Do the math: over 50% of tickets went to scalpers

[KestrelSF]

From hearing from camps and other groups, it's pretty clear that A- only around 30-40% of the actual burners that applied for tickets got one B- not that many virgins got tickets either (at least from looking at FB comments) C- almost no one in camps have extra tickets. We've been told to not worry because the reason tickets sold out is because folks ordered extra fearing it would sell out so don't worry, things will "sort themselves out" as you assessed who in your camp had the extra tickets. That simply isn't panning out. From every camp I've heard from, precious few got tickets and I have literally yet to hear someone say they had an extra. So if you do the math, there were over 100,000 requests for 40,000 tickets. If we are seeing only around 30% of a community of around 50,000 getting tickets, that really only accounts for about 1/2 of the 40,000 total. We're being told to hold tight and use the STEP system, but you know what folks, if over 1/2 the tickets are now in the hands of scalpers that's just not gonna happen. The small amount of legitimate extra tickets will certainly be given to close friends. Let's face it, for the rest of us, barring bold action from the new kids in charge now, we have little choice but to hold our noses and buy from a scalper if we want to go.

[AntiM]

Eplaya represents a scarce 1% of the community. FB? More, but still a fraction. I don't buy it.

[lemur]

or!!

maybe a lot of people want to go to burning man this year.. people who arent involved in the online burner community!!


HEY its just as possible as assuming its scalpers..

[KestrelSF]

Eplaya represents a scarce 1% of the community. FB? More, but still a fraction. I don't buy it.

Hi Anti! Don't think I ever found ya last year to say hi. You are right that I am only looking at a small slice of the community on Eplaya or FB ... but if I remember my time working at a dreaded market research firm (lord I hated that job) they do provide enough sample size to establish trends. The 30% success rate seems to hold true from every source. I'm also taking data from private email lists, etc. From some of the email lists a friend from work is on which include a bunch of long time folks from that have been coming since the early days, at least it seems that there was no discrimination at all on who didn't get tickets. Even a lot of key folks who run stuff at center camp, etc etc didn't get tickets.

But yeah, I'd really REALLY like to be proven wrong on this.

[BetaBox]

I'd like to see it proven right.....

[notthelarryharvey]

Good thing the BORG listened to all the ACTUAL PARTICIPANTS.....YEAH RIGHT

errrr....

sorry its pretty obvious they DIDN'T ....there that's better

the one simple solution to guarantee more participants got in than spectators and they totally ignored it

and some dumb@$$ will post a reply on here asking what it was.....

who F'ing cares its too late now....go read past posts

[lemur]

anyone who shows up at the gate with a ticket is a participant.

(even if they are an asshole spectator who moops and steals your beers from your cooler when you are away from camp)

[JayBobBoy]

I believe that Kestrel is right on the money. I think that if you account for speculators as well as scalpers the % could be even higher.

Last year when the tickets sold out, the publicity was pretty crazy. So now everyone who's paying attention knows that their is a scarcity issue and that it will only be greater next year.

Now the lottery is announced and everyone who is aware and has a credit card at their disposal has a chance to make a killing on these tickets. If you are awarded any tickets main sale, there is absolutely 0 risk you will be stuck with them or be forced sell them below cost.

So now BM has created an investment tool in which you can safely turn a huge profit in 6 months. I believe that there are more speculators holding tickets than the scalpers.

Enjoy!

[BBadger]

Lies, damned lies, statistics, speculated statistics.

In that order.

[spacecat]

Now the lottery is announced and everyone who is aware and has a credit card at their disposal has a chance to make a killing on these tickets. If you are awarded any tickets main sale, there is absolutely 0 risk you will be stuck with them or be forced sell them below cost.

So now BM has created an investment tool in which you can safely turn a huge profit in 6 months. I believe that there are more speculators holding tickets than the scalpers.

This is terrifyingly plausible.

[KestrelSF]

Lies, damned lies, statistics, speculated statistics.

In that order.

I've heard that 87.256 % of statistics are made up ....

Of course even though this is all speculative, the fact remains that well over 1/2 of the people that wanted tickets didn't get them, and there aren't nearly enough left. It's very doubtful that the number of people wanting to go (and ready and signed up to get a ticket) could have more than doubled in a year. Whatever the reason, the fact remains that a whole lot of folks will have to wait till the end of March or the end of June to know if they have a ticket or not.

[Killbuck]

.

[5280MeV]

This 30%-40% number seems reasonable enough, even though I wouldn't even put it in the ballpark of scientific (or even near the parking lot..).

However, I have heard reports of camps getting 12/12 tickets, and also getting 0/20. This is extremely unlikely if every ticket request had a 30%-40% chance of making it. In fact, if we accept a 30% success rate, the probability of either of these things happening (even assuming they all doubled up on ticket requests) is extremely low (1/1000 for the winning camp, 1/50 for the losing camp).

It must be the case that there are a *lot* of requests at only Tier-1 or Tier-1/2. If you made only a Tier-1 request, your chances were extremely low. If you made a Tier-3 request, your chances were considerably better.

I could believe that many Tier-1 requests were made by amateur scalpers around the west coast. One is nearly assured of being able to sell them as Tier-3 tickets "at face value", or at the absolute least, recovering the investment. That is a tidy $300 for a few minutes work registering for two tickets.

I am coming around to the idea that it would be better to remove the tiers completely. Right now Tier-1 just looks cruel. It seems that some have been budgeting $240 for tickets, and putting real effort and money into other things that they intend to contribute. They may have thought that they could likely get Tier-1, but the reality is almost certain that one has only a 10%-20% chance of scoring a Tier-1 ticket.

It would be interesting to see what the success rates were at each tier. I bet that Tier-3 requests succeeded at a much higher than 30% rate.

[tattoogoddess]

I have seen this to. Out of all the camps and groups I know it has been 0% to 40% TOPS of people who got tickets and !0% of those are from the christmas sale! I olnly know of one person who did not get a xmas sale. So I am to wondering where all the tickets wents to. No way could we have a 150% gain of people!

[Killbuck]

I see I'll have to add more categories to the wheel!

.

[lemur]

damnit kernul im too buzzed to read upside down words!!!!

[AntiM]

I'd believe a huge jump in interest as a part of the equation. There's a lot of factors, can't be just one thing.

So, in no particular order: normal increase in population, panic over the sell out, padding of ticket orders, scalping professional and amateur, bucket lists, economy improving, friends bringing friends, videos and documentaries, burners turning old enough to go, Facebook, YouTube, and good weather last year. Look at the 2009 dip after the terrible dust of 2008 couples with the bad economy.

For example, how did you hear of the event, why is this your year to go? Just curious. (Hmmm, maybe this would be a good thread in Experience?)

[jkisha]

I believe that Kestrel is right on the money. I think that if you account for speculators as well as scalpers the % could be even higher.

Last year when the tickets sold out, the publicity was pretty crazy. So now everyone who's paying attention knows that their is a scarcity issue and that it will only be greater next year.

Now the lottery is announced and everyone who is aware and has a credit card at their disposal has a chance to make a killing on these tickets. If you are awarded any tickets main sale, there is absolutely 0 risk you will be stuck with them or be forced sell them below cost.

So now BM has created an investment tool in which you can safely turn a huge profit in 6 months. I believe that there are more speculators holding tickets than the scalpers.

Enjoy!

Speculator/Scalper. Aren't they both the same thing?

[Ruleryak]

It's still early in the process of hearing back from everyone in my camp but so far I've heard back from 14 out of about 40 folks and only one couple got tickets (I promise you I'm not joking). The other 12 people (myself included) lost the lottery. Every one of us registered at Tier 3 - so what does that mean?

Just saying that I don't think it's even remotely possible to generate accurate statistics from hearsay and message boards. It would be really really nice of the org to release numbers to the public so we didn't have to throw so many guesses out there. Considering that they have the data I don't think it's too much to ask that they just give us a quick update. X people registered, Y people remaining after lottery without tickets. This many registered at Tier 1 only, this many at Tier 2, this many at Tier 3. It's not like they have to crunch any data at all to get those numbers - that's just on-the-surface stuff that could really help people gauge where their likelihood at getting one of the remaining tickets stands.

[Mofessor]

I haven't heard of many people in the Reno burner community that ended up with extra tickets. And though I by no means know everyone, people at burner friendly places like The Melting Pot haven't heard of many extra tickets either. It really is a question of "where did they all go?"

[The CO]

Where is the math? I was promised math in this thread!

Oh ya, there is no math because we don't have the numbers.

Ok, I'll provide some.

‎"There are an unexpectedly high number of registrants, and they are requesting 1.7 tickets/person on average."
-JRS

This statement is causing a great deal of confusion. A breakdown based on their phrasing: We know that at least 40,000 tickets were requested, as that is the amount available in the lottery.

1-Now, if each ticket request is considered to have been made by an individual, then the magic 1.7 means 68,000 ticket entries were made.
(simplified: does not account for 1 card buying more than one ticket, and the average would be 1.0 tickets per person if they were all bought individually)

2-Some folks have mistaken 1.7 to be a ratio of buyers:tickets, which would mean that 280,000 ticket entries were made.
(Seems unlikely, but possible)

Now, the phrasing 'they are requesting 1.7 tickets/person on average' is what strikes my fancy. Based on that statement....

3-25,000 people register for the lottery, some requesting a single ticket, some requesting 2. This could lead to:
-Ticket entries totaling 42,500 (more than tix available during main sale)
-The magic number of 1.7 ticket requests per person (25,000x1.7=42500) This is scaleable.


Anyone else got some math?

[BBadger]

Lies, damned lies, statistics, speculated statistics.

In that order.

I've heard that 87.256 % of statistics are made up ....

Of course even though this is all speculative, the fact remains that well over 1/2 of the people that wanted tickets didn't get them, and there aren't nearly enough left. It's very doubtful that the number of people wanting to go (and ready and signed up to get a ticket) could have more than doubled in a year. Whatever the reason, the fact remains that a whole lot of folks will have to wait till the end of March or the end of June to know if they have a ticket or not.

Well gee, what do you expect when the average number of tickets requested was 1.7? Even with 40,000 applicants that's pretty close to 50% missing out right there.

In my own sub-group, each of us entered for 2x tickets. That is twice the number needed. I expect that was what virtually every person did as well. Some people even entered their friends, siblings, parents, spouses, or other people to increase their odds. The dilution of the ticket drawing pool was a function of inflated demand, not necessarily the number of tickets actually needed (actual demand).

Then came the lottery, which is a fair distribution, and a major contrast to the previous system where the bulk of tickets were purchased by people who planned to get their tickets early in the year, with the remainder slowly getting bought up by individuals and smaller groups. THAT is the disorder you're seeing here: the tickets are spread out among all the applicants, not simply bought up early by the people running camps or such. We operate as groups, not individuals, but tickets were distributed fairly at the individual level.

And scalpers? The only way scalpers could affect the system is by flooding the system with huge numbers of applications just like so many of us did likewise. That was part of the beauty of the lottery: now everyone is in the fray, not just scalpers with the resources to game the system.

Where are the tickets? They're out there among the 23,500 people who actually won the tickets. Those 23,500 are spread among the 40,000-120,000 or however many entered the lottery. Across that total population are the camps, groups of people, and individuals. How many of those people actually need all the tickets they bought? If they're not the people in dedicated camps, possibly whining that they didn't get enough, they're probably predominantly individuals, and they're going to need to offload those tickets somehow.

Let's all have some patience. It's one day after the lottery concluded. There isn't even a way to sell or trade tickets yet, so any tickets that are "out there" can't even be redistributed even if the owners wanted to.

[trilobyte]

So far, there's been no evidence of any kind of significant scalper participation. Many were caught and blocked through the registration process, and while there have been listings there have generally been very few of them. It's difficult to say with certainty whether that's because not many scalpers got tickets, or it's because most scalpers have chosen not to list their tickets yet (either because they do not want to sell a ticket they won't have until June, or they would prefer to wait for peoples' panic to die down… both seem like high moral ground for a ticket scalper).

What I've seen a lot of, through anecdotal posts on the boards and on Facebook is that there are an unprecedented number of brand new burners planning to come to Black Rock City. Lots and lots and lots of first timers. Not the vast majority or anything, but more than I've ever seen in previous years - that's going to be a fun and interesting dynamic. That said, I hope that those still seeking tickets have success either through their network of friends, through the ticket exchange, or through the open sale in March.

[tattoogoddess]

damnit kernul im too buzzed to read upside down words!!!!

It's not even noon yet! lol

[Nipple]

75% OF TICKETS WENT TO PEOPLE WHO MISTAKENLY PURCHASED THEM INSTEAD OF KANYE/JAY-Z "WATCH THE THRONE" TICKETS!

[The CO]

Oh, and uh...

Don't buy from scalpers.
Face value or fuck off.

[Killbuck]

Oh, and uh...

Don't buy from scalpers.
Face value or fuck off.

[KarmaYoga]

The math is pretty simple... Based on roughly 30-40% of lottery entries receiving tickets...

viewtopic.php?f=290&t=53746

and

http://isopop.com/2012/02/01/survey-res ... ry-system/

1.7 tickets per entry.

40,000 tickets from 23,500 entries

Roughly 58,750-78,333 total entries

[The CO]

20,000 Ccards applying for 1-2 tickets=34,000 ticket requests@1.7 requests per person.

30,000 Ccards applying for 1-2 tickets=51,000 ticket requests@1.7 requests per person.

40,000 Ccards applying for 1-2 tickets=68,000 ticket requests@1.7 requests per person.

1,000,000 Ccards applying for 1-2 tickets=1,700,000 ticket requests@1.7 requests per person.

WE DON'T KNOW THE NUMBERS. No one here can 'do the math' without the numbers, and the Borg are the only ones that have those.

2nd party tickets found online so far: 200>

That's 200 tickets out of 43,000 so far. A lot less than 50%. More like less than 1%.

[KestrelSF]

A lot of people have pointed out, quite correctly, that the "math" is speculative at best and fuzzy as all hell. I'll concede this point. However, I think JayBobBoy's comment best sums up the undeniable (albeit after the fact) observation that the ticket system as implemented created a perfect scenario for scalping and speculating (more on that later) ...

[quote="JayBobBoy"I think that if you account for speculators as well as scalpers the % could be even higher.
Last year when the tickets sold out, the publicity was pretty crazy. So now everyone who's paying attention knows that their is a scarcity issue and that it will only be greater next year.
Now the lottery is announced and everyone who is aware and has a credit card at their disposal has a chance to make a killing on these tickets. If you are awarded any tickets main sale, there is absolutely 0 risk you will be stuck with them or be forced sell them below cost.
So now BM has created an investment tool in which you can safely turn a huge profit in 6 months. I believe that there are more speculators holding tickets than the scalpers.
[/quote]

Now that raises the question of what do we mean by speculators? The ticket lottery system may very well have been quite successful in stopping the professional scalpers who would try to buy up large blocks of tickets, however what it doesn't stop is thousands of individuals who had no real intention of going. These will of course include things like camp mates that didn't intend to go but got them in case other camp mates needed them ... but again the (completely unscientific and absolutely anecdotal) information I'm getting is that there aren't that many people in this category.

But beyond my fuzzy math, completely speculative pulled out of my arse numbers there are some numbers we do know ... that the next date that one can try to get a ticket is 28 March ... which is really damn late for folks that are trying to pull off a theme camp or art project, etc. After that, assuming the worst, you can't really have an assured ticket until June when the scalpers / speculators get their grubby hands on them and start to sell them on stub-hub and craigslist.

But I could just be a whiney, pessimistic completely worried for no reason crybaby who should just STFU and wait for the STEP system to start up where everyone that wants a ticket will get one easy peasy. Trust me, I'd very very like to be proven wrong here. Hell if the STEP system actually works this way I'll set up a "Pelt Me with Pies and Eggs for being such a negative Nancy" booth at the burn. The problem if this perception is completely wrong, when you are trying to plan for stuff, you have to assume the worst. So right now that means for my camp personally we have only 5 people reporting they have tickets out of 30, only one camp leader with a ticket. When I'm looking at things like "do we rent a truck now to haul out our 30x40 shade structure" without a driver with a ticket ... do I plan anything at this point until I know we'll have the people there to pull it off. Fuzzy math or speculation aside, we just don't know and it's the not knowing that's killing us.