Ticket Scalping Exposed: Preventing Quick Sellouts (2024)

FAQs

What is the problem with ticket scalping? ›

Ticket scalping is the act of purchasing event tickets, often in bulk, to resell them at a higher price. As a result, many genuine fans are priced out of attending their favorite concerts, fairs, or shows. The costs may become prohibitive for families or groups that need to purchase multiple tickets.

Ticketmaster places all these hurdles on the way to a purchase with an eye toward stopping professional resellers — the networks of scalpers who snap up tickets with the goal of reselling for a profit.

Buy tickets from official sources when possible.

Sometimes the official ticketer sells out and resale is your only option. But primary ticket sellers like Ticketmaster, Seat Geek, or AXS are often the safest and most secure places to buy tickets, when possible.

Verify that the seller has a real physical addresses and phone numbers. Scammers often post fake addresses, PO Box, or no address on their websites. Check the actual web address of the resale ticket seller. Some scammers create phony websites that closely resemble authentic ticket company websites.

The point-and-click style execution through the Level 2 window or pre-programmed hotkeys is the quickest method for the speediest order fills. Scalping is purely based on technical analysis and short-term price fluctuations. Due to the extensive use of leverage, scalping is considered a high-risk style of trading.

Specifically, there are seven states where scalping is illegal because anyone who is selling or reselling tickets needs a special license (New York, Alabama, Georgia, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Massachusetts.) A further four leave it up to individual municipalities to decide.

Economists, however, typically are opposed to such laws because they create market inefficiencies. As stated earlier, ticket scalping exists as a necessary mechanism that allows the market to clear. Without ticket scalping, demand would continue to exceed supply, thus creating an inefficient market.

Great in theory, but despite decades of advancements with computerized ticket selling, paperless tickets, and fan-driven ticket exchanges, scalpers and secondary-market companies still manage to get their hands on tickets. The problem is not going away.

Among the changes it proposed are outlawing speculative ticketing in which scalpers try to sell tickets they don't actually own yet, expanding legislation to stop bots from buying mass amounts of tickets and slowing down on-sale periods, mandating all-in ticketing to avoid hidden fees at the end of purchases, and ...

Ask yourself if the deal seems realistic. Jane Parsons, consumer expert at Citizens Advice, says: 'If it seems too good to be true, it usually is. Be suspicious if tickets are being sold for events that have already sold out, haven't officially gone on sale or are being offered for a reduced price.

How do you fight back against scalpers? ›

Bots are super-charging ticket scams, buying up huge numbers to sell at a mark-up, according to consumer advocacy groups. Ticket scalping — where tickets are bought to be sold for profit — is an age-old con, but it's now on the rise because of new technology, CHOICE's Jarni Blakkarly says.

If you purchased tickets through Ticketmaster online, they will be displayed inside your Ticketmaster account. Sign in to your account, then go to “My Events.” Click on the event to view your tickets. If they're there, then they're real. Contact Ticketmaster to verify your tickets.

Ticket scalping is the act of buying tickets in an automated manner, using bots (scalper bots) to later resell them for an increased price. Ticket scalping is often considered an unfair practice by many people because this automatically excludes a lot of people from being able to attend the event/concert.

If your tickets have been duplicated or transferred to another account, Ticketmaster might be able to issue new tickets and invalidate the fraudulent ones. File a chargeback: Contact your credit card company or payment platform immediately to request a chargeback.

As a result of the small amount of profit per trade, one trading loss can obliterate any gains from several successful trades. Good trades can yield a 1:1 risk to reward or less. The volatility or wild swings in the currency market can add to scalping gains and profits, but also exacerbate losses.

Scalpers will sell the products at a price that is way above the producer's price. Therefore, a lot of the general public is priced out of the market. By putting regulations in place, we can ensure that customers and businesses are both protected from this unfair practice.

On the other hand, ticket scalping could have detrimental effects on producers and consumers in the long run. Because scalpers may be able to price discriminate more perfectly than producers, they may extract profits that the producer would collect in the scalper's absence.

Some forex brokers prohibit scalping because it can lead to rapid trading activity, which may strain their systems and increase their risk exposure. Is scalping the best for a small account in forex?