Buying Tickets Online is a ‘Fixed Game’

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman released a report Thursday detailing how ticket vendors, scalpers and the secondary ticket market makes it harder for you to get to see your favorite concerts.

The Daily News reported Wednesday on its website that the probe found that 54% of all tickets to hot concerts are set aside for industry insiders or pre-sale customers before they are offered to the general public. M.S.M.S.S. of Manhattan received $80,000 in penalties, and Extra Base Tickets, of Garden City, New York, handed over $65,000. They found that on average, 16 percent of tickets are reserved for various industry insiders like the venue employees, artists and promoters, while 38 percent are reserved for presales to certain groups like holders of a particular credit card.

The situation is compounded by fees added to ticket sales by companies such as events giant Ticketmaster, which can add more than 20 percent to the face price of the tickets, Schneiderman said.

As part of his report, Schneiderman outlined four proposed changes to ny law to make ticket buying more consumer friendly and transparent.

Such floors deprive buyers from purchasing tickets at below face-value, even for teams going nowhere, the report says. “Ticketing is a fixed game”, Schneiderman said in a statement accompanying his infuriating report on Big Ticket. They and their principals also must maintain a license.

Schneiderman also raises issues with brokers that rely on bot software to purchase tickets to popular events, citing research that “confirms that at least tens of thousands of tickets per year are being acquired using this illegal software”. Despite the state having lifted many restrictions on ticket resale in 2007, the report warns that many of these practices are likely still illegal. The report said it “is frequently billed as the official resale site and the only “safe” place to buy secondary National Football League tickets”. The report, the settlements and the National Football League probe together signal the start of a broad investigation into the whole ticket industry.

Reps for Live Nation and the National Football League did not immediately return calls for comment. The investigation, for instance, found that on December 8, 2014, a single broker used a bot to purchase 1,012 tickets to a June 2015 U2 show at Madison Square Garden within the very first minute of the sale.

“Reinstating caps on markups would still allow brokers a role in the market but would also ensure that any price markups be reasonable”, Schneiderman said. “Brokers then mark up the price of those tickets – by an estimated 49% on average, but sometimes by more than 1,000% – yielding easy profits”.

“This investigation is just the beginning of our efforts to create a level playing field in the ticket industry”, Schneiderman said.