Primary-Market Auctions for Event Tickets: Eliminating the Rents of 'Bob the Broker'?

Aditya Bhave and Eric Budish

No 23770, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Economists have long been puzzled by event-ticket underpricing: underpricing both reduces revenue and encourages socially wasteful rent-seeking by ticket brokers. This paper studies the introduction of auctions into this market by Ticketmaster. We first show theoretically that Ticketmaster’s auction design, a novel variant of position auctions, has attractive efficiency, revenue and no-arbitrage properties. Then, by combining primary-market auction data from Ticketmaster with secondary-market resale value data from eBay, we show that the auctions “worked” in practice: on average, they eliminated the arbitrage profits associated with underpriced tickets. We conclude by discussing why, nevertheless, the auctions have failed to take off. “It is nevertheless true that gangs of hardened ticket speculators exist and carry on their atrocious trade with perfect shamelessness.” —New York Times Editorial (1876).

JEL-codes: D44 D47 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-des
Note: IO
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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