EBay, and its subsidiary StubHub, this week announced that it was joining TicketNetwork in not allowing Inaugural tickets to be resold on any of its websites. The two companies are the first major ticket exchanges to make the move.
Soon after Barack Obama was elected the nation’s 44th President, interest in Inauguration tickets skyrocketed, but government officials quickly sought to end the speculative reselling of tickets that are being distributed free by Congressional members to their constituents.
TicketNetwork removed Inaugural tickets from its exchanges earlier in the week and began refunding money to customers, and eBay followed suit after meeting with representatives of the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies on Wednesday, an eBay spokesperson told the Associated Press.
“I’m glad eBay is joining us in this policy,” said Don Vaccaro, CEO of TicketNetwork.
Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein of California is seeking to make reselling of such tickets a crime, according to published reports.
Last Updated on April 14, 2009
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Nice strawman argument.
He didn’t say anything about brokers or fan2fan. I think he was just saying there’d be less supply because there is s less outlets to sell from. That seems likely unless everyone migrates to sell else where.
It will be interesting to see what happens especially with very tight security.
Wow, now these tickets are gonna get even MORE expensive.
since ticketnetwork is the main source of tickets for stubhub it makes sense that stubhub would follow ticketnetwork’s lead
I guess the red tapers need an economics course. This will make supply even more scarce than it already is.
Hi unintended consequences.
Actually, that’s not even close to being true. When will the TicketNetwork hacks stop posting on here? Maybe when they answer that question, they could also inform us why they let brokers massively short sell inauguration tickets through TN in the first place?
If it is for security purposes then it’s a valid
Ticket Network is not the main source of tickets for StubHub. That would be brokers that are the main source for StubHub and Ticket Network. When will brokers wise up and stop kissing the Don’s ass?
Since brokers are the main source of tickets for both StubHub and Ticket Network that is blatantly false. When are brokers going to wise up and stop kissing the Don’s ass? We don’t and you shouldn’t either.
Brokers are the main source of inventory for StubHub. StubHub’s marketing is great, they fool most with the “fan to fan” bulls**t. HA!
Brokers upload most of te tickets to Stubhub. Fan2Fan is a scam
Not listing these tickets has nothing to do with security.
Not allowing for the resale of inaugural ball tickets has quite a lot to do with security. Over the summer, I had the privelege of going to the White House, and prior to my visit, they had to get some personal information to do a security check through DOD. Obviously, it turned out clean, but what if I had someone else go in my place? Someone without a clean background, someone who wanted to cause harm to the occupants of the White House? It makes pretty good sense to not allow for the resale of inaugural tickets. Although this is a free market society, you are not entitled to buy and sell anything you want. Part of the reason we’re in the mess we’re in right now is because this administration allowed the banks to run wild, relatively unregulated, and make some decisions that jeopardized our entire economy. This mess only underscored our need to have some regulation and rules for businesses to follow, and not allowing inaugural tickets seems like a pretty good one for me. Try to think about someone bigger than yourself sometime.
YES WE CAN
The fact that the major resale markets will not allow the sales of any inauguration tickets is an outrage. Ticket prices are high because of the government has created such a limited supply of tickets to the event. Secondly, not all tickets associated with inauguration are given away for free in the primary market.
The resason that tickets to the inaugural ceremony become so expensive are two fold: (1) limited amount, and (2) the difficulty in figuring out how to obtain them. These tickets would not be so expensive if the inauguration committee set up jumbo-trons along the mall and used the entire space available. Furthermore, there was never an announcement of as to when wait lists for inaugural ceremony tickets would begin. The inauguration committee has done a suboptimal job of communicating how to get tickets.
The bigger concern is the inability to list inaugural ball tickets. Tickets to inaugural balls cost in the range of $200 to $400 and were not meant to be given away. Ticket resellers who purchased such tickets should be rightfully allowed to resell such tickets on TicketNetwork and Stubhub.com. Inaugural Ball tickets cost money and are not given away free!!!!!
Is this the Socialist States of America? Why is the government allowed to tell you what you can and cannot sell!!!!!!!!! They are willing to bail out every corporation, why can’t I sell tickets to bail myself out if I am lucky enough to get them?
This is outrageous!
Free market my a$$. Don, stop tryin to lie about your business as it slowly goes the way of the buffalo
Selling tickets to an inaugural ball has absolutely nothing to do with the financial mess we are in today. The financial mess was propogated by highly educated financiers who felt that it was wise to take a mortgage and turn it into multiple tranches. These tranches were then de-linked from the original mortgage and re-packaged into new investment vehicles. People unwittingly bought these instruments because it appeared that they were risk-less. We are in this mess because of greedy mortgage brokers who lied about the facts on mortgage applications. People misunderstood the risk associated with new and exotic investment vehicles.
The reason we cannot fix the mess lies in the fact that no one knows what they actually own. Someone who owns an MBS actually owns parts of hundereds maybe thousands of loans. There is no way to figure out what mortgage they link back to in reality.
As for security, I live in Washington DC and have been to the White House before as well. If this was about security, the Illinois State Society would have required that I provide my SSN number when purchasing the tickets. May I remind you, that no one cared when tickets were scalped to the 2001 or 2005 inaugurations or inaugural balls. A quick review of the internet will show that tickets to the Black Tie and Boots Ball sold on average for $775, when they carry a face value of $175.
I should be able to make a windfal if I am willing to take the time to determine how to get tickets to these events. I should be able to receive an economic gain for the time spent researching how to obtain these tickets. Most poeple are not interested in taking the time to search extensively on how to obtain such tickets. This is the essence of the secondary or resale market for tickets.
Lastly, this is only a tipping point of where our now socialist leaning government will attempt to go with its initiatives. To tell me that we cannot buy and sell everything we want, I say what about eBay? You can pretty much sell anything you want on that site. I for one did not vote for the President elect, so therefore if I can benefit from his success I am going to do so.
There would be no question about price if the government followed the lead of Warren Buffett. When people attempted to scalp tickets to the Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meeting, he listed 50K tickets at $10 on eBay. This listing immediately ended any scalping of tickets for large multiples of face value of zero. You do not need government regulation to develop fair pricing or zero pricing for inaugural ceremony tickets. The entirety of the national mall is large enough to accomodate the numbers that are being thrown around regarding the attendance of the inauguration ceremonies.
Actually, much of the deregulation of banks and financial markets began under the Clinton Administration.
Maybe the Obama administration just wants all Americans to be able to share in this moment if they want to be. And obviously, as a greedy, selfish Republican, who gives a shit about this so-called ‘right’ you have to profit off everything you want? We spent the last eight years with banks following that belief, and now look where we are. Thank God idiots like you are now the minority.