article | AI Finance and Economics Society Xu Manfei
edited | Luming
This article is originally produced by AI Finance and Economics Society. Please do not reprint any channel or platform without permission. Violators will be prosecuted.
The Mayday concert held at the National Stadium (Bird's Nest) for three consecutive days made fans feel addicted, but at the same time, the ticketing platform Ferris Wheel fell into doubts about the "official scalper".
Recently, Ms. Mu of Beijing reported to AI Finance and Economics that she bought two Mayday concert tickets on the Ferris wheel on August 4. Since the tickets were sold out at that time, Ms. Mu chose to ask the platform to help grab the tickets. The ticket grabbing time was August 22, 2019. Ms. Mu checked the Ferris Wheel APP on the deadline and found that she was still catching the ticket. At the same time, Mayday tickets are still being sold on the Ferris wheel and have different degrees of premiums.
There are tickets, but why can't the tickets be issued for a long time? After Ms. Mu consulted the Ferris wheel customer service, the other party said that she did have tickets at present and suggested that Ms. Mu cancel the ticket grabbing order and place an order directly to purchase premium tickets. However, looking at the price of the page, I found that the price of a ticket was three times more expensive than the price I used to grab the ticket. Ms. Mu was puzzled: "Isn't this asking me to increase the money in disguise?"
A ticket tripled. If you want to get the ticket, you need to buy a 650 yuan acceleration package
According to the Ferris wheel page, on August 22, the price of some tickets for Mayday concerts was given to varying degrees of premiums. The face price of Saturday games, which was originally priced at 255, 355 and 555 yuan, has been increased to 755, 737 and 756 yuan respectively. The face price of 255 yuan is even more expensive than the face price of 555 yuan. Ms. Mu questioned that the platform is increasing the price and face-to-face sales through price adjustments.
In response to this, the Ferris Wheel customer service responded: The ticket prices are quotes provided by the seller, and the seller may adjust the quotes according to the market fluctuations. The prices of some popular performances will indeed be higher than the original price. The specific amount shall be based on the display of the page. The prices will also vary when orders are placed at different times.
Ms. Mu felt the difference. She placed an order to grab tickets on August 4th. Now the platform clearly has tickets but cannot issue tickets, and asked herself to buy tickets at a premium. What is the reason? After consulting the customer service, the other party said that catching tickets and buying tickets was not the same channel. The ticket products from the past and now were provided by merchants. Trying tickets only helps customers search for ticket sources across the entire network, and cannot guarantee that they can successfully grab tickets. AI Finance and Economics asked about the "cooperative merchant" mentioned by the Ferris wheel customer service. The other party insisted that it was not a scalper, and the ticket source came from the organizer, venue, etc.
AI Finance and Economics checked the Ferris Wheel APP and found that if you want to increase the success rate of ticket grabbing, you have to purchase the platform's ticket grabbing package. The price of a ticket grabbing bag is 10 yuan. If you want to increase the success rate to 95%, you have to buy 65 ticket grabbing bags, that is, you have to spend an additional 650 yuan, which is even higher than the ticket price itself. Some lawyers said that this kind of transaction of accelerated package sales on the grounds of robbing tickets obviously violates the business principle of fairness and integrity and will inevitably cause serious infringement on consumers' rights.
In addition, does the Ferris wheel's practice of placing a premium on the ticket infringe on consumers' right to know? Lawyer Han Xiao from Beijing Kangda Law Firm told AI Finance and Economics that according to Article 1 of the "Third-Party Commodity Platform Trading Service Agreement" of Ferris Wheel: This platform does not price the tickets sold by the seller. All pricing is set by the seller and can be modified at any time. The transaction price is determined by the seller's pricing at the moment when the user generates the transaction order. "When the user purchased tickets through the Ferris wheel platform, he read the service agreement between the Ferris wheel and the user. Therefore, the purchase price is higher than the original ticket price. The Ferris wheel platform does not infringe on the user's right to know."
Lawyer Lin Jieying from Shanghai disagrees with this view. She believes that the Ferris wheel belongs to the ticket business unit. According to relevant laws and regulations, there are two ways to obtain the ticket business source. One is to obtain the ticket business directly from the performance organizer and the other is to obtain the ticket business after authorization from other qualified ticket business units. The Ferris wheel obtains tickets from other sellers, which should be obtained at the face price. If not, there is reason to reasonably presumably that the seller arbitrarily priced tickets without obtaining the corresponding qualifications. In any case, Ferris wheel ticketing cannot avoid mistakes.
Lawyer Han Wenbo from Shandong Qiushi Hexin Law Firm analyzed to AI Finance and Economics: From the customer service statement, this behavior cannot be considered an infringement of the right to know. However, the platform's practice of running premium tickets separately from ticket grabbing objectively makes scalpers convenient, and while providing ticket grabbing services, consumers who purchase acceleration bags can often get what they want to get tickets, while consumers who do not purchase acceleration bags find it difficult to get tickets through this service. This unreasonable difference actually forces consumers who have a strong desire to watch concerts to accept such services, which is suspected of infringing on consumers' right to choose.
day eye check information shows that the Ferris wheel was granted a commercial performance license by the Shanghai Film, Television, Radio, and Culture Administration in 2017 to operate performances and brokerage business. The administrative license is valid until January 23, 2019 and has expired.
Jay Chou’s concert was questioned for being locked in
The dispute over the concert sales continued to be staged. On the 21st, tickets for Jay Chou's concert in Hangzhou were on sale, and it was sold out in just two minutes. A Weibo user said that he bought 100 acceleration bags on the Ferris wheel in one go, which was an additional 1,000 yuan, and he successfully grabbed the ticket to the Hangzhou venue of Jay Chou's concert.
In addition, a large number of fans said that they did not get tickets. It is worth noting that this year, Jay Chou’s online ticket sales in Hangzhou must account for 70% of the total number of votes. The total number of votes in the two games in Hangzhou is 80,000, but in Damai.com, there are actually only 16,950 votes, which is only 21% of the total. Jay Chou’s fan club’s official Weibo post questioning where the remaining tickets were gone, and called on fans not to buy scalpers and resist scalpers.
Why do scalpers have so many tickets in their hands? What is the relationship between the ticketing platform, the organizer and the scalper?
Industry insiders analyzed that the source of scalper tickets depends on the whereabouts of the organizer tickets. The organizer is the top level of the distribution chain. Ticketing platforms, sponsors, partners and media are all downward branches. It is possible for scalpers to collect tickets from any of the above roles.
According to Beijing Business Daily, most of the scalpers’ votes come from the organizers, and the two colluded with each other to compete for tickets. There are two ways of cooperation: one is to sell the top concert to a higher price and make huge profits to supplement the performance costs; the other is to use scalpers to create the illusion of a hot concert and sell the tickets to the other party at a low price to pay for the money.
In addition, scalpers can also collect tickets from retail investors, including tickets given by the media, partners, and some fan clubs. Some scalpers also grab tickets through ticket swiping software, and some even steal user information to purchase tickets.
In recent years, with the increasing market demand, in addition to the first-level ticketing platform, second-level ticketing platforms such as Ferris wheel and ticket bull have also been born in the market. However, due to the lack of corresponding system improvements in the secondary ticketing platform, it has opened the door to convenience for scalpers. According to Securities Daily, some industry insiders said that the current secondary ticketing platforms mainly have the following problems:
First of all, the ticket source channels in the secondary ticket market are complex and the ticket source is unclear, which will directly lead to the emergence of fake tickets, which will not only reduce the reputation of the platform, but also cause heavy losses to consumers' rights and interests; secondly, unlike the primary ticketing market, the ticketing platforms in the secondary market will not price tickets in a memorable manner, and the seller will price them on their own, which leads to a large fluctuation in ticket prices, which is unstable. There are many phenomena of ticket price premiums for popular performances and ticket discounts for unpopular performances; thirdly, some secondary platforms have poor after-sales service, making it difficult for consumers to protect their rights. At present, it is still difficult for consumers to purchase on secondary platforms to be protected.
