• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Fox says NO to Ebayers for the Star Wars I-VI UK Marathon

Status
Not open for further replies.

ManaByte

Member
hehe Ebayers are getting fucked with this. They're having a SW Saga marathon in the UK on the 16th and people immediately snagged a ton of tickets just to sell on Ebay. Well, Fox and the UK theaters are saying NO to that so the tickets sold on Ebay will be turned away at the door:

http://www.theforce.net/cons/story/UK_Star_Wars_Marathon_Tickets_Sell_Out_91650.asp

Any details regarding sales on ebay have already been passed to Fox Distributors and we will investigate in more detail. Unfortunately, ebay will not halt sales of these resale of tickets.

As there were only 1000 tickets sold, it is easier for UCI to police the event on the day than at, say, an event like Glastonbury. We would advise anyone who is thinking about purchasing tickets off ebay that they may find that they will be refused admission to the event.

Some people paid $2,000-$3,000 for the tickets on Ebay. HA HA.

And for people who think they'll buy a ticket just to see Episode III two days early:

The "Galactic Passport" that the lucky fans purchased contain posters of each film and an area in which the Passport will be stamped after each screening. The end-of-day screening of "Revenge of the Sith" is reserved for those fantastic fans who have stamps next to all five movies. We want to ensure that the vast majority of the fans who purchased their Galactic Passports with the intent of seeing the saga all the way through (for the first time in the world) will not have their efforts and achievement spoiled by people who think they can just show up in the evening to see "Revenge of the Sith."

This is a first-time-ever "saga marathon," and we hope everyone who attends is excited to see ALL six movies. "Revenge of the Sith" on May 16 will be reserved for those special fans who attend the entire marathon.
 

border

Member
How do they have any chance in hell of knowing whether or not your ticket was purchased on eBay? Sounds like a bunch of hot air....totally laughable.

I don't see why they think it's appropriate to punish the people that buy the eBay tickets rather than the ones that hoarded them in the first place.
 

borghe

Loves the Greater Toronto Area
I think they are trying to punish the hoarders by scaring away the potential ebay buyers..

flawed I know, but really that is the only way you could punish the hoarders... by scaring away any potential buyers.
 

ManaByte

Member
border said:
How do they have any chance in hell of knowing whether or not your ticket was purchased on eBay? Sounds like a bunch of hot air....totally laughable.

I don't see why they think it's appropriate to punish the people that buy the eBay tickets rather than the ones that hoarded them in the first place.

IIRC, the theaters used assigned seating (like the Arclight does in SoCal) so they looked on eBay at the seat numbers on the tickets and that's how they know which tickets were sold on eBay.
 

border

Member
I can't find very many auctions that have the seat numbers listed or scanned in. And the ones that do have numbers received no bids. Looks like the buyers and the sellers are all pretty smart about this.

It looks like everyone will get away with it except for a few dumb sellers. The real hilarity here is that there is assigned seating in the first place -- can you imagine paying over $500 for a ticket only to find that they put you in the front row? :lol
 

ManaByte

Member
border said:
I can't find very many auctions that have the seat numbers listed or scanned in. And the ones that do have numbers received no bids. Looks like the buyers and the sellers are all pretty smart about this.

It looks like everyone will get away with it except for a few dumb sellers. The real hilarity here is that there is assigned seating in the first place -- can you imagine paying over $500 for a ticket only to find that they put you in the front row? :lol

Not sure if the UK do this, but the ArcLight has its numbered seating charts online so you can see where you will be sitting.
 

border

Member
Can you decline based on the seating you get? (Like Ticketmaster) Or does it charge you and then give you the seats?

Even at the tickets' face value ($100) I would feel pretty ripped off if I was in the front for 6 movies in a row. Perhaps they did the right thing and just roped off that whole section.
 

ManaByte

Member
border said:
Can you decline based on the seating you get? (Like Ticketmaster) Or does it charge you and then give you the seats?

Even at the tickets' face value ($100) I would feel pretty ripped off if I was in the front for 6 movies in a row. Perhaps they did the right thing and just roped off that whole section.

At the Arclight you can decide where you want to sit. They also don't show commercials before the movie (only trailers), which is why they justify the $11 ticket price.

Also, they have an Arclight membership which is like holding a season ticket where you pick your seat and that's always your seat. It's an awesome theater.

A friend and I are driving up there from San Diego one weekend to see Star Wars because its sound system kicks ass. We saw Kung Fu Hustle and Mallrats there last week.
 

Lhadatt

Member
The content of boths quotes are fucking retarded.
The entire event is retarded.

What they ought to do - not that I would go for it, since Ep 1 and Ep 2 both sucked and I don't care about Ep 3 at all - is hold this event in multiple locations and drop the price. Make it $50 or so per ticket, but take over the whole theater or a large part of it - each screen would be showing all of the movies. Do this in each major city around the country. Everyone would be happy, Fox would be charging just about normal admission for each movie yet still making boatloads of cash, and the ebay jerks wouldn't have any room to pull this crap.
 

ManaByte

Member
Lhadatt said:
The entire event is retarded.

What they ought to do - not that I would go for it, since Ep 1 and Ep 2 both sucked and I don't care about Ep 3 at all - is hold this event in multiple locations and drop the price. Make it $50 or so per ticket, but take over the whole theater or a large part of it - each screen would be showing all of the movies. Do this in each major city around the country. Everyone would be happy, Fox would be charging just about normal admission for each movie yet still making boatloads of cash, and the ebay jerks wouldn't have any room to pull this crap.

They're already planning on doing it in the US...
 

borghe

Loves the Greater Toronto Area
ManaByte said:
At the Arclight you can decide where you want to sit. They also don't show commercials before the movie (only trailers), which is why they justify the $11 ticket price.

Also, they have an Arclight membership which is like holding a season ticket where you pick your seat and that's always your seat. It's an awesome theater.

A friend and I are driving up there from San Diego one weekend to see Star Wars because its sound system kicks ass. We saw Kung Fu Hustle and Mallrats there last week.
man.. I would marry that theater. I mean straight up divorce my wife and change my last name and everything. that sounds like the holy grail of theaters.

do they have info on everything you've mentioned on the web that I can forward to Marcus Theaters for their new state of the art complex they are putting in Milwaukee WI (THREE COUNT THEM THREE 75' WIDE ULTRASCREENS!!!! droooll!!!)
 

ManaByte

Member
borghe said:
man.. I would marry that theater. I mean straight up divorce my wife and change my last name and everything. that sounds like the holy grail of theaters.

do they have info on everything you've mentioned on the web that I can forward to Marcus Theaters for their new state of the art complex they are putting in Milwaukee WI (THREE COUNT THEM THREE 75' WIDE ULTRASCREENS!!!! droooll!!!)

http://www.arclightcinemas.com/
 

whytemyke

Honorary Canadian.
First off, there's the chance that they could be checking receipts at the door. Since most people on ebay don't send receipts of the original product, that could foil a LOT of people.

Secondly, what's the problem with people on Ebay marking the prices up for their shit? If you don't want to pay extra for it, make the effort to buy the ticket where you can buy it cheapest at. Otherwise, sit and choke on it. I don't think you should complain about people who make money by using the guidelines of capitalism. Even if you don't like capitalism, that's fine, but you shouldn't take it out on the people who just play by the rules.
 

borghe

Loves the Greater Toronto Area
whytemyke said:
Secondly, what's the problem with people on Ebay marking the prices up for their shit? If you don't want to pay extra for it, make the effort to buy the ticket where you can buy it cheapest at. Otherwise, sit and choke on it. I don't think you should complain about people who make money by using the guidelines of capitalism. Even if you don't like capitalism, that's fine, but you shouldn't take it out on the people who just play by the rules.
scalping is not capitalism. it is opportunism. the entire basis behind scalping is screwing people over on their legitimate ticket purchase so you can sell a ticket to them at an inflated price. Like the episode of the simpsons where Homer is second in line, and as soon as the ticket office opens the guy who is first in line buys every ticket for the game.

Do you think the guys on ebay are people who just happened to find out that they couldn't make the show? No, they are guys who stood in line solely to resell the ticket, thus screwing other people further in back of the line out of seeing the show at face value.

that isn't capitalism because the people whose effective tickets the scalpers purchase don't have the same opportunity to buy the tickets as the scalpers.
 

border

Member
whytemyke said:
First off, there's the chance that they could be checking receipts at the door. Since most people on ebay don't send receipts of the original product, that could foil a LOT of people.
If you're going to check receipts at the door, what's the point of even selling tickets? And what about people who bought more than one ticket (but thus only have 1 receipt)? Do the friends that they gave/sold tickets to just get screwed over? How can you retroactively start demanding receipts for entry? A great many people have probably already thrown the receipts into the waste bin.

Scalping for an event this high-profile is totally unavoidable. But what good is it to punish the fans for something unavoidable? I would bet money that they're not actually keeping tabs on the auctions, and this is all just lip service to try and deter scalpers.
that isn't capitalism because the people whose effective tickets the scalpers purchase don't have the same opportunity to buy the tickets as the scalpers.
Of course they had the same opportunity....they just didn't get in line (or online) early enough. It seems to me like pretty straightforward capitalism. Limited supply with great demand means high prices.
 

whytemyke

Honorary Canadian.
It's not that i'm arguing that it doesn't suck, cuz it does. But the fact that there are people willing to sit in the rain for three days, to me, means that they deserve to sell the tickets for a bit of a profit. Naturally the 2000 bucks a ticket is a bit high, but you cannot argue that this isn't capitalism. This is free market capitalism in its finest. This is the very reason that even MORE people should do this, to create competition among those that scalp.

If you want to stop people from scalping, you should stop buying tickets at raised prices. But some people who are willing to pay a lot for something can find those objects which they'd pay a lot for easily on Ebay. I see no reason to hold it against the sellers for doing what they can to make some extra dough on resale values. If people don't like it, then perhaps they should raise their complaint with the system itself, rather than the people who merely play within the rules of the system.
 

border

Member
Forcing people to sell tickets at face value (as we do in this state) is actually anti-capitalist, since it's putting an artificial restraint on the free market.

If the theatre really cares so damn much, they should have demanded to see your ID at the time of purchase, and then printed it on every tickets you bought.....then they could demand ID at the actual showing. That way at least the scalpers would have to attend with the people they sold the tickets to :lol

Oh, and btw, if you want to be an asshole or a real life "grief player", here's want you can do: make photoshopped tickets for every seat and every row, then post them on eBay with a very high "Buy It Now" price (or Starting Bid). Have friends with ebay accounts purchase them a couple days the auction goes up. Now that seat/row will get blacklisted and people with who bought those seats legitimately will get turned down :lol I wouldn't be surprised if scalpers did that as a counter-tactic. It would push the legitimacy of all tickets into question and forcing them to either admit everyone or admit next-to-nobody.
 

Flynn

Member
Ticket sellers have a way of linking the credit card to the ticket purchased. My friend said that the Springstein show he's going to will have every ticket confirmed against a credit card.
 
Flynn said:
Ticket sellers have a way of linking the credit card to the ticket purchased. My friend said that the Springstein show he's going to will have every ticket confirmed against a credit card.

What if they buy a ticket for a freind or something.
 

Fusebox

Banned
This is fucked, it doesn't punish anybody but the fans - the scalpers still get their money, but the fans dont get to see the movie.

Typical retarded, unconstructive Fox arrogance. Grrr...
 
borghe said:
man.. I would marry that theater. I mean straight up divorce my wife and change my last name and everything. that sounds like the holy grail of theaters.

do they have info on everything you've mentioned on the web that I can forward to Marcus Theaters for their new state of the art complex they are putting in Milwaukee WI (THREE COUNT THEM THREE 75' WIDE ULTRASCREENS!!!! droooll!!!)


I <3 the Archlight. I used to hate to see movies until I started going there.

If people talk, they will kick them out. Also? there are no bad seats, the front row is as far back as teh screen is high. So even sitting in the front is prettty damn good seating. Its clean, comfortable and quite. They even do 21+ screeings of PG 13 movies. So no dealing with BRATS. I hate kids more than anything
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom