One of the episodes deals with a scandal that broke during the filming of the series: tickets were secretly sold to the rich at extraordinary prices when they were supposed to be allocated on a first-come-first-served basis. This also put me in mind of the Athens Olympics when the stands were virtually empty because people didn't buy the tickets. Same thing happened in Beijing, although the reason there was less clear.
I have a solution for this type of issue and I don't think I'm giving anything away when is say that the core of the idea rhymes with "tree kark-it". That's right: I want people to be able to pay however much or little they want to for any ticket they want.
Technically, this would be done via online auction. It would be trivial to automate such a system. I imagine a system where packages of one or several tickets for some event at some place in the arena would be made available in decreasing quantities as the event approaches. Each auction could last something like a week to give plenty of chance for those who want those tickets most at that particular time to bid for them. One could also envision a certain stock of tickets that might be sold at lottery. You could have anyone who wants them commit to pay whatever price they are sold for but the ultimate recipient and buyer to be selected by lottery. The buyer would then pay for and receive the tickets. That way you could have some tickets available at lower prices than they might be bid to at auction.
The beauty is that all tickets would be sold, since any event that most people are not interested in might have the less popular tickets going for dollars, even cents, while the most demanded tickets would be decided by the democracy of cash.
If any events organisers are desirous of paying me a small retainer I'll take it in hard currency, thanks.
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