpers got a buttload of tickets. And really, the most reliable metric for predicting future states in this whole ticketing process is to look at what ideas are dismissed on these here boards, and then believe heavily in them, because without fail, they've all come true, my lovelies. Sooo, it's a scalper epidemic!

[lemur]

the people who predicted the 'lottery will be a disaster' werent right!!!

[vargaso]

There's one listing on StubHub with a quantity of 48 tickets at $2,499 apiece.

I'd be surprised if there's even one there. Maybe it's a way of finding out what the market is like. Getting emails from people offering less, and guestimating the market from that.

(Good old Fishy, always trying to find a rational reason for bizarre behavior...Even though she knows better.)

Do we think the 1000s of Coachella tickets on StubHub are also just scalpers testing the waters without tickets? Of course not. Burning Man is special to us but not to others, it doesn't exist in a vacuum, it is susceptible to the same scalper activity as any other event that doesn't print IDs on tickets.

[vargaso]

the people who predicted the 'lottery will be a disaster' werent right!!!

The people who predicted specifics (hoarding, extremely high demand, etc) were right on every count. The people who predicted things way back in Sept when the theme was not announced that hmm, some major changes could be in the works and were promptly dismissed, were right. "Disaster" is a highly subjective term. The specifics are not.

[Eric]

Do we think the 1000s of Coachella tickets on StubHub are also just scalpers testing the waters without tickets? Of course not. Burning Man is special to us but not to others, it doesn't exist in a vacuum, it is susceptible to the same scalper activity as any other event that doesn't print IDs on tickets.

"Minor" point: there are NO Burning Man tickets yet. None. Zero. Zilch.

The most anyone, including a scalper, can have is a confirmation email. There is no way to know if the scalpers have real confirmation emails, if they've taken one or two confirmation emails they did get & have duplicated them or figured out how to make false ones, or if they have them at all.

The one thing we do know is that they Do Not Have Physical Tickets To Sell. They have at best the "promise" of a ticket, which you can easily see when you look at the auctions & notice all the ship dates are for mid-late August. There is no way to tell if they're selling real confirmations or "on spec", because there's no way to buy what they're selling.

[vargaso]

Do we think the 1000s of Coachella tickets on StubHub are also just scalpers testing the waters without tickets? Of course not. Burning Man is special to us but not to others, it doesn't exist in a vacuum, it is susceptible to the same scalper activity as any other event that doesn't print IDs on tickets.

"Minor" point: there are NO Burning Man tickets yet. None. Zero. Zilch.

The most anyone, including a scalper, can have is a confirmation email. There is no way to know if the scalpers have real confirmation emails, if they've taken one or two confirmation emails they did get & have duplicated them or figured out how to make false ones, or if they have them at all.

The one thing we do know is that they Do Not Have Physical Tickets To Sell. They have at best the "promise" of a ticket, which you can easily see when you look at the auctions & notice all the ship dates are for mid-late August. There is no way to tell if they're selling real confirmations or "on spec", because there's no way to buy what they're selling.

Coachella tickets don't ship until March:
http://www.coachella.com/festival-passes

So Coachella scalpers are selling the exact same promise as BM scalpers.

[Eric]

Coachella tickets don't ship until March:
http://www.coachella.com/festival-passes

So Coachella scalpers are selling the exact same promise as BM scalpers.

Lesson #1: buyer beware

[BBadger]

Fools and their money are soon parted. The money is liberated from those undeserving of it.

[vargaso]

Fools and their money are soon parted. The money is liberated from those undeserving of it.

Oh absolutely, I'm just saying there is no difference between the Coachella and BM tickets being sold on StubHub. I believe there isn't much speculation on whether the Coachella scalpers are "legit," and if that's the case, there shouldn't be with BM scalpers either. And especially with StubHub, where the scalper doesn't get his/her money until the buyer confirms he/she has received the ticket(s). (It's actually a very good business model, if you can call facilitating scalping a "business.")

[CapnJoe]

139 tickets for sale on Stub Hub!!!!!! Cheap ones a little over $1000, expensive $5000! One person has 48 TICKETS!!!!! So much for the LOTTERY!!![attachment=0]4460450363_4668c02004_z.jpg

[wraith]

:evil:139 tickets for sale on Stub Hub!!!!!! Cheap ones a little over $1000, expensive $5000! One person has 48 TICKETS!!!!! So much for the LOTTERY!!![attachment=0]4460450363_4668c02004_z.jpg

But Cap'n, clearly no tickets went to scalpers, 70k plus new people saw a youtube video and decided to spend $400 to get access to a desert!

[Stephendragonfly]

One person claims to have the rights to 48 tickets on Stubhub and is selling them for $2499 each. Will he/she/soulless-creature-from-the-deepest-frozen-depths-of-hell be able to deliver the tickets when the time comes (assuming anyone is foolish enough to buy them)? I don't know, but I do hope that any rights to any tickets that he/she/soulless-creature-from-the-deepest-frozen-depths-of-hell does have are revoked and that those tickets then go to STEP.

[gyre]

What is sasquatch?

Why do people keep comparing concerts to burning man?

I can't imagine that any scalper would put up tickets for sale before all the tickets are sold, unless they have a vast quantity and want to test market.

There are still tickets to be sold, right?


You folks are aware of the upper level pricing of tickets?
If a scalper sells a few that way, it can cover a stack of unsold tickets.
Since there is no prime seating at b man, we don't have to worry about that extra incentive driving things, and there is a question of how big that market is for burning man.
It does exist to some degree though.

[Stephendragonfly]

I believe that the majority of scalping currently occurring with Burning Man Tickets is the result of small time operators, inexperienced gamblers attracted to the notion of making some fast money. I further believe that the most of more experienced scalpers are only putting a very few tickets into the market now and are waiting for a few more things to happen, like an official announcement from the BMorg that Burning Man 2012 has SOLD OUT or getting the physical tickets into their greedy little hands, before they make more of an effort at selling their tickets for astronomical prices.

[trilobyte]

There are no more tickets to Burning Man available for sale to the general public.

The 10K tickets from the canceled main sale will be allotted and sold to core members of selected registered theme camps who submit their theme camp questionnaire on or before March 8th. There are also 4K tickets going through the low income program (which starts on the 29th), but that's a separate application and review process.

As for amateur scalpers, they do appear to be making up the bulk of tickets listed to date. That's similar to what happens with other events too, there are a lot of amateur speculators out there. In our case, burners who couldn't resist the temptation, or people who know burners who figured they had money to spend and would try their luck at scoring and profiteering off of Burning Man tickets (silly people who could have had made their money a few times over by investing in any other 'hot ticket' event).

[Max Callahan]

:evil:139 tickets for sale on Stub Hub!!!!!! Cheap ones a little over $1000, expensive $5000! One person has 48 TICKETS!!!!! So much for the LOTTERY!!![attachment=0]4460450363_4668c02004_z.jpg

But Cap'n, clearly no tickets went to scalpers, 70k plus new people saw a youtube video and decided to spend $400 to get access to a desert!

139 tickets on stubhub and we're up in arms? Come on, have some perspective, there were 40,000 tickets on the main sale, take that 139, add 100ish already sold on stub hub and another 100ish on other sites and we're still less than 1% of tickets from the main sale being scalped. You want real scalping check out LCD Soundsystems closing show, over 90% of tickets went to scalpers (http://www.slate.com/articles/business/ ... ingle.html).
Between presale, main sale, theme camp sale and low income, there are 57,000 tickets this year, so I'm going to have to see at least 570 scalped tickets before I'll start to care about scalpers, because killing 1% scalping isn't worth what it's going to take to stop scalping.

I'm not saying we're not going to see that level of scalping, we probably are, but the open sale being canceled should have been the floodgates for tickets, 'casue no one is really holding out for step, and low income kinda excludes people who can afford scalped tickets (or vice versa). Scalping may go off once physical tickets ship, be we all should recognize that, at the moment, the amount of scalping we're seeing is very low.

There are 2 threats that could be causing this years sales, Scalpers, and people wanting to go. Right now, we should be _praying_ for scalpers because scalpers don't actually want to go. If scalpers are the problem this year they can be defeated next year, we will get non transferable, identity matched tickets and scalping will be largely neutralized (and we get fun 8 hour waits at gate). Real demand is the threat that must be taken seriously, because real demand is the threat that _will_ kill us. 70,000 people trying to go this is a very plausible number(total, old and new), we were just shy of 50,000 4 years ago, then the economy tanked and we had the first ever drop in attendance on the playa, the economy is kinda recovering and people have had time to save up for this year. Last 2 years have had great weather, a lot of people who would have gone once and tapped out haven't, and they came back saying the weather isn't that bad. 70,000 people is more than the BLM will let us have in 2016.

[gyre]

If a scalper is targeting those outside the country and the culture, it might make sense to sell now, or maybe if they're clueless.

But still not sold out.
Once tickets are out, the extras will settle in quickly and then the demand will rise, or not.
It doesn't make sense to me to sell before then, if profit is the idea.


if we are seen as another concert, and we don't change that, burning man is fucked.
Simple.

It would explain a sudden demand.

[theCryptofishist]

There's one listing on StubHub with a quantity of 48 tickets at $2,499 apiece.

I'd be surprised if there's even one there. Maybe it's a way of finding out what the market is like. Getting emails from people offering less, and guestimating the market from that.

(Good old Fishy, always trying to find a rational reason for bizarre behavior...Even though she knows better.)

Do we think the 1000s of Coachella tickets on StubHub are also just scalpers testing the waters without tickets? Of course not. Burning Man is special to us but not to others, it doesn't exist in a vacuum, it is susceptible to the same scalper activity as any other event that doesn't print IDs on tickets.

So, you think that there is actually a person on Stub Hub with 48 ticket emails (or 24 of two or 12 of 12) who thinks that he's (or she) going to sell them for 2 and a half thousand dollars? Because that seems a little odd to me...

[candiru]

Seems to me that if I were a scalper, I'd wait until I had the tickets in hand to sell and I'd certainly wait until I was sure that the org wasn't going to make them non-transferable. I suspect if/when the org distributes the tickets without making them non-transferable you'll see more scalping activity.

Even if there are only 1,000 tickets in the hands of scalpers (both pros and those burners who decide not to go and want to make a few bucks selling their tickets) that would be a nice chunk to have back in STEP. I'm pretty surprised that the org hasn't been hinting that they would make them non-transferable even if they decide not to. It might have a nice effect on STEP, which as it stands now is going to be pretty worthless (as most transfers will happen between burners without going through STEP).

I sure hope this all works out. I'm eager to get back to the playa.

[kujo]

Seems to me that if I were a scalper, I'd wait until I had the tickets in hand to sell and I'd certainly wait until I was sure that the org wasn't going to make them non-transferable. I suspect if/when the org distributes the tickets without making them non-transferable you'll see more scalping activity.

Even if there are only 1,000 tickets in the hands of scalpers (both pros and those burners who decide not to go and want to make a few bucks selling their tickets) that would be a nice chunk to have back in STEP. I'm pretty surprised that the org hasn't been hinting that they would make them non-transferable even if they decide not to. It might have a nice effect on STEP, which as it stands now is going to be pretty worthless (as most transfers will happen between burners without going through STEP).

I sure hope this all works out. I'm eager to get back to the playa.

There is no way that Burning Man will change the sold tickets to non transferable. That wasn't part of the rules initially when they sold the tickets so they will have a hard time legally/community wise getting that to fly. You can't change the initial agreement after the tickets have sold without having a huge backlash. It also goes against burning man's own policy of encouraging gifting tickets. They had no choice but to adjust the last stage of ticket sales but The Rules Are Clear About This Sale Before The Burner Actual Pays For The Ticket.

The best comparison I can think of is buying a car, and part of the sale says the warranty follows the car and not the person. Then after the sale, the car company decides on new rules and now the warranty follows the person and not the car. Now if you sell the car or give it to a family member it no longer is covered by the warranty. If you had been initially told that the warranty follows the person and not the car that's ok cause that was part of the initial sale. Changing the rules after the sale is not ok and this car company would get in a lot of trouble legally and customer wise for doing so.

Also less then 250 tickets have been scalped on stubhub which has 2/3rds of the scalping market. Scalping isn't an issue, most scalpers will list their tickets before the sell out for very high prices so they can quickly adjust prices when the event does sell out. This isn't happening. There are very few tickets that went to scalpers. Most went to people who put in multiple entries and then gave them away to their other friends who weren't smart enough to put in multiple entries.

I do this all the time for phish new years eve show. 8 of us want to go so all 8 try to get tickets to various dates near NYE. Some get them others don't but we always end up with enough people getting tickets for us all to go.

The world is not fair. It was obvious that BM would be heavily sold out. You should have played the game and got your tickets. If you didn't, then sucks for you, but life's tough and when push comes to shove everyone will act in their own self interest.

People have this belief that Burning Man is different, but it's not immune to natural human behavior. When things get scarce they become A. Harder to come by. B. Hoarded by those that see their value. and C. More Expensive.

If you didn't get tickets take this as a lesson and plan ahead next time.

As a whole, altruistic behavior in a large group with a finite resources just doesn't happen. That is why for example in WWII there were enforceable limits on the amount of sugar/oil etc one could purchase. Even though there was a threat of Fascist governments and their relatives dying overseas. The government still had to have actual restrictions on a persons use of rare commodities, the population couldn't be trusted to only purchase small amounts even with the fate of the nation in the balance.

[Stephendragonfly]

The BMorg could change their policy on tickets to make them non or even semi transferable.
From the Terms and Conditions: 22. These Terms and Conditions may be changed by Burning Man prior to the Event, and if so the revised Terms and Conditions will apply to you. Your use of the ticket for entry to the Event signifies your binding agreement to the Terms and Conditions in effect at the time of your entry to the Event.
The BMorg likely will not change the transfer-ability of tickets. Apparently radical inclusion means including people in the ticketing process who have absolutely no respect for Burning Man or any of its ten guiding principles. Hopefully the Bmorg will figure out something better next year.