Buying live performance tickets has lengthy been a high-stakes affair, with well-liked occasions typically promoting out inside minutes.
More and more, nonetheless, followers are competing in opposition to automated ticket-buying packages, generally known as bots, that may snap up seats in seconds earlier than reselling them at increased costs.
This has distorted entry not solely to live performance tickets however additionally to on a regular basis providers akin to prepare ticket reservations.
Buying a ticket has at all times been “very luck-based,” stated Bryce Sng, a 23-year-old live performance fanatic. The added competitors of bots “feels very unfair,” he added. Half the enjoyment when preventing for tickets is the stress, Sng stated, utilizing a bot looks like “it takes away from that have.”
It is a sentiment shared by almost 65% of respondents in a December 2025 survey by the Shoppers’ Affiliation of Singapore, who stated ticket scalping prevented real followers from attending occasions. The survey’s focus group members additionally cited bots that snapped up tickets inside seconds earlier than reselling them at increased costs.
Governments, together with South Korea and China, have responded by tightening guidelines in opposition to automated ticket-buying.
South Korea expanded its anti-scalping legal guidelines on Jan. 29 to focus on conduct that disrupts honest ticket buying for resale, whereas Chinese language regulators have repeatedly warned third-party platforms in opposition to utilizing automated ticket-grabbing software program.
On Feb. 12, Beijing market regulators met with 12 corporations, together with JD.com, Didi and Tencent, over prepare ticket gross sales that had drawn “sturdy public criticism.” In an April 10 announcement, regulators stated seven third-party platforms, together with Ctrip, Alibaba‘s Fliggy and Meituan, have been summoned for regulatory talks.
Within the first three months of 2026, China’s railway system dealt with over 1.13 billion journeys, based on the Nationwide Railway Administration.
Passengers are passing by the gate at Fuyang West Railway Station in Fuyang, China, on April 29, 2024.
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Legal guidelines aren’t sufficient
Ticket scalping is an inevitable “perform of provide and demand,” stated Marc Hershberg, director of enterprise and authorized affairs at Music Theatre Worldwide.
Whereas banning bots could assist to some extent, Sng stated that insurance policies alone might not be efficient.
“Realizing people, they may at all times discover a totally different manner [around the rules],” he added.
For corporations defending in opposition to bots, there is extra to contemplate than simply “a single sign,” stated David Irecki, chief know-how officer at information software program firm Boomi.
Detecting bots requires analyzing patterns in consumer information, together with transaction and cost indicators, buy pace, shopping for patterns and bank card exercise, somewhat than counting on only a single indicator.
To fight bots, Ticketmaster, the first ticketing platform for a lot of live shows, blocks automated software program, identifies and shuts down pretend accounts and cancels orders that violate its insurance policies.
“Brute pressure bot assaults… solely symbolize one a part of the battle we’re preventing in opposition to scalpers,” the corporate instructed CNBC in an e mail.
“These are extremely refined networks that try to imitate human fan habits to mix in.”
Past bots
But bots are just one a part of a a lot bigger drawback. Hershberg stated the restricted variety of tickets obtainable to most of the people typically compounds the issue.
In late 2022, Reside Nation and its subsidiary Ticketmaster confronted widespread backlash after mishandling ticket gross sales for Taylor Swift’s 2022 ‘Eras’ tour.
The Reside Nation web site organized on a laptop computer in New York, US, on Wednesday, April 17, 2024.
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A number of lawsuits have been filed in opposition to the corporate, alleging monopolistic practices and harming shopper pursuits.
Reside Nation reached a $9.9 million settlement with the District of Columbia in April over allegations it marketed deceptively low costs earlier than including obligatory charges and used deceptive techniques that created synthetic urgency. Reside Nation denied wrongdoing as a part of the settlement.
“For at the very least a decade, Reside Nation and Ticketmaster boosted income by charging predatory, hidden charges — benefiting from DC residents shopping for tickets for his or her favourite artist or staff and pricing others out fully,” stated District of Columbia Lawyer Common Brian L. Schwalb.
Face-value tickets for Swift’s “Eras” tour ranged from $49 to $450, whereas VIP packages began at $199 and reached $899. On the secondary market, some tickets have been listed between $800 and $20,000 every.
The identical problem extends throughout the leisure trade, Hershberg stated.
“Reveals like Hamilton… are having tickets bought on the resale marketplace for, as an example, $2,000, however the high ticket value is round $800 on Broadway. That reveals that they don’t seem to be setting it at an quantity that’s clearing the market.”
Nevertheless, demand far outstrips provide, and persons are clearly keen to pay increased costs. However producers who nonetheless need to make reveals accessible are unwilling to cost what they think about unreasonable costs.
Compounding the issue, some shoppers don’t notice they’re shopping for tickets from resellers on-line. Hershberg pointed to Broadway.com, a resale ticketing platform whose title typically leads many patrons to mistake it for an official distributor of Broadway tickets. CNBC reached out to Broadway.com however didn’t obtain a response from the corporate by the point of publication.
The issue goes past a singular repair, Boomi’s Irecki stated.
“It is not nearly one device since you want regulation or enterprise coverage, however it must be supported once more, by well-connected methods.”
Scalpers are the first beneficiaries of these markups, Hershberg added, somewhat than “the precise people who find themselves placing up with the danger and the artists and different individuals engaged on the present.”
