Event ticket sales are rigged, says attorney general

Some of the brokers also use illegal software – called “ticket bots” – to snap up as many hot tickets as possible and resell them at significant markups. New York’s attorney general says that may be because more than half of tickets to some events are reserved for various industry insiders.

Investigations have identified the brokers re-selling the most tickets for NY events, and almost all the brokers were unlicensed, and several had employed illegal ticket bots to buy tickets, according to the report. “The NFL imposes no restrictions whatsoever on any fan’s ability to buy or resell tickets on other secondary ticketing sites or to do so at any price they choose”. “There’s just no way ordinary fans can compete with that”, Schneiderman said at a news conference in Buffalo Thursday.

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”.

The results of a multi-year investigation show that for top concerts, a sizable chunk of tickets are never made available to the general public.

Schneiderman has released the findings of a wide-ranging investigation into the alleged abuses of the concert and sports ticket industry.

“The more aggressively sports leagues and individual teams push ticket buyers and sellers to use their “official” secondary markets, the more serious this problem becomes”, the report said. The cheapest ticket on the site was $353.

Venues and sellers like Ticketmaster regularly tacked on fees that added more than 21 percent to the face value, investigators said.

Also on Thursday, Schneiderman’s office announced settlements with brokers MSMSS, LLC and Extra Base Tickets, LLC that were illegally operating without a ticket reseller license.

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. “I’ve seen bots manipulate the system, hold tickets and ultimately lock average consumers out of the ticket buying process”.

Schneiderman says leveling the playing field for consumers will take action on many fronts, including changes in state law. Tickets, he said, should be limited to a percentage over the face-value cost of a particular ticket. “That is true of Amazon and Etsy, and it is also typically true even of vendors of airline tickets, like Expedia and Priceline”.

The report also said that the New York Yankees have also put in place a price floor.

In terms of ticket fees, Schneiderman said ticket vendor fees are much higher than other online retailers.