Idea for event ticket sellers

Whether or not you're idealogically for or against ticket touts we all know that most big events will have them, especially given the access to consumers that the internet now gives anyone willing to try their hand at speculation on tickets. This raises the observation that most tickets are sold by event organisers at prices lower than some of the attendees are willing to pay.

What would be interesting would be if they sold tickets in a reverse auction - starting the price very high and gradually bringing it down. Those fans with the money and desire to make sure they get in will have the advantage of getting their tickets early on but at a higher cost, whilst everyone can wait, and watch as the prices comes down. Assuming the number of available tickets is also made public, you can wait until the price is what you're prepared to pay or you see enough tickets shifting to think it's time to get one before they run out. Buy early - pay more and get peace of mind. Buy later - pay less and take more risk of missing the show.

This has several desirable effects: those prepared to pay more get better preference; the event gets maximum price the market is willing to pay at the expense of touts who can't "gazump" consumers early on; and payload on the ticketing system would be distributed over a longer period as not everyone will be refreshing their browser a bazillion times at 8am on the day sales start because tickets will be, say, £1000 to start with.

If the system starts with a £1000 price tag and brings it down by £5 every 30 minutes, after about 4 days the price would be £60. Now the system could also delay the next price drop by, say 5 minutes every time there 1+ tickets are sold. This way the maximum price will be maintained so long as people are buying.

Whether or not fans will see this as exploitation / profiteering would be the biggest hurdle to get over, but pointing out that this eliminates touts and the artist / venue get the money they would have spent anyway instead of that annoying 15 year old bedroom speculator could well mitigate that negative feeling.