In other news...

[andrewducker]

Can someone explain to me exactly who is losing here?  Apparently selling Live8 tickets on ebay hurts the poor.  How, precisely does it do so?  What poor person loses anything through this? 

I'm completely boggled.

Comments

[deililly.livejournal.com]

Logically I know no one is really losing and obviously those who pay out for the tickets on ebay really want to see these concerts but at the same time something about it makes me vaguely uncomfortable and I don't really know why.....

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

I've bought tickets in the past with the intention of selling them on at a profit. Is this morally wrong? A lot of gigs sell out in minutes, if you are organised you can usually purchase some tickets, other people who are less organised can't. I have no problem with it (obviously). Surely this is just supply and demand. Those people paying over the odds for the resold tickets are under no obligation to buy them from me.

I suppose the live 8 tickets are a bit different as it is a charity gig, but again I can see nothing wrong with it. In essence you are gambling your SMS charge for the chance to win a ticket. Is this any different to winning something in a game of poker, or one of those reader's Digest draws? I don't think so. What we have here is an easy opportunity for "outraged from Reading" to whip up hysteria and they are doing so quite successfully.

[drplokta]

It reveals just how much money Live 8 have lost through using a crap lottery system for the tickets instead of just selling them at a reasonable market rate. So it makes them look bad -- but only because they are bad.

[andrewducker]

Depends on what the ticket/text ration was. Some people may have sent 5 texts, and there may have been 10 million people trying to buy tickets with a teeny fraction getting them. If you've got figures on how much they effectively charged per ticket then I'd be interested in knowing.

Dutch Auction would have been the fairest money-maker, but that would have shut out poor people entirely. This way they've made a lot of money (I assume) _and_ sprinkled the tickets about.

[drplokta]

They got about 2 million texts, making £3 million, for 150,000 tickets. So £20 per ticket. They could have flogged them for £60 each, I bet.

[andrewducker]

Ouch. In that case, yes, they should have sold them for a lot more.

I mean, I paid twice that for NIN tickets. I'd easily have paid £60 to see Pink Floyd live.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

I'm as baffled by this as you are. My only thought is that Geldof and company are simply jealous that they didn't think of this way of making more money first.

[broin.livejournal.com]

Charity doesn't like the idea of profit.

[andrewducker]

When Bob says:
"There's nothing illegal about what they're doing unfortunately but there is something wrong with it and everyone in this entire country knows why it's wrong,"

I really have _no_ idea what's actually wrong with it. I can understand him wishing that people had entered because they wanted the tickets for themselves. But something actively _wrong_? Can't see it at all.

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

Holy fuck did they really only get 2m texts? Ha ha ha ha ha. But they always said it wasn't about money -- they'd have had a free festival if they'd been let. (Free festival, Pink Floyd, central London, would have thought would attract approx. 5m people... hmm...)

[azalemeth.livejournal.com]

You have to understand it's wrong because it's denying money to the music companies <_<. In reality, it's morally objectionable because people are selling their tickets to others for (huge) profit. And that profit will be going to their pocket, not to Make Poverty History. Mainly as Live8 is already sold to capacity, I think...and then some.

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

:-))

[broin.livejournal.com]

I've given this a lot more thought. Gem reminded me that Live-8 isn't a charity, anyway.

So uh, I got nothin'.

Someone on the news noted the tickets were marked 'non transferable', which would make them less legal to sell. If that's legally binding, which it may not be.

But apart from that, it's 'filthy lucre'. This country has a funny view of money - we're socialist here, but free market there...