This post continues the focus on jobs with lessons from personal experience with NFL ticket sales. Sometimes it is helpful to shift to a totally different context to understand the full implications of the transformation taking place in work.
Moving from easy sales to almost no sales. We have been season ticket holders since the Tennessee Titans moved to Nissan Stadium in 1999. In the early days we attended most games but over the last several years have frequently sold our tickets. Initially the sales were quite easy, especially for big games. Through personal communication and social media, we let people know we had tickets for sale and generally were able to sell them at or near face value. We met the buyer in person, handed the tickets over, and received payment.
Then everything changed. Ticketing moved from paper to digital. And sale of tickets was limited to a ticket exchange platform like SeatGeek. We put our tickets on the exchange, priced them according to how theTitans were doing, the draw of the opponent, the weather forecast, and the price of other tickets on the exchange, and then waited. Crickets! On Saturday we would go through the ritual of lowering the price. Then Sunday morning we would lower the price again, to a fraction of the face value. And they would sell almost immediately.
The impact of an efficient market. When I think about the future of work, I think about that experience frequently. The change was about much more than the move from paper to digital tickets. And it was larger than the Titans terrible record over the last few years.
For the first time, every buyer could see every ticket for sale in the stadium, the location of the ticket, and the price of the ticket.The digital platform had instantly created what economists might refer to as an efficient market—they had all the information needed to make a rational decision. And when those two tickets in the lower bowl on the ten-yard line became the cheapest good seats in the stadium, a buyer would pounce.
In the paper-ticket era, neither we as the seller nor the buyer had good information. At times we may have underpriced and at times the buyer may have overpaid. But now, everyone has all the information to make arational decision.
The implication for the future of work is profound. A previous installment in this series made the case for a future without jobs. Of course, there will be some jobs, but the point is that the trend is toward consults, projects, and fractional roles carried out by freelancers and gig workers rather than traditional full-time jobs. So how do digital ticket sales on a platform point us in this direction?
Using a ticket exchange platform, you purchase only the games you are interested in attending, that fit your schedule, in a location that you like, and at a price you can afford. Similarly, using an on-demand workforce platform, you hire the exact expertise you need for a specific task or project, at the time you need it, and for a price you can afford. Like the ticketing platform, you see all the experts available, their specific areas of expertise, their experience, and information about their pricing. For the first time, you have an efficient workforce market.
Digital ticket platforms and digital workforce platforms.There may always be season ticket holders and full-time employees. We should not, however, underestimate the transformational power of having the information to conveniently access what we need, when we need it, at an appropriate price, whether it is a ticket to an NFL football game or expertise to accomplish a specific task in the future of work.
While this post addresses the advantages for buyers of expertise, many unanswered questions remain related to the experience of the experts in this scenario. Will they be able to find buyers for their expertise or will they end up selling their expertise at a fraction of the value, like I did with the football tickets. What about job security and benefits normally associated with traditional jobs?
Many workers are already worried about losing their jobs to AI. Is this another threat lurking in the wings? We will address these and other important questions in future posts.