Ticket Resale Business is ‘Fixed Game,’ Says NY Attorney General

The investigation found that ticket bots – illegal software that allows people to buy large numbers of tickets – were being used by brokers who sold them on with profits of up to 1,000 per cent.

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.

“The greatest evil that theatergoers in this city have to contend with is the ticket speculator”, a NY magistrate wrote in 1901, according to the report.

“Consequently, if a season ticket holder wants to sell his or her tickets for a lower price than he or she paid, he or she may be unable to do so”, the report states.

In what appears to be a separate probe, CNBC said in a tweet that the attorney general’s office is conducting an antitrust investigation of National Football League and its price-floor practices on tickets.

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — Had a hard time getting a ticket to a concert or sporting event? Fans desperately scouring the web for tickets in the minutes, hours, and days after the concert sold out were confronted with astronomically inflated resale prices. Schneiderman announced settlements with two such companies, MSMSS and Extra Base Tickets, on Thursday and said they would pay penalties of $80,000 and $65,000 respectively. “This investigation is just the beginning of our efforts to create a level playing field in the ticket industry”, he said.

Yet the AG’s office “found an average surcharge of 21% of the face value of a ticket, which amounts to nearly $8 in fees on average”.

“I’ve worked with artists to make ticket prices affordable, only to see those same tickets on sale on the secondary market for much more than face value”, David Taylor, an independent promoter with Empire State Concerts said.

“It took a single bot just one minute to buy more than 1,000 tickets to a U2 concert last summer at Madison Square Garden”.

The attorney general’s office issued a report more than 15 years ago that found New York’s ticket distribution system was largely underground and provided “access to quality seating on the basis of bribes and corruption at the expense of fans”. “With the good has also come the bad and the ticket bots are a very real problem for both producers and consumers”, said Donny Kutzbach of Funtime Presents/Town Ballroom, in a statement. The main exceptions are the sites that sell movie tickets, because those vendors charge consumer fees that are close in magnitude to the average fees charged in live event ticketing.