Ticketmaster Claims Hacking Over Ticket Resale Site

FlopEJoe writes "Ticketmaster claims that RMG Technologies is providing software to avoid security measures on their website - even to the point of utilizing bots to get large blocks of tickets. RMG says it just 'provides a specialized browser for ticket brokers.' From the New York Times article: 'The fact that tickets to popular events sell out so quickly -- and that brokers and online resellers obtain them with such velocity -- is clouding the business, many in the music industry say. It is enough, some longtime concertgoers say, to make them long for the days when all they had to do to obtain tickets was camp out overnight.'"

Ticket Brokers Suck

[by Anonymous Coward]

They are nothing more than scalpers.

Of course, all that is needed to fix this is for tickets to be tied to the credit card. You buy the ticket with the card,you confirm it's your card when you get there.

Led Zepplin fans with wrong CC get turned away

[davidwr (791652)]

Led Zepplin held a lottery for tickets to an upcoming concert.

They neglected to tell the winners the tickets were non-transferable.

The promoters are telling ticketholders that if their names don't match the names on the credit cards they won't get in.

BBC News has more [bbc.co.uk].

"What we have here is a failure to communicate."

Re:

[alshithead (981606)]

"Led Zepplin held a lottery for tickets to an upcoming concert.

They neglected to tell the winners the tickets were non-transferable."

I seem to remember hearing that the tickets were non-transferable when I first heard that they would be available by lottery only. That was the whole idea, cut out the scalping.

Re:Led Zepplin fans with wrong CC get turned away

[Firethorn (177587)]

My economic solution, that would also ensure that scalping is minimized would be to hold a dutch auction - everybody bids what they're willing to pay, then the tickets are all sold at the highest price that ensures a sellout.

If that doesn't work, start up with sky-high prices, then gradually drop them until a sellout is achieved - it would minimize scalping because in order to get large numbers of tickets you'd have to buy early, at the higher price.

Though making the tickets non-transferable works at least a little bit.

Besides, scalpers don't always make out - I've heard of them selling tickets at half the price they paid for them on the day of the show because they just can't move them.

Re:

[crosbie (446285)]

See The Digital Art Auction [digitalartauction.com], which describes such an auction. It focusses upon the case of an unlimited number of seats, but can just as easily be used for a finite ticket count.

Re:

[Firethorn (177587)]

Hmm... That reads a lot like a dutch auction, just modified to be revenue maximizing when the material to be auctioned is unlimited.

You could do that at least a bit with a regular dutch auction. If you see that selling 99 out of a 100 items would raise the price by a dollar each, say $20 to $21 dollars. The seller could place an extra 'bid' at $21, buying the last one, increasing the price from $2079 rather than $2000 for an extra profit of $79, plus having the item available.

Still, when you're talking a

Re:

[John Hurliman (152784)]

Your proposed solution might work because it makes sure the high profits go the venue/artist, not the scalpers, but it only works if you can design such a system that can keep out/identify the scalpers. These technical hurdles is what caused the problem in the first place: if Ticketwhatever made a system with all security features working as intended, then there would be much less of a problem. The same technical hurdles would need to be taken for your proposed auction system. But the reason scalpers can ma

Re:Led Zepplin fans with wrong CC get turned away

[NoPantsJim (1149003)]

"What we have here is a failure to communicate."

I believe that they really meant to say "Communication Breakdown".

Re:Ticket Brokers Suck

[Broken scope (973885)]

What if you buy tickets for a friend... or you give them to a friend because something comes up and you can't go?

Re:Ticket Brokers Suck

[by Anonymous Coward]

Have you been writing all the spam I get?

Re:

[senatorpjt (709879)]

I am the gatekeeper. Are you the ticketmaster?

Re:

[magarity (164372)]

all that is needed to fix this is for tickets to be tied to the credit card
 
All you need to fix this is for tickets to be sold in an auction format. If the highest bidder is a scalper then they won't be able to sell it at a higher price on the marketplace. Presto, no more scalpers. Now to only make sure the bands get the increases in ticket retail values and not TicketMaster or the record companies.

Re:Ticket Brokers Suck

[MoriaOrc (822758)]

Because there's no way that someone can simultaneously have money and enjoy music...

Re:

[Firethorn (177587)]

Bingo - If you can sell out concerts at $400 per ticket, why sell tickets at $100 per ticket. Sure, you get the excuse 'but legions of my fans can't afford $400'. So what? They can buy the CD/music video DVD when it comes out. If nothing else, it's an incentive for various fans to get better paying jobs, save up, etc...

If they really want to let the people who can only scrounge up $100 attend a show, then hold more concerts. Eventually even the rich fans will run out of money for multiple concerts.

But

Re:

[Protonk (599901)]

It still doesn't matter. If the band insists on doing this, then shortages will result, because you have more tickets demanded at that price than will be supplied. In this case you have a direct tradeoff ONLY if you assume that no one breaks the rules (hah). The tradeoff is this. If prices are allowed to rise to equilibrium, then some people will not be able to go because they can't afford it. If we hold prices low, then some people won't be able to go REGARDLESS of their ability to afford it.

The b

Re:Ticket Brokers Suck

[DamnStupidElf (649844)]

They are nothing more than scalpers.

Damn straight! Service charge here, convenience charge there, credit card processing fee at the end... You were talking about ticketmaster, right?

Mod Parent Up

[jbengt (874751)]

Tickmaster sucks the life out of venues and acts.

Desperate for culture...

[TheNarrator (200498)]

Speaking of Brittany Spears concerts, It throughly amazes me how desperate people are for "culture". Any public gathering that involves alcohol, some pretension of sophistication or spirituality, and good parking is absolutely overflowing with people these days. Maybe I'm just getting old :/

Solution

[Travis Mansbridge (830557)]

Sell some tickets online, sell some more at the venue.

Re:

[MightyYar (622222)]

That still doesn't address the core problem - that there is more demand than supply. Keeping prices below market rate is bad for everyone. If prices reflected the market, then there would be no room for 3rd parties.

On the other hand, I know absolutely nothing about the business - perhaps having shows "sold out" all the time is more important to the marketing of a band, and solving the problem of 3nd party ticket sellers is secondary.

Re:

[Neoprofin (871029)]

Depends on the show.

A lot of people buy their tickets early, at face value, and would never consider paying scalper prices. A lot of other people don't bother and are willing to pay far far more. Raising the cost of tickets might force out 3rd parties, but it would, in many cases lead to fewer people buying tickets and thus less profit overall. There are probably very highly paid people working that sort of thing out.

Re:

[timmarhy (659436)]

the tickets don't reflect the market at all. they are artifically high due to ticket* group of companys fixing prices.

$100 a ticket to see a band? you've got to be kidding me.

they lost my business years ago.

Re:Solution

[Sergeant Pepper (1098225)]

Uhh... artificially high? The fact that concerts for good bands sell out so quickly shows that they're NOT artificially high.

Re:Solution

[cHiphead (17854)]

You're older and have enough disposable income, the core fans typically do not for newer bands.

Re:

[DAldredge (2353)]

What age do you assume I am?

Re:Solution

[empaler (130732)]

Daldredge (2353)What age do you assume I am?

4-digit UID? Moses beats you by a nose hair.

Re:

[CastrTroy (595695)]

Or just go to see different bands. There's probably about 20 different venues in any major city where you can see a live band for $10 or less at least once a week. I've even seen some pretty big name bands sell tickets for way less than $175. Last concert I went to was Slayer, ant it was about $50 for a ticket on the floor. The Eagles only charge $175 a ticket because they know all their fans are old, and have a bunch of money saved up, and will pay just about anything to see them. If a band like Slaye

Re:

[shmlco (594907)]

"Keeping prices below market rate is bad for everyone."

Yeah, I'd say that only the rich and well-to-do deserve to go to concerts.

Re:Solution

[644bd346996 (1012333)]

Forgetting your Econ 101 class? Price ceilings only help the poor when you make sure the poor are first in line. Otherwise, they end up helping the rich just as much (and in the real world, often more so).

And we're to feel sorry?!

[FatAlb3rt (533682)]

Ticketmaster's been bending us over for years...now we're to feel bad for them? It's too bad TM has such a stronghold on the industry - ticket sales ain't rocket science, especially not at a convenience fee of $10+.... per ticket.

Re:

[Chris Pimlott (16212)]

I'm not a big fan of TicketMaster either, but anything to stop professional scalpers from buying up huge blocks of tickets is a good thing for the average fan.

I do agree that their fees are overly high; on the other hand, their site does perform rather well under huge swells of traffic when popular event tickets go online. I've had much more frustrating experiences with some other online ticket sites that just buckled under the load.

Re:And we're to feel sorry?!

[jandrese (485)]

Does Ticketmaster actually do anything to stop scalpers? From what I've seen Scalpers seem to have a lot less trouble with their system than regular people. I really really hate buying tickets online from them. Lemme run down the experience:

1. You navigate to their website past the dozens of scalper pretenders and through their horrible interface.
2. Select your area and click go. It's not always clear where exactly the tickets are, but I guess if you do it enough you'll learn the terminology.
3. Now you have to do their Captcha, which usually has a bunch of 1s and Os, or Is and 0s, it's a bit of a crapshoot getting it right.
4. After a few minutes you get randomly given some seats. If you'd prefer to have one higher up but closer around a side or down the middle, well, tough. You can try to have more tickets randomly generated but they'll tend to be in the same area time and time again.
5. Now you have to high stress part of buying the tickets. You're presented with a huge form with your name, address, etc... and told that if you can't fill all of the info in within 2 minutes then you'll lose your tickets and have to start over
6. Do it again for the credit card info.
7. And for the delivery part. If the site is going to crash, it will usually do it here, or the next page will just take more than a minute to load and when you finally get it the page will already be timed out.
8. Otherwise you get the joy of spending $10 or $15 to have them email you a PDF and have you print it out on your own paper with your own ink. I'm sure glad they managed to email me for only $10.
At least once you have the PDF (which tells you very clearly to print out the whole thing on an 8.5x11 or it won't be valid, despite the fact that 75% of the page is just ads). When you get to the venue all they care about is the barcode on the bottom.

Every time I see the system I think I could write a website that could easily do the same thing for less than a dollar a ticket. The trick is of course that I wouldn't have the vast sums of money to buy out venues across the country to insure the monopoly.

Re:

[bitingduck (810730)]

Every time I see the system I think I could write a website that could easily do the same thing for less than a dollar a ticket. The trick is of course that I wouldn't have the vast sums of money to buy out venues across the country to insure the monopoly.

brownpapertickets [brownpapertickets.com]

I've only used them once (or maybe twice), but it worked fine. It was when a band had *very* early advance ticket sales to supporters (essentially low level patrons).

Ticketweb [ticketweb.com] also handles a lot of small clubs in the LA area and isn't usually too expensive. It's gotten so that things are likely enough to sell out at small clubs that advance tickets are a good idea, even for a lot of local bands.

Re:

[truesaer (135079)]

Ticketmaster doesn't really care, its not like they get less money if a scalper buys tickets as opposed to someone who really wants to see the show. They only care because their customers get frustrated when they can't buy tickets for a show they want to see. The main beneficiaries from Tickermaster's lawsuits should be regular consumers. It does benefit them indirectly by making their customers happier, but they get paid one way or another.

Whats interesting is that the article says this company RMG is a

Re:

[ucblockhead (63650)]

It's not Ticketmaster that gets hurt. It is the people (other than scalpers) trying to buy tickets.

Re:And we're to feel sorry?!

[kindbud (90044)]

You do realize that the promoter for the event negotiates the service fee Ticketmaster will be allowed to collect? TM doesn't get to charge just any old fee they want without the promoter's explicit OK. If the promoter had his way, your ticket would have one figure on it, the face value, and all the fees and extras would be hidden in that single figure, and you'd not know there was anything to complain about. But state and local laws require varying degrees of itemization from place to place, and where disclosure requirements are most stringent, fans are most unhappy about ticket prices. Ignorance really is bliss sometimes.

Re:

[liquidpele (663430)]

$30? You should feel lucky. I just had to pay double for tickts to Rascal Flatts because it sold out so quickly and my wife wanted them for her birthday. Ended up paying over $300 for 2 tickets in a decent section. I wish they would limit a certain number of sales to individuals - like making the person submit a Credit card # or drivers license # on payment, and then they have to show that card to get into the concert or something, or maybe they only ship up to X number of tickets to each home addresses

Re:

[by Anonymous Coward]

That really sucks. You had to pay $300+, and you had to listen to Rascall Flatts.

Re:

[CastrTroy (595695)]

Unless, of course, the venue [wikipedia.org] happens to be out in the burbs.

One good turn deserves another...

[garcia (6573)]

Coming from the company that has, for the longest time, been ripping off customers and making a killing off unnecessary ticket processing fees which are likely a hold-over from when they were outlets in shopping malls and telephone sales. There is absolutely no reason why I should have to pay such astronomical rates to a third party in order to get tickets for a show to support bands that I want to see because they don't support the RIAA.

If anything, these companies are just paying you back for screwing over legitimate consumers for years by screwing you over more. The TicketMaster model is dead and everyone should really do their own ticketing in order to avoid this non-sense. I am much more likely to pay a band's direct ticketing agent than TicketMaster. Hell, I'm more likely to go to a show when I have to pay anyone other than TicketMaster to get the tickets for any event I attend whether it be sports, theater, or music.

Re:

[garcia (6573)]

Then support your local music scene. Chances are there are more than a few great bands in your city, and the clubs they play at don't even sell tickets through TicketMaster (or if they do it's only for the really big acts/shows). If you don't want to support the RIAA, then that means not supporting the bands on the member labels. It's as simple as that.

Uhh, that's what I was talking about but thanks for allowing someone to waste their mod points on your post which is redundant.

Several obvious solutions

[davidwr (791652)]

1) Lottery
2) Auction
3) Non-transferable tickets

An auction is the most capitalistic approach. Scalpers won't bid much lower than they think they can resell the tickets for later.

A lottery adds some fairness but only if you can limit the number of tickets per buyer and avoid the straw-buyer problem.

Non-transferable tickets that are refundable for 100% of the purchase price will solve the scalpers-buying-up-all-the-tickets problem but they aren't too useful if your target audience is children and others who don't have ID cards.

For popular shows, I'd go with selling non-transferable tickets, where any adult would need an ID that matched the name on the ticket and children would have to be accompanied by someone sitting nearby. If after a few days the promoters realize a given block of seats is not expected to sell out, I would lift the non-transferable restriction and let people sell their tickets on the open market. Anyone needing to return tickets could get their money back less the usual ticket-service charge.

If you show up with a non-transferable ticket in hand that doesn't have your name on it, you are turned away. You can contact the original purchaser to beg him to get you a refund.

I'm not sure how this would work for shows oriented to the 12-15 crowd, as these people usually come without their parents but without any ID other than a school ID.

It's their problem to solve, not mine.

[m0nkyman (7101)]

Waah. They can spend some of the money they get from ticket buyers to come up with solutions to protect their customers (the promoters that is). It's their problem to solve, and I ain't going to help them. If they can't solve it, promoters might stop using them, and I would consider it progress.

Captcha Problems

[astrotek (132325)]

I'm assuming ticketmaster isn't implementing the captcha correctly. There is only 3 ways to exploit the system:

1) enter in the captcha before the tickets go on sale, and purchase when available
2) bypass the captcha because its not a requirement to make a purchase
3) the captcha not complex enough to fool a computer for a few minutes

No software should be getting around it without someone typing in the magic letters after the tickets go on sale.

Re:

[astrotek (132325)]

CAPTCHA = Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart

A human using the system is beyond the stated scope.

Happened before - will happen again...and again...

[djupedal (584558)]

Two years ago, authorities in Paris uncovered a ticketing scheme that had thrived for years and sluiced off more than a million euros involving the Eiffel Tower.

As long as there is commodity demand, there will be someone short-cutting the process for their own advantage.

It's worse than you think...

[bluelarva (185170)]

These so called ticket brokers are actually worse than most people think. I actually had a long conversation with one of these scums. First of all, these guys don't operate small. He claimed that his operation spent over a million dollar a year just on Google AdWords advertisement campaign. That tells you the scale of his operation. He uses a network of machines with bot software to buy up as much tickets as he possibly can for sports events and concerts. The markup on those tickets are astronomical. He deals mostly with movie and sports star agents mostly to unload these tickets at shockingly high prices but those agents don't care because they are out to make their clients happy at all cost. What's sad is how he sometimes end up with bunch of unsold tickets. This creates artificial demand thus increases ticket price for everyone as well as depriving fans who want to go see these events. Whenever you see bunch of empty seats in a sold out baseball game, it's not because the fan had a change of plans or got sick. It's because these scummy ticket brokers couldn't unload them for huge profit. One of the reason why ticketmaster won't do anything about the situation is because these brokers ensure that events are sold out which works out in their favor. They don't care about actual fans getting hold of the tickets. They simply want the tickets sold.

ticketmaster is why I don't go to events

[fotbr (855184)]

Concerts, sporting events, whatever. If ticketmaster is involved, I don't go.

I just don't like being surcharged and fee'd to death. If its going to turn out to be a $300 ticket, just price the ticket at $300. Not $150 with a $50 convenience fee, a $30 internet-order fee, a $20 online-ticket-printing fee, a $10 "you paid with a visa card" fee, a $20 "processing fee", and a $20 "fee collection surcharge".

Here is where the money is!

[maillemaker (924053)]

I think this is very interesting. It tells us a few things:

1) It tells me that ticket prices are, basically, under-priced. If scalpers are buying up the tickets and selling them for 10 times the face value, then Tickemaster should be selling those tickets at ten times what they are currently selling them for.

2) It tells me there is a lot of money in live performances. If I were a performer, I would capitalize on this by putting on 15 shows in a city instead of 5 (or however many I could continue to sell out) before moving on to the next city. While digital music is becoming worthless, clearly some live performances are skyrocketing in value.

3) It tells me that Ticketmaster needs to work on developing technology that can limit the number of tickets that can be purchased by any given entity or individual.

Re:

[vtcodger (957785)]

***Ayn Rand would be so disappointed.Ayn Rand would be so disappointed.***

If I recall my Ayn Rand, high ticket prices wouldn't be a problem in a Randian paradise because artists whose artistic integrity has been transgressed would frequently blow up venues. That would, I am quite certain, discourage desire for tickets and therefore bring ticket prices down.

An interesting and unique solution to a vexing problem.

Note that we could achieve much the same affect by simply marking every 500th ticket with a