The economic psychology of nightclubs

While I waited in the line for pre-sale ticket holders outside a Detroit nightclub (names have been omitted in order to protect the guilty) from midnight to 1 AM on Friday night/Saturday morning, I had an epiphany regarding the economic psychology of nightclubs. It is a often-repeated truism that there is an incentive for a nightclub to try to have a long line waiting outside in order to give the impression that they are the hippest place to be. As I waited in line, I realized that the reason why they made the pre-sale ticket holders wait in line, rather than people who didn't already have tickets, was simple economics. The nightclub has an economic incentive to get non-ticket-holders into the club quickly, because if they make those people wait, they could decide to go home or go to a different club and then that is a lost sale. The nightclub already has the pre-sale ticket-holder's money. They can make the ticket-holder wait in line for an hour on a freezing winter night because the ticket-holder has an economic incentive to stay--(s)he has already spent money for admission in the club, and if they go home (or to another club), that money is wasted. And if there are a lot of pre-sale ticket holders, you fulfill the psychological strategy of having a long line waiting outside to give the impression of being a hip place to be.

The moral of the story: Don't buy pre-sale tickets for a club event unless you are fairly certain that the club is going to be filled to capacity when you arrive.