Skip to main content

That feeling of missing out as soon as sales open, then seeing inflated prices elsewhere will be familiar to many concert-goers.

But you might not have realised you weren't just competing with other fans for those face-value tickets.

Hundreds of bots - sophisticated software that pretends to be a real person - were also in taking up spaces in the queue ahead of genuine fans.

Trainers, games consoles and other in-demand items are also targeted and sold at a profit by scalpers.

Now a BBC investigation has discovered how it happens so quickly.

Queue barging

To illustrate how it works, we joined the queue for Eurovision tickets on Tuesday, and brought some experts with us.

Like many others, we quickly found ourselves 2,000 or more spaces from the front.

Matthew Gracey-McMinn, who works for anti-bot company Netacea, says we're seeing a digital version of queue-barging, or pushing in.

"Think of them as hundreds of friends," he says.

But they're not friends. They're not even real. But as far as the system is concerned they are.

"Because it's all digital, they can create these sort of imaginary people to barge into this imaginary queue," says Matt.

Matt says even the basic laptop he's using can mimic thousands of people. More ambitious scalpers will turn to the cloud to recruit even more processing power.

"Imagine the big server racks you see in movies that hackers have," Matt says, describing large rooms full of dedicated network devices.

"They're hiring those off cloud computing companies and firing all of that power into this."

If you've ever felt like you don't stand a chance of getting tickets, there's a good chance this is why.

The Golden Circle

There are dozens of groups using bot software to attack online queueing systems - so many, that Matt says his company can't track them all.

One, called The Golden Circle, provides members with what they need to beat the online queues.

For £99 ($118) a month they're granted access to the circle and guidance on using a "queue pass" - computing code for manipulating ticketing systems.

One of the group's founders, Josh Silverman, makes promotional videos talking about the money made from tickets by the group's membership of about 400 people.

Speaking to the BBC, Josh, 34 and from London, says he previously used the software to buy limited-run trainers at retail price before selling them on at a huge profit.



In the UK, it's illegal to use bots to buy more tickets than the promoter or venue allows.

But Golden Circle's software doesn't bulk buy - it purchases small numbers of tickets in multiple transactions.

What's being done?

Since we approached Golden Circle, the group's deleted its social media presence. But there are others and makers of queueing software describe tackling touts as a "constant battle".

As soon as the companies change their system, the bot makers update their software, sometimes within minutes.

Stuart Galbraith is Ed Sheeran's promoter and boss of event promoter Kilimanjaro Live.

As you might expect, he's a long-time campaigner against ticket touts.

He says a small group of "power sellers" are behind the ticket trade in the UK, and stop customers who "could quite legitimately be buying them at face value".

And Stuart says fans miss out in other ways.

"If touts can't shift their tickets at their inflated price, they won't drop the ticket price because it then spoils their marketplace," he says.

"So not all the tickets that are purchased in bulk actually get sold."



https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-64893863

Original Post

Ticket Bots? Laughing my ass off!

It's amazing how arenas sold out in 5 seconds before"Ticket Bots" existed but now they are the reason it sells out so fast? Another article that offers no proof of what they say.

Stop ALL ticket bots tomorrow, nothing will change except the scapegoat fans choose to focus their anger, because they don't understand simple 3rd grade math and 9th grade economics..

Add Reply

Post
×
×
×
×
Link copied to your clipboard.
×
×