I've wondered if you could price tickets with an algorihm where they start out high and then over time or volume get cheaper and cheaper. If a scalper jumped in first they would pay a high price, later buyers could get tickets much more cheaply, if they come in later they won't have the desirable tickets which sold early.
How would this be in the best interest of the venue/artist who want to move tickets quickly and reduce risk? Seems like this would favor only those concerts destined to sell out or be popular.
Ideally it would maximize the revenue going to the artist and not to the scalper. Lets assume you worked it this way.
Artist X, playing 3 shows (Friday eve, Saturday Mat, Saturday Eve) would normally put tickets on sale lets say a month in advance for $20/$30/$50 (General Admission, Main Floor, Orchestra (rows 1-3)) each. Now in this new system they put tickets on sale 6 weeks before the event and in the additional two weeks prior the prices start at $200/$300/$500 and decay in price linearly by date to their 'marked' price over those two weeks. So each day sees a 7% drop in the 'over' price (so from $200 -> $20). Landing at the one month mark at the 'regular' prices.
In scenario one, it does nothing and no one takes advantage of early access to higher priced tickets and the tickets are on sale at "list' price 1 month ahead of the date as usual.
In scenario two, some people are really looking forward to the show and wait until the prices come down to what they are willing to pay for the seats they want prior to the tickets reaching their "list" price. That gives the artist/venue a bit more money for the show.
Scenario 3, lots of people want to go, they buy out all the tickets during the first two weeks of availability at higher prices. The artist/venue get a lot more money for the show.
The challenge for scalpers is that if they buy the tickets when they are expensive, they might take a loss on them (they don't really want to go to the show).
What this scheme tries to do is to move the market dynamics around a potentially mispriced product so that the artist/venue benefits if it is mispriced rather than the scalpers.
