In terms of the indoor venues/stadiums/etc. I have ever been to (honestly, quite a few), I ALWAYS have absolutely HORRIBLE reception on my iPhone (AT&T). I feel like this could be a massive issue for this sort of app. How can I use it, if it can't even figure out where I am or display the data inside the venue?
Possible solution: It would be nice if the venues that they teamed up with started offering free WIFI to help with this problem of poor reception or no data. Almost always, the venues have WIFI, but it is password protected. Maybe there are security concerns for having public WIFI at places like this that I am unaware of?
EDIT: I will also add more of a "real world" example of this. When I use Foursquare, I always have to "check-in" outside of the venue, because it can't even find where I am when I'm inside. Luckily, Foursquare's model allows you to do these "check-in's" manually (by searching), or before/after you attend the event. I think that is why they can get away with it, unlike an app like this. It seems like a big problem they would need to figure out before they launch.
Finding the right prices will be key, and take some time, but even less than optimal fee (from the stadium's perspective) will recoup some of the otherwise lost revenue.
How much can stadiums realistically expect to earn a night? Several thousand?
Ideally, you should pay an amount that's fair to you and fair to the team without going to either edge case -- you paying $0 and "stealing" the seat, and you paying full boat.
The trick is finding that equilibrium price - and sometimes the stadium won't act logically. In theory, they should take anything >$0, but if they charge too little then people will stop paying full price in advance and just wait until the last minute. If they charge too much (I.e $150), it won't have any effect and they'll be right where they are now.
The illogical part is that they might not actually care about "revenue maximization" in the way a hotel or airline does - which is where this could all break down.
The code change needed to make this work (auctioning / dynamic pricing / after event start upgrading of ticket) would require the ticket provider to enable this, they might as well not even bother buying a startup if they have to add all this to their own system.
Isn't the main point of getting a cheap ticket and then moving to a more expensive one to not pay the price of an expensive ticket?
Last year, I went to a baseball game a few innings late (maybe 2nd inning), how do you determine the time at which point to sell the seat? I would be upset if I paid $64+ bucks per ticket to have my seats sold based on getting to the stadium a little late.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2507662
I think it's an interesting read, and it puts things in perspective.
Much easier to enforce when you don't have to ask people to see their tickets. Everyone hates that.
