Not surprised was my thoughts when reading this. Ticketmaster turns a blind eye to “professional” scalpers who use bots and hundreds of fake named accounts to resell tickets, which Ticketmaster benefiting from the sale fees.
The ticket industry in the digital age has always been overshadowed by scalping, aside from Ticketek failing to scale each year for AFL finals demand that is. Most states in Australia have even made ticket scalping illegal, yet it still happens.
The article and investigation is another notch into the twisted side of ticket selling. Scalpers can take away the opportunity for a fan to see their idol or beloved team even simply making them pay anywhere from 20 to 60% more to attend the event.
Scalping is wrong, but Ticketmaster supports it. The processing and handling fees for an online transaction is also a big load of rubbish. Why there needs to be a processing charge for an online system is ridiculous and isn’t anything but a cash grab.
Tickets follow simple economics, high demand and low supply means high prices. Scalpers delight. Without scalpers the tickets would be falling into the true fans hands and the prices would be lower. Lower again without the cash grab processing fee’s.
If we wanted to put an end to scalping simply having the full name printed on the tickets and an ID scan needing to be done at the entry would be enough. It wont happen though because the privacy sensitive people will have an uproar. I see no problem needing to scan your driver’s license with the ticket to gain entry. Honestly if it removed scalping then 100% would wish that’d be implemented.
Another part of the problem is as this article leads onto, the ticket services are part of the problem. They are essentially doing nothing or in this case supporting and encouraging the scalping. What a sad situation.
Considering the problem is worldwide in multiple companies its going to be hard to police, The scalping issue is rife but for governments to issue id for entry or investigation into companies like Ticketek and Ticketmaster we may then finally see scalpers squashed.