Slashdot Mirror
The Man Who Broke Ticketmaster (vice.com)
Jason Koebler quotes a report from Motherboard: The scourge of ticket bots and the immorality of the shady ticket scalpers using them is conventional wisdom that's so ingrained in the public consciousness and so politically safe that a law to ban automated ticket bots passed both houses of Congress unanimously late last year, in part thanks to a high-profile public relations campaign spearheaded by Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda. But no one actually involved in the ticket scalping industry thinks that banning bots will do much to slow down the secondary market. Seven years after his Los Angeles office was raided by shotgun-wielding FBI agents, Ken Lowson, the man who invented ticket bots, told Motherboard's Jason Koebler he's switched teams. Now, he's out to expose the secrets of the ticket industry in a bid to make sure tickets are sold directly to their fans.
...are hand in glove with the scalpers. I was offered a job once at a company that automates the purchasing process on ticket selling sites using bots, then resell at vastly inflated prices. they claimed that they get unofficial help from the ticket selling sites, and even give kickbacks. Rather than being shy about it, the guy was boasting about it. I declined. The guy interviewing was a douchebag.
My hunch is that at least some of the bots are their's.
Most are. In fact, TicketMaster skips the bots entirely.
TicketMaster owns and operates TicketsNow, which is ticket scalping site.
TicketMaster pinches off a chunk (often the bulk) of tickets and gives them to TicketsNow BEFORE they go on sale.
If they don't sell on TicketsNow, TicketMaster takes some back and releases them on TicketMaster. This is why TicketMaster has the option to be alerted in case more tickets become available.
TicketsNow (and they probably have other sites that are the same damned thing) is their primary business because it lets them get out of any pricing contracts. TicketMaster "sells" the tickets to TicketsNow in advance (or at T 0), and TicketsNow resells them at a much higher price.
The scalpers ARE TicketMaster, most of the time. TicketMaster owns TicketsNow, which is basically eBay for scalpers. TicketMaster moves its own tickets to TicketsNow to charge obscene prices, preventing anyone from buying them on TicketMaster.