Last year I went to the Glastonbury Festival with a group of about eight friends, and a fantastic time was had by all. So much so that we decided to go again this year.
But the rules have changed. In an effort to eliminate ticket touts, the organisers have limited the number of tickets each person can buy to two. In addition, each ticket is printed with a name and address so that they can’t be transferred.
The results are predictable. Since large groups can no longer buy tickets all together, the total number of transactions required to sell all the tickets has increased. The single ticket agent is swamped. Because demand is so high, it has become a lottery as to who gets tickets and who doesn’t. It now looks as if only me and one friend from our group are going. No doubt the event will be full of people walking about in pairs.
Needless to say, I preferred it when there were touts. The trouble with an event like Glastonbury is that there is a strictly limited supply of tickets. Normally in a market, demand is controlled through pricing. Hence rare items such as antiques sell for high prices no matter what their material worth. In the case of Glastonbury tickets, they are sold far below their market value. Normally ticket touts correct for this by inflating the price of tickets to their real value. If someone is prepared to pay three times the face value of a ticket, then that means that is what the ticket is worth to that person.
The alternative is rationing. This is what happens with NHS dentists. NHS dentistry is subsidised so that it costs less than its market value. The result is huge waiting lists. To say that touting tickets is immoral is to say that distributing goods by lottery is somehow better than distributing them to those who are prepared to pay the most.
Not that ticket touts ever made it easier to get Glastonbury tickets. It just meant that it was at least possible to get tickets if you were prepared to pay extra for them, and now that is no longer an option. What this does show is that getting rid of ticket touts does not make it any easier to get tickets. So we have the worst of both worlds.
The first thing the organisers should do is abandon the two tickets per person limit. It makes it impossible to go in a group which is likely to ruin the atmosphere of the event. Secondly, they should face up to the economic reality. Either admit that it’s a lottery, and lottery the tickets out, or increase the face value of the tickets to reduce demand. Pretending that everyone has a fair shot at cheap tickets just causes pain and disappointment.
Update: At about the same time as I was writing this, Mark Cornish was having similar thoughts over on the Adam Smith Institute Weblog.
Buyers from touts gain, too. Instead of taking their chances and losing out in the usual lottery allocation or waiting lines, they simply pay extra to get the tickets. The benefit of watching their favourite band or sports stars is greater to them than the extra cost. People who are time-poor would rather pay others such as touts to do the queueing.