TicketDisaster caught red-handed allowing scalpers to scoop up thousands of tickets and resell on their own sister site
I always hated Ticketmaster. I found, as a customer, that they always had a pretty bad ticket selection, high prices, and high fees. In addition, their customer service has always sucked.
In 1989, I had a friend who worked there. He told me that he was instructed to leave people holding for at least 10 minutes when they called in, even if he was available to take calls.
"The company determined that people who want to go to a show will wait 10 minutes, while those asking random questions will not," he explained.
Most tickets available on Ticketmaster tend to be in crappy locations, yet not that much cheaper than the more premium locations.
I can't remember the last time I had a satisfying purchase experience with them.
Anyway, there's a new scandal, involving their collusion with scalpers, thanks to CBC Toronto, who sent undercover reporters into a ticket selling conference at Caesars Las Vegas.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/a-p...gram-1.4828535
Cliffs:
Ticketmaster usually has a 6-8 ticket limit per person, and supposedly employs security to prevent scalpers from using multiple accounts and/or bots to circumvent this.
However, they've recently been turning a blind eye to such "abuse", because they developed a new, invite-only product called TradeDesk.
https://tradedesk.ticketmaster.com/
TradeDesk can be used to upload massive numbers of tickets at once for resale, and contains proprietary pricing tools in order to rapidly change the prices on all tickets, based upon audience demand.
Apparently it has been suspected that Ticketmaster has been turning a blind eye to abuse of mass ticket buying on their main site, because those same scalpers are turning around and selling those tickets at a markup through TradeDesk -- which allows Ticketmaster to collect fees TWICE on the same ticket!
CBC sent undercover reporters into a ticket conference at Caesars, and indeed this was verified by Ticketmaster representatives.
Quote:
We've spent millions of dollars on this tool (TradeDesk). The last thing we'd want to do is get brokers caught up to where they (scalpers) can't sell inventory with us.
Quote:
If you want to get a good show and the ticket limit is six or eight ... you're not going to make a living on six or eight tickets.
These were statements made by Ticketmaster employees, regarding whether they would thwart scalpers circumventing buying limits, or if TradeDesk would report back to main Ticketmaster if it tickets are being sold which were obtained by bots or multiple accounts.
At the conference, one Ticketmaster employee said that their biggest broker partner has "moved 5 million tickets" through TradeDesk.
