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.
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In a statement, Ticketmaster said: “Ticketmaster fully cooperated with the Attorney General’s office in developing the report and looks forward to continuing to work with the Attorney General to ensure that artists can get tickets into the hands of their fans”.
Schneiderman’s report also talks about more straightforward scalping businesses run by licensed ticket brokers, which are legal but loathsome – the resale of a single One Direction ticket recently sent the cost from $101 to $7,244 – and about ticket “holds” for industry insiders, as well as presales for club members and credit-card holders. “And there’s just no way ordinary fans can compete with that”. “Although NYAG has taken steps to stop numerous largest operations from using Bots to purchase tickets to events in New York”, Schneiderman’s report explains, “we recognize that other brokers may take their place”. Current laws already prohibit the use of bots and speculative price but both practices are rampant in the industry.
While that may be the case, one argument from the NFL’s side says fans who are looking to buy and sell tickets frequently have other options and can explore them if they do not want to worry about the price floors on Ticketmaster. “Ticketmaster and Tickets.com can add on significant fees that can as much as double the price of the ticket”, added Schneiderman. The investigation confirms that hundreds of thousands of tickets are being acquired using illegal software.
“The revelation that the concert and sport ticket industry is unfair is nothing new, however discovering how deep it goes is certainly unsettling”, said Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz (D-Bronx), chair of the Assembly Committee on Consumer Affairs & Protection.
Bots are purchasing concert tickets in NY at an extremely high rate, but the practice is illegal.
“It is therefore easy for buyers to be fooled into believing what they are paying is the market price for a ticket”, Schneiderman’s report says. According to New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, that’s because you never had a chance. In 2013, another automated purchaser obtained 520 tickets to a Beyoncé concert at the Barclays Center in 2013 in three minutes.
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And defeating bots has also proved hard. “I’ve seen bots manipulate the system, hold tickets and ultimately lock average consumers out of the ticket buying process”.
