Did you know that 4 out of 5 event tickets are purchased by bots every day?

The entertainment industry has a lot of vulnerabilities. One of them is ticket scalping. This type of bot attack allows online platforms to acquire a large number of tickets and resell them at higher prices.

Unregulated price inflation leads to customer complaints. Complaints eventually lead to reputation loss and public relations crises. To understand the nature of ticket scalping, let’s take a closer look at it.

What Is Ticket Scalping?

Ticket Scalping Definition

Ticket scalping (aka ticket touting or ticket reselling) is an example of a sophisticated bot attack. It is aimed at instant mass acquisition of tickets to resell them at a higher price and generate a profit.

Resellers use scalping bots (aka ticket bots) to acquire large amounts of tickets. After that, they resell them at inflated prices. As a result, customers are left with no alternative but to purchase these tickets at inflated prices. The New York State Attorney General has provided several startling examples: a single bot purchasing over 1,000 concert tickets in just one minute, two bots snapping up more than 15,000 tickets in a single day, and ticket prices being inflated by as much as 7,000% on resale platforms.

Who Uses Ticket Scalping?

Ticket scalping isn't exclusive to resale platforms. Different individuals could use scalping bots depending on their needs.

• Ticket brokers
• Individual scalpers
• Hospitality agencies
• Corporations
• Criminals

They use bots to scrape event data and ticket prices, continuously scan seat map inventories for newly released or premium seats, and instantly purchase available tickets to resell them.

How Does Ticket Scalping Work?

1. Scanning ticketing platforms for hot events: Scalpers are usually appealed to several specific ticketing industry characteristics, such as availability of tickets and prices, and limited availability of tickets for certain hot events.
2. Getting as many accounts as possible: Scalpers would use bad bots to create fake accounts or take over existing accounts. Take this example, a ticket broker used 9,047 separate accounts to make 313,528 ticket orders over the course of 20 months.
3. Deploying scalping bots to automate mass purchases: During ticket sales, scalpers leverage bots to rapidly purchase large quantities of tickets, outpacing loyal fans and circumventing per-customer limits by using multiple browsers. This strategy allows bot operators to secure hundreds of tickets as soon as they become available.
4. Reselling tickets at inflated prices: Scalpers quickly resell tickets through social media, specialized websites, and classified ads. Despite high markups, loyal fans are likely to buy these tickets because they are eager to attend the event.

The Impact of Ticket Scalping Bots

Ticket Scalping Is Bad for Business and Economics

• Mass purchases prevent customers from being able to acquire tickets directly from the vendor for events, leading to a significant loss of clientele.
• Tickets sold at inflated prices cause discontent among the customers and lead to a public relations crisis.
• Vendors keep selling tickets at low prices aiming to sell as many tickets as possible relying on profits from food and merchandise.
• The absence of ticket reselling policies allows scalpers to put any prices approved by the market.
• Uncontrollably high ticket prices create customer outflows.

More details here: The economics of ticket scalping

Is Ticket Scalping Legal?

The legitimacy of the ticket scalping situation is different across the world. Every country implements its policies to handle scalpers. Here are some examples.

USA

In the US, different states apply different policies to manage scalpers and resellers.

New York the Arts and Cultural Affairs Law limits the ticket's reselling price to $5 or 10% (whichever is greater) of the ticket's face value.

In New Jersey, this limit goes to $3 or 20% of the ticket price (whichever is greater). (2013 New Jersey Revised Statutes § 56:8-26 – 56:8-38)

Delaware prohibits reselling tickets at a higher price than their face value on the day before or during an event.

In Hawaii, Indiana, Maryland, Arkansas, and New Mexico reselling tickets for more than their face value is illegal. (Hawaii Revenue Statute § 440-17, Indiana Code § 25-9-1-26, Maryland Code § 43-318, Arkansas Code § 5-63-201, New Mexico Statutes § 30-46-1)

In California, Louisiana, and North Carolina, ticket scalping is illegal without documented permission from the venue owner or operator (California Policy Center § 346, Louisiana Revised Statutes § 4-1, North Carolina General Statutes § 14‑344)

In Illinois, selling tickets anywhere except the box office of the venue is prohibited. (720 Illinois Compiled Statutes 375 § 1)

Canada

Quebec’s Bill 25 prohibits brokers from reselling a ticket at a higher price than its face value. To resell tickets, they need to receive documented permission from the original vendor.

In Ontario, reselling tickets above the face value is completely illegal due to the Ticket Speculation Act. and even punishable.

Australia

In Australia, the New South Wales government prohibits scalpers from reselling tickets at a price 10% higher than the face value of the ticket.

How to Prevent Ticket Scalping?

The ticket bots need to pass several layers of gateways:

1. Account registration;
2. Account login;
3. Order check-out page;
4. Payment page;

Deploying human verification, which can distinguish bots from genuine human users, to these sensitive gateways can detect and filter out these automated programs.

Traditional CAPTCHA (like ReCAPTCHA)

CAPTCHA was originally designed to help us distinguish bad bots. However, with the growth of the Internet, traditional CAPTCHA is not effective enough.

Advantages:

• Image rotation
• Orientation
• Recognition

Disadvantages:

• Can be beaten by modern sophisticated bots with image recognition technologies
• Can be beaten by CAPTCHA farms
• Poor user experience and unfriendly for admins

Full-Stack Bot Management Solution

A full-stack bot management solution is a comprehensive and effective strategy for addressing bot threats. However, its configuration and management can sometimes be complex and costly.

Advantages:

• Constantly monitoring your website traffic to detect bots
• Smooth user experience with less friction

Disadvantages:

• Paid and very expensive
• Installation and management can be complex

GeeTest Captcha | Advanced AI-based CAPTCHA

GeeTest is the world's leading enterprise-grade bot management solution provider. With its advanced Adaptive CAPTCHA, which ensures both ease of use and security in every interaction, enterprises can prevent various frauds and threats such as Ticket Scalping, Web Scraping, Credential Stuffing, and more.

Advantages:

• Deep Machine Learning analysis and AI-powered back-end engine ensure Adaptive security strategies, proactive defense before attackers, providing 7-layer dynamic security protection with up to 4374 security strategies per cycle
• Ease-of-use design with customizable fun captcha tests ensures low friction, offers the best reporting system and user experience
• Intelligent and modular operating systems ensure real-time risk detection and settings at a glance
• 3-Step Installation, 0.5 days integration for each business event

Disadvantages:

• Paid after free trial

Conclusion

Why do you need to take measures to prevent scalping bots?

1. Managing ticket scalpers is crucial for long-term success and the reputation of your business
2. Preventing ticket scalping will help ticket price regulation in the overall market
3. Stop customers' outflow

It is imperative to take measures and stop scalpers and resellers from mass purchasing your tickets. Analyze your needs and options and take serious measures right now.

Learn more about how Geetest offers an enterprise-grade bot management solution as an alternative to traditional captcha. Register or try the Demo of GeeTest Adaptive CAPTCHA!