There’s been a bit of controversy in the Firefly fan community concerning ticket scalpers. This controversy started because tickets for the first pre-screening were auctioned off on eBay. At pretty high prices. And every time another pre-screening sold-out the number of auctions on eBay grew. Fans seem to be debating this topic from a number of different directions (scalping is morally wrong, capitalism rules, this is something the crew of Serenity would do, as long as it’s legal it’s okay, real fans shouldn’t try to make money off other fans, it’s okay if it’s fans who bought too many by accident, and a variety of other perspectives). And often talking past each other. I have a definite opinion on the subject but think the ongoing debate is sorta pointless. It’s going to happen regardless.
So I might as well track the numbers :-)
But first I’ll just briefly state one portion of my opinion on the topic. I think the scalping of tickets for the Serenity pre-screenings is a bad thing for one simple reason: it contributes nothing to the Big Damn Goal. The Big Damn Goal, as I like to call it, is very simple: Serenity 2 and Serenity 3. To accomplish that goal Serenity needs to generate between $60 and $100 million in box-office returns during it’s domestic release. That’s a daunting task. And none of the money spent on scalped tickets goes to that box-office total.
To be fair, we’re not talking about a lot of money. For the first two pre-screenings, a total of around $21,500 was spent by fans on eBay auctions. And all of this was spent on 315 tickets. At an average price of $6.40 (which is what boxofficemojo is using as it’s average ticket price for 2005) 315 tickets would’ve brought in a little over $2000 dollars. Chump change compared to what we need. But, on the flip side, $21,500 could be used after September 30th to buy 3360+ tickets. Which represents many sold-out theaters. Which results in a lot of buzz. Which translates into more ticket sales. It’s almost a given that the people who spent money on eBay auctions are not going to spend the same amount of money on tickets once the movie is officially released. And that hurts the bottom line. Even if only slightly.
So, short answer, scalping Serenity pre-screening tickets is bad for the overall goal. It’s myopic. It’s egocentric. It’s all that stuff and more. And it’s also fun to track. I’ve been keeping a spreadsheet on all the completed auctions just to try to get a feel for what’s going on. It’s a bit too early in the process to make generalizations but there were some anecdotal things I found funny. One thing, in particular, was the different ways in which sellers tried to camouflage what they were actually doing.
There are some people who are purposefully misrepresenting themselves. One seller started off their listing with, “The people I bought these tickets for can't go - their loss is your gain!” Sounds nice and all. Who wouldn’t want to help out a fan? Except that this seller used the same opening line in all five of their auctions. And the listings were posted in a forty minute span. And these five auctions were all for different cities (Norfolk, Charlotte, Columbus, Albany, and Providence). And the seller was located in a different state from any of these cities. The tickets are going to sell no matter what you write. Why did this seller feel the need to lie? Pretty hilarious.
Then there are a group of sellers who are trying to get around existing state regulations concerning the resale of tickets. This is silly because many states have not updated their laws to reflect online auctions. As long as you do not live in the same state as the event you are not affected (at least, that is how eBay interprets things). So they’re going out of their way trying to circumvent something that doesn’t even apply to them. And their attempts are very amusing. Quite a few sellers are auctioning something else (CDs, computer cables, etc) and then giving tickets as a gift to the person who wins the auction.
And finally, there are people who are just hoping prospective buyers don’t read the fine print. A person who individually sold six tickets to the Miami screening was charging a “Buy it Now” price of eight dollars a ticket. Face value! Outstanding! But if you look just a little further down the page you read that the shipping charge was $30! Wow, that’s an awful lot of money to mail a piece of paper. It was probably because the seller was also located in Miami and needed to ship those tickets using overnight air (heh heh). They have since tried a new tactic and have two regular auctions where you’re bidding on a pair of tickets. Not surprisingly, the addition of the second ticket bumped the shipping charges up to $34 dollars. So far no takers.
That’s it for now from the eBay tracking trenches. I’m sure there will be more to come.
