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“The empirical results suggest that banning scalping might lead to a revenue windfall of $2 million per year to the team owner (in baseball or football),” wrote economist Craig A. Depken, II. “What is still unknown is whether anti-scalping legislation improves social welfare.”

It points to a baffling economics question at the heart of the scalper problem: why do they even exist? If customers are willing to pay double or triple the face value of the ticket to a scalper, why don’t sports teams and musical acts simply raise the price and collect that revenue themselves?

The former CEO of Ticketmaster Irving Azoff told New Yorker magazine that a member of Congress in the United States asked him if he was “f—ing stupid,” for leaving so much money on the table and letting it go to scalpers.

“You’ve got the only business I can think of where the price goes up as soon as the merchandise leaves the store. It’s crazy,” the congressman said.

The politician has a point. If the best shawarma shop in town was selling sandwiches for $2, a savvy reseller could buy sandwiches and sell them for a quick profit outside to people who didn’t want to wait in line. Presumably, the shawarma shop would see the error and raise prices to correct the market inefficiency.

As a rough analogy, it works — in general, businesses want to make as much profit as possible — but live events are much more complicated.

A research paper published in the Public Finance Review found that promoters tend to be risk-averse when it comes to ticket prices, because most artists are happier with a packed venue, even if it costs them money. Lower prices also mean that more of the artist’s fans will be able to attend, which is valuable to the artist and often makes for a better show.