Ticketmaster Accused of Working With Scalpers to Increase Profits

Some fans wonder how come the popular concert tickets are sold out in 30 seconds on Ticketmaster.com then appear on reseller platforms very soon right after. A pair undercover reporters from Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, CBC, might be able to explain why. Reseller program TradeDesk unveiled Ticket Summit 2018 were held in Las Vegas from July 16 to July 18. The undercover reporters approached Ticketmaster’s representatives with hidden camera, pretending they are scalpers and wanted to learn how they can make profits out of its professional reseller program, “TradeDesk,” which is launched in 2017. General public cannot find its rules and regulations online or in its corporate reports. However, CBC reporters got a copy of “Ticketmaster's Professional Reseller Handbook“ and made it available online now. They also found some surprising facts from interacting with Ticketmaster’s employees directly. Ticketmaster employee appreciates scalpers working with them It seems like Ticketmaster allows scalpers to create large quantity of fake accounts or use ticket-buying bots to acquire popular tickets, then resell them for more profits while Ticketmaster making more money with additional fees acquired in the process. “I have brokers that have literally a couple of hundred accounts,” Ticketmaster resale division representative said. “It's not something that we look at or report.” During one closed session held in Cesear’s Palace Hotel, Casey Klein, director of Ticketmaster Resale Division, also expressed its appreciation to brokers/scalpers’ partnership. He also mentioned that TradeDesk is a web-based inventory management system which is the most powerful ticket sales tool ever. Registered and protected brokers make more profits TradeDesk only allow registered users to upload large quantities of tickets they got on Ticketmaster, and then list them again right away for resale with different price tags depending on the assessment of demand. Ticketmaster already spent millions on this re-seller program. Ticket buyers won’t know who’s re-selling the tickets. And there is a reward program for brokers to reach certain milestone such as $500,000 or $1 million annual sales. In addition, TradeDesk users won’t be policed by Ticketmaster’s buyer abuse division. Ticketmaster could double dip During another video conference demonstration of TradeDesk in March, according to an earlier CBC investigation, employee from Ticketmaster said there were 100 scalpers in North America using such system to move a few thousand to several million tickets per year. CBC also used Bruno Mar’s recent 4500-seat concert in Canada as an example and come up with the following explanation and calculation. “For example, Ticketmaster collected $25.75 on a $209.50 ticket on the initial sale. When the owner posted it for resale for $400 on Ticketmaster, the company stood to collect an additional $76 on the same ticket,” according to CBC. “If Ticketmaster sells every seat in the arena for Saturday's show, it would collect an initial $350,000 in service fees, plus $308,000 in fees on scalped tickets, for a double-dipped total of $658,000.” Many people feel that TradeDesk program is unethical when it allows scalpers to create a secondary market, and charges end users with another layer of commission. Other Complains about Ticketmaster Ticketmaster sell event tickets in countries like U.S., Canada, and Mexico, from sports games, concerts, to theater shows and more. Its other resale programs, such as “Fan-to-Fan Resale” that was introduced in March only sell Tickemaster-validated tickets. Such programs also make the ticket-selling giant manipulating the market as its monopoly game. Fans and artists have been suspicious on how Ticketmaster runs its business with both primary and secondary markets. Some end users complained about they can’t see available tickets all at once. Some question why resell tickets show up soon after the initial sales begin but usually at higher values which is not determined by the event host organization but by the reseller. Resell ticket usua