Economics of Ticket Prices

Justin Dantonio and I had a brief discussion of the music and ticketing industry here.

Justin stumbled across an interesting blog called http://www.ticketeconomist.com/. One particular post, called the Battle of the Ticket Geeks, reviews two of the secondary market "price forcasters," called FanSnap and SeatGeek.

"The challenge is that most of the academic research I have performed or read indicates that resold ticket prices usually go down following the on-sale date. Though this is mostly true for concert tickets, I have seen these price patterns occur with sporting event tickets, too. However, sporting events can be subject to price fluctuations driven by unique influences such as weather and rankings, so that is likely where there is a value in forecasting. As cool as the forecasting piece could be down the road, I don’t agree that SeatGeek is (right now) as impressive as its competitor, FanSnap."

Here is a link to a podcast which discusses the economics of Ticketmaster.