Scott Porad

Should I go to the Winter Olympics in Vancouver next week?   That is he question on my mind.  (You, my lucky readers, get a chance to help me decide in the poll at the end of this post.)

I live about two hours away, and I have a place to stay because one of my best friends lives in Downtown Vancouver.  So, I’m fortunate in that respect.

I don’t have tickets to anything, but this gives me the opportunity to trot out one of my pet economic theories: that any event that attracts ticket scalper will always attract too many scalpers.

For every event, there are professional ticket scalpers. These scalpers live and breathe in the market for scalped tickets, so they have a very deep understanding of what the market will bear for a ticket.  As events get bigger and bigger there are more and more people who think they can sell tickets and make a buck.  In other words, amateur scalpers.

As a result, The amateur scalpers, not knowing the market as well, invariably provide supply that isn’t demanded.  In addition, the “amateur scalpers” are more likely to fear losing money, so cut their prices earlier.  The net result is the theory I presented above; just checkout Craigslist…there’s thousands of tickets available.

Anyhow, on the con side of the ledger are these things: cost…I would imagine it’s not going to be cheap when you add it all up. Border traffic is going to be a headache; probably not the nightmare that is predicted, but it’s never a breeze.  And, apparenlty, transit within the city is going to be a nightmare.

On the other hand, how often does the Olympics come to the town next door?

What do you think?