The multi-year probe found that more half of all tickets to many popular concerts go to event “insiders” and pre-sale customers, with illegal software “bots” auto-buying thousands of tickets within seconds of their release to the public.
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“My office will continue to crack down on those who break our laws, prey on ordinary consumers, and deny New Yorkers affordable access to the concerts and sporting events they love”, Schneiderman said.
New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is cracking down on third party ticket re-sellers, after a lengthy investigation uncovered third party brokers routinely sell event tickets well above face value.
The attorney general says investigators discovered some brokers mark up tickets as much as 1,000%.
“Price floors may make it impossible to obtain tickets on the team-promoted Ticket Exchange platform for below face value when demand decreases”, like during games at the end of a sports season between teams not headed to the playoffs, the report said.
“It took a single bot just one minute to buy more than 1,000 tickets to a U2 concert”, he said. “Scalped tickets for the Pope is about as low as you can get”.
A similar practice came under scrutiny past year when regulators criticized “speculative” ticketing sales.
Reps for Live Nation and the National Football League did not immediately return calls for comment. Schneiderman’s office has contacted ticket vendors like Ticketmaster to create a process to reduce the number of illegal sales to brokers, according to the report. Tickets, he said, should be limited to a percentage over the face-value cost of a particular ticket.
“The NFL does not require them to use the Ticket Exchange”, NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy told the Associated Press.
The report also advised ending the ban on non-transferable paperless tickets, giving buyers no recompense if they can no longer go to an event.
A spokeswoman for the Yankees said the Yankees Ticket Exchange is “a completely voluntary program” and a small percentage of the market. They want the teams to remove it, he said.
Also on Thursday, Schneiderman’s office announced settlements with brokers MSMSS, LLC and Extra Base Tickets, LLC that were illegally operating without a ticket reseller license. Moreover, the existing system has also enabled a select few to buy tickets in bulk to Broadway shows like ‘Hamilton, ‘ or big concerts like Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band, only to sell them on the secondary market at outrageous markups – these people are nothing short of vultures.
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Schneiderman said Thursday the NY state law “has been amended to require only reasonable fees for special services. and these fees are excessive”.
