The World Cup should signal the end of resellers and dynamic pricing

As a die-hard Formula One fan, I was stoked when I found out there was going to be a race on my birthday weekend in Las Vegas. I went to the ticket page and signed up to be alerted to buy tickets.

To register for the presale, you had to make a “donation” to some Las Vegas foundation to secure your spot. I took this as I would make a donation and be able to purchase tickets before anyone else. The day of the pre-sale, I waited in the virtual queue only to be told the tickets for the Las Vegas Grand Prix presale had already sold out.

I was disappointed but figured it was an inaugural race so there was probably a lot of demand. So imagine my anger later when I later got another email from the race organizers telling me that I could go to the regular on-sale and purchase tickets.

I had made a donation to secure a spot in the presale, only to be told the event had sold out, only to be told it hadn’t actually sold out, only to go to the regular on sale and see (surprise surprise) that there were already resale tickets, heavily marked-up.

I would venture that many of you have had experiences like this.

As we are now seeing World Cup games with swathes of empty seats, including at the first home match for one of the host teams, it should be time for our politicians to take a bit more action than grandstanding at congressional hearings. Having worked for more than a decade in professional and collegiate sports, I have seen how ticket prices have absurdly ballooned, taking advantage of the people’s fandoms, passions and wallets.

Dynamic prices were rolled out when I first started working for the San Diego Padres. It made sense. A Padres-Yankees ticket would be worth a lot more than a Padres-Rockies........

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