Lin-Manuel Miranda is flexing his newfound cultural muscle in an attempt to shore up this unusual gap in legislation that exists, says RollingStone, and he’s doing so with the support of ny senator Chuck Schumer.
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“It’s plain and simple: We need to sweep the stage of bots so that actual fans can enjoy Hamilton, other hit Broadway shows and major concerts”, Schumer said Sunday. Charles Schumer is calling for a federal crackdown on ticket scalpers using computer programs to jack up the prices of popular Broadway shows, concerts and sporting events, urging support for legislation he introduced to restrict them.
According to Schumer’s office, scalpers used bots to grab over 20,000 Hamilton tickets during Miranda’s run in the title role; from that surplus of tickets, scalpers walked off with over $15.5 million by selling their bot-bought tickets to roughly 100 Hamilton performances.
Miranda penned a New York Times article in June to discuss how scalper bots were making it hard for Broadway fans to get Hamilton tickets. Between 2012 and 2014, three ticket scalpers in the NY area bought more than 140,000 tickets using bots, and Ticketmaster has estimated that bots may purchase a full 60 percent of online tickets.
“The problem will persist until we strengthen the existing law and make this recurrent illegal behavior a felony”, he wrote. In a statement, Senator Schumer said, “By eliminating “bots” and slapping hackers with a hefty fine, we can better ensure those who want to attend shows in the future will not have to pay outrageous, unfair prices”.
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The bill, which was originally announced in March, still needs to be approved by Congress.
