OFF: TicketMaster bidding

[Jon Jarrett]

On Fri, 19 Sep 2003, M Holmes wrote:

        <huge snip>

> > Someone with a large
> > disposable income can bid a large amount that represents an
> > insignificant blip on his or her income---perhaps even bidding an
> > amount that exceeds the total resources of an avid fan.  That high
> > bidder may have a negligible interest in the band, but see the high
> > ticket price as no barrier whatsoever to attendance.
>
> People can only outbid other people so long before they have less money
> than the folks they've been outbidding.  If I have 50 credits and 10
> other people have 5 and we're all very determined then I'll be paying 6
> credits at the start of the tour and I'll see 8 gigs.  After that I'll
> have 2 credits and everyone else will have 5.  I'm seeing no more gigs
> and each of them will see one of the next 10 gigs at half what I paid.
> After that we all have 2 credits for the next tour.
>
> Note that for my cash, I see half the return that they do in terms of
> gigs since I'm paying twice as much.

        This, at least, and I'm not really competent to judge the other
stuff, but this is screwy. It assumes finite assets and neglects to
consider income. By the next tour the first buyer will likely have
fifty-two credits while the others will still only have seven each. The
high-income bidder will see many more gigs over any long period than any
one of the buyers, even if the return is as you say proportionally
smaller. I doubt the low-income bidders much care about that when if you
weren't bidding at all they could get their seats cheaper.

> > I don't believe there is any correlation between fan loyalty and the
> > size of your wallet, measured in absolute terms.
>
> Me neither. I do believe there's a correlation in what's bid. It's what
> you'll give up, not what you have left afterwards.

        Again, a low-income fan can only sell their house or car once. I
can quite easily (all too easily just at the moment) envisage a situation
where a fan has nothoing left to seel that isn't life-essential, because
capital can only be alienated once and doesn't replenish itself. Someone
on a higher income doesn't have that problem. So there is a threshold
beyond which means is actually more relevant than will to be there.

        This only works, of course, if it's impossible for the low-income
type to improve his income by working harder or getting a better job. I've
seen you argue that their failure to do this holds up your theory because
they don't care enough to do that. But jobs like that aren't available to
everyone because the demand for good jobs sadly doesn't force the market
to create them. At the bottom level these things are based on the
exploitation of capital and resources, and there's a certain distance
beyond the availability of these things which development of economies
can't carry; witness the dotcom bust.

        I also heartily dislike the implication that if I wanted to see
more gigs, I should have become a management consultant. But I would,
wouldn't I.

> If they get a better monopoly then what else are they going to do but
> organise more gigs??? The *only* point in getting a monopoly is in order
> to maximise the extra (monopoly) profit that you take. The way to do
> that is to increase the opportunities to take it.

        Not everyone does this though; sometimes they're content to ensure
that their hold on the monopoly isn't threatened by throttling any
comptetion. Then they have a guaranteed and safe income which they can
invest on other development projects or their own leisure or whatever. I
suppose they're just insufficiently greed-powered to make capitalism work
as it should dammit.

> You forgot about all those folks priced out in the bidding. They're now
> ready to roll...

        They're not, as I point out above. They're still priced out.

> If the others will still pay more than the marginal cost of extra seats
> then you lose profit by not bringing them on board.

        But, it's about the music right? Yeah, yeah, I know. Yours,
                                                                    Jon

--
                Jonathan Jarrett, Birkbeck College, London
    jjarrett at chiark.greenend.org.uk/ejarr01 at students.bbk.ac.uk
  "As much as the vision of the blind man improves with the rising sun,
       So too does the intelligence of the fool after good advice."
       (Bishop Theodulf of Orleans, late-eight/early-ninth century)