Surprise once more echoed round the pop world as tickets for Take That that were put on sale at dramatically below market value sold out almost instantly, delayed only by the technical limitations of the websites and phone lines put in place to transact the things. Given how greatly the demand for tickets exceeded the supply at this artifically low price, and given the element of luck involved in getting through either online or by phone, by underpricing their tickets Take That (or more likely their clearly inspired commercial team) have simply created a lottery in which a relatively small number of people, selected at random from amongst those who wanted tickets for one reason or another, have acquired those tickets for a fraction of their actual value.
The sell-out was almost immediately followed by outrage from fans that people who had managed to acquire the manifestly underpriced tickets were now realising their actual value by putting them on eBay. The same outrage has been expressed at various times by other concert organisers and performers who for some reason imagine that they should be able to set both the supply and price of their goods without any reference to demand. Last year Ricky Gervais complained
"Tickets for my Edinburgh show are changing hands for £200. Please don't buy them. The people selling them are scum...I have tried to stop this happening but I can’t. I’ve tried holding tickets back for sale on the night. I've tried putting gigs on sale at the last minute so people don't have time to put them on eBay, but nothing works."
The problem here is not profiteering, but the reality that if you leave bundles of twenty pound notes lying around on the floor people will pick them up. And actually, two things would work here. The first is to increase the supply so that demand for each individual show fell to whatever price per ticket the perfomer insists is the right one. If Take That, Ricky Gervais et al insist that fans must be able to see them for £2o they can simply keep playing until they have put on the number of shows that brings the price down to that level. Rather more ingeniously, one commentor pointed out last time I discussed this issue that they could also manipulate demand by lowering the quality of their output so that demand, at the level of supply they happen to have chosen, matched the supply of performances at the price at which they happen to want to sell the tickets. Take That would not have sold out, even at £20 per ticket for a relatively small number of gigs, if they had made a credible commitment to suck. Perfomers who (bizarrely) insist on choosing the level of both price and supply for their performances might take note - there's really very little you can do to manipulate the supply and demand curves, but reducing the quality of the product is one solution that falls within your gift.
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