Who is hurt by scalping?

Quiggin admits that resale possibilities will increase the overall demand for tickets and thus increase the overall revenue for charity.  But he sees a caveat:

Geldof is relying on donated services from musicians who would otherwise be selling them. To the extent that lottery tickets go to people who could not otherwise afford to pay, the musicians are giving up time, but not money (and getting good publicity). But with resale, the charity concert becomes a substitute for attendance at a standard concert. Musicians might reasonably change their minds about participation.

In other words, a charity concert — with tickets allocated by non-price mechanisms — might cannibalize the demand for other concerts less than would a market-clearing price event.  So the musicians can be better off with no ticket resale. 

But keep the following in mind.  Let’s say it is feasible to prevent or at least limit resale (otherwise there is nothing practical to argue about).  Any musician could limit resale for a selected non-charity concert, and allow resale for a charity concert.  The resold charity tickets would then be reaching a new group of buyers, rather than cannibalizing demand.  If you are not selling your tickets at market-clearing prices, why not allocate some of that surplus to the charitable event, rather than to scalpers for the non-charitable concert?

At the very least, Geldof is being hypocritical.  First, his rhetoric does seem to be simply anti-capitalist.  Second, he claimed that the ticket resale was being funded off the back of the world’s poor.  That is not true.  Most likely resale boosts charitable receipts, increases consumer welfare, and maybe lowers the future income of the participating musicians.  Those musicians are the backs in question, and no those people are not the world’s poor.