Poster (scalping) selling

gangwarily

If I buy a ticket to a sold-out show and sell it for above face value that will attract  a lot of criticism. If I buy a poster at a show and all of the posters sell out, I can come on this site or eBay and sell it for above the price I paid. In both cases I have deprived somebody of the chance to buy it at the regular price. Why is it not acceptable to do this with tickets but considered ok with merchandise, particularly posters? Isn't it essentially the same thing? I'm not trying to start an argument, I genuinely want to know.

drakeheuer14

Tangible vs intangible 

PJ_Soul

gangwarily said:

If I buy a ticket to a sold-out show and sell it for above face value that will attract  a lot of criticism. If I buy a poster at a show and all of the posters sell out, I can come on this site or eBay and sell it for above the price I paid. In both cases I have deprived somebody of the chance to buy it at the regular price. Why is it not acceptable to do this with tickets but considered ok with merchandise, particularly posters? Isn't it essentially the same thing? I'm not trying to start an argument, I genuinely want to know.

My guess is it's because as far as 10C is concerned, the music/concerts are all that really matter, so that's what they want to protect for the fans. Merch is like a side (freak) show and pretty much the ultimate in consumerism, so 10C really doesn't give much of a shit if fans choose to be a part of the secondary market crap or not. And really 10C's attitude about these things are what drives the attitudes of the fans. I mean, obviously. If you're caught scalping by 10C you lose your 10C membership and get your tickets cancelled, but they have no reaction to people flipping posters. I think that makes it pretty clear where 10C and Pearl Jam stand, and what line they've drawn and why. Live music and merch just aren't in the same ballpark, so to speak.

on2legs

gangwarily said:

If I buy a ticket to a sold-out show and sell it for above face value that will attract  a lot of criticism. If I buy a poster at a show and all of the posters sell out, I can come on this site or eBay and sell it for above the price I paid. In both cases I have deprived somebody of the chance to buy it at the regular price. Why is it not acceptable to do this with tickets but considered ok with merchandise, particularly posters? Isn't it essentially the same thing? I'm not trying to start an argument, I genuinely want to know.

You have a point. But at the end of the day it’s their website and their rules. 

jeffbr

My explanation is "Hypocrisy". It both cases the original seller got their price and the transaction is complete. The secondary seller, regardless of whether it is tickets or posters, will get paid what the secondary market buyer is willing to pay. Anyway, PJ ticket flipping or scalping is a no no only because PJ / 10c says so. But feel free to take advantage of fellow fans when it comes to merch. Buy 10 posters and fund your PJ travels by flipping them on ebay or in Lost Dogs. All is fair if merch is involved.

PJSoul makes an interesting point about music/concerts being all that really matter to 10c, but I completely disagree with this. Merch is where the money is made and PJ is happy that there is a stupid level of scarcity and demand for items that they own the market for. Tickets are done through TicketMaster, so PJ doesn't own those. But they own their merch market.

on2legs

jeffbr said:

My explanation is "Hypocrisy". It both cases the original seller got their price and the transaction is complete. The secondary seller, regardless of whether it is tickets or posters, will get paid what the secondary market buyer is willing to pay. Anyway, PJ ticket flipping or scalping is a no no only because PJ / 10c says so. But feel free to take advantage of fellow fans when it comes to merch. Buy 10 posters and fund your PJ travels by flipping them on ebay or in Lost Dogs. All is fair if merch is involved.

PJSoul makes an interesting point about music/concerts being all that really matter to 10c, but I completely disagree with this. Merch is where the money is made and PJ is happy that there is a stupid level of scarcity and demand for items that they own the market for. Tickets are done through TicketMaster, so PJ doesn't own those. But they own their merch market.

Gotta disagree with you about the band making their money through merch.  Assume there are 1000 posters at a show.  At $35 a pop that means they gross $35,000 from posters.  Split that 5 ways and subtract taxes and expenses and that’s not a lot of money.  If they were really that reliant on posters to fill their bank accounts they would be charging a lot more than $35.  They make their money off ticket sales like most other artists.  

jeffbr

Sure, but they don't control the tickets. They work with an existing ticketing system. I'm not talking strictly about posters. I'm talking merch in total. It is their market. They decide what to offer. They decide how much of it to offer. They decide what to charge. They decide how it is sold. They can put limits or not on sales. They can make something limited edition or not. Etc... With ticketing, they have very little control. So in order to keep the merch market (which they control) hot, they encourage scarcity. It creates a buzz. It creates impulse buyers. It creates flippers. And they've even created a forum here to enable those flippers.

bootlegger10

I think the music is what is most important and the band wants to make sure the tickets are affordable and going to the right people.  That is where their energy is devoted and don't have the resources to stop flippers of merch.

PJ_Soul

jeffbr said:

My explanation is "Hypocrisy". It both cases the original seller got their price and the transaction is complete. The secondary seller, regardless of whether it is tickets or posters, will get paid what the secondary market buyer is willing to pay. Anyway, PJ ticket flipping or scalping is a no no only because PJ / 10c says so. But feel free to take advantage of fellow fans when it comes to merch. Buy 10 posters and fund your PJ travels by flipping them on ebay or in Lost Dogs. All is fair if merch is involved.

PJSoul makes an interesting point about music/concerts being all that really matter to 10c, but I completely disagree with this. Merch is where the money is made and PJ is happy that there is a stupid level of scarcity and demand for items that they own the market for. Tickets are done through TicketMaster, so PJ doesn't own those. But they own their merch market.

I didn't mean merch doesn't matter to them in terms of making money (although could they really be making that much on it?? Certainly not even close to what they make on tix). I mean emotionally or philosophically.

drakeheuer14

bootlegger10 said:

I think the music is what is most important and the band wants to make sure the tickets are affordable and going to the right people.  That is where their energy is devoted and don't have the resources to stop flippers of merch.

They stop it with pre-orders or what I favor, timed editions. But they don’t...

deadendp

gangwarily said:

If I buy a ticket to a sold-out show and sell it for above face value that will attract  a lot of criticism. If I buy a poster at a show and all of the posters sell out, I can come on this site or eBay and sell it for above the price I paid. In both cases I have deprived somebody of the chance to buy it at the regular price. Why is it not acceptable to do this with tickets but considered ok with merchandise, particularly posters? Isn't it essentially the same thing? I'm not trying to start an argument, I genuinely want to know.

If they allow above face for tickets, it makes them ticket brokers and opens up a whole can of worms that they are not legally equipped for.  I recently chatted with Sea about a tickets specific portion of the site and the reason they don't basically boils down to this reason.  

Tickets and merch are not legally the same thing. 

on2legs

jeffbr said:

Sure, but they don't control the tickets. They work with an existing ticketing system. I'm not talking strictly about posters. I'm talking merch in total. It is their market. They decide what to offer. They decide how much of it to offer. They decide what to charge. They decide how it is sold. They can put limits or not on sales. They can make something limited edition or not. Etc... With ticketing, they have very little control. So in order to keep the merch market (which they control) hot, they encourage scarcity. It creates a buzz. It creates impulse buyers. It creates flippers. And they've even created a forum here to enable those flippers.

Rather than being a huge source of revenue, i would argue that the merch craze helps drive the ticket sales where the real money is made.  

PJ_Soul

deadendp said:

gangwarily said:

If I buy a ticket to a sold-out show and sell it for above face value that will attract  a lot of criticism. If I buy a poster at a show and all of the posters sell out, I can come on this site or eBay and sell it for above the price I paid. In both cases I have deprived somebody of the chance to buy it at the regular price. Why is it not acceptable to do this with tickets but considered ok with merchandise, particularly posters? Isn't it essentially the same thing? I'm not trying to start an argument, I genuinely want to know.

If they allow above face for tickets, it makes them ticket brokers and opens up a whole can of worms that they are not legally equipped for.  I recently chatted with Sea about a tickets specific portion of the site and the reason they don't basically boils down to this reason.  

Tickets and merch are not legally the same thing. 

That's a good answer.

jeffbr

PJ_Soul said:

deadendp said:

gangwarily said:

If I buy a ticket to a sold-out show and sell it for above face value that will attract  a lot of criticism. If I buy a poster at a show and all of the posters sell out, I can come on this site or eBay and sell it for above the price I paid. In both cases I have deprived somebody of the chance to buy it at the regular price. Why is it not acceptable to do this with tickets but considered ok with merchandise, particularly posters? Isn't it essentially the same thing? I'm not trying to start an argument, I genuinely want to know.

If they allow above face for tickets, it makes them ticket brokers and opens up a whole can of worms that they are not legally equipped for.  I recently chatted with Sea about a tickets specific portion of the site and the reason they don't basically boils down to this reason.  

Tickets and merch are not legally the same thing. 

That's a good answer.

That answer kind of works for me. They're poster brokers, but not ticket brokers. I suppose it is for the same reason they do not allow alcohol sales or transactions to be conducted in the Lost Dogs forum. I'll buy that as the reason they cite. I don't know that they would really be considered ticket brokers since the transaction doesn't actually happen through the site (ie no money is exchanged, they don't have anything to do with the actual transaction - the exchange of tickets and money). They'd be ticket brokers in the same way that Facebook or Craigslist are ticket brokers (and I'm guessing neither of those organizations consider themselves ticket brokers). 

CW55354

Poster artists rely on the secondary market to help sell new art. It’s a lot different than a band. Artists like Emek are collected regardless of whIch band they are producing posters for. If their work is highly sought after in the secondary market, even though they don’t receive any direct benefit from a sale, their new work becomes sought after as well and they can charge accordingly or get commissions, etc. if the band tried too hard to shut down poster flipping, I would think some artists would think twice about doing work for the band. 

slabahn13

CW55354 said:

Poster artists rely on the secondary market to help sell new art. It’s a lot different than a band. Artists like Emek are collected regardless of whIch band they are producing posters for. If their work is highly sought after in the secondary market, even though they don’t receive any direct benefit from a sale, their new work becomes sought after as well and they can charge accordingly or get commissions, etc. if the band tried too hard to shut down poster flipping, I would think some artists would think twice about doing work for the band. 

Agree with this 100%. The only way the artists get paid is through their AP drops. Limited supply/sold out SEs help the artist make their money. 

hihobibo

jeffbr said:

 So in order to keep the merch market (which they control) hot, they encourage scarcity. It creates a buzz. It creates impulse buyers. It creates flippers. 

Good point about the impulse buyers. It's pretty much a given that you typically need to buy whatever psst item is posted within the first 30 minutes or you will find it sold out. I remember people getting 4 or 5 mystery boxes a couple years ago, especially after they saw what was in the first batches that were posted. And while almost every European poster was panned, it seems all the APs went in seconds. I know I bought a skateboard with Eddie on it last year that when it arrived I wondered what I was going to do with it. It's still just in storage although I bought grip tape for it. 

Eddieredder

Another no win situation. Imagine the backlash if they mass produced the merch. Everyone gets theirs and demand goes down. Do the lines get shorter? Maybe but PJ fans are nuts about merch as is. Not sure that changes. Everyone's happy right? Wrong. In comes the complaining about how the band "sold out", and mass production and the posters won't be "special" anymore. Keep it how it is and, like anything, people figure out they can make money........and they will exploit it. Can't win. Which one is the "don't lose as much" solution?

2-feign-reluctance

The whole funding trips with merch flipping isn’t new. There have been some wild accusations on this board though about folks doing less than honorable things in order to see as many shows as possible. 

Get_Right

bootlegger10 said:

I think the music is what is most important and the band wants to make sure the tickets are affordable and going to the right people.  That is where their energy is devoted and don't have the resources to stop flippers of merch.

This.  Well said.  And not all merch can be flipped for a profit.  They end up with enough leftover merch to sell mystery boxes.

BRONDO

Expectations of merch at baseball shows?? Like it was in Europe 16 tour, not enough, or like it was at wrigley16 too much

RS65573

I predict like 2016, too much.

BCBA

Someone should clue the IRS onto some of these slugs clearing several to tens of thousands of dollars a year un-taxed in for-profit "raffles".  That would slow it down