CBC news affiliate Toronto Star did an undercover report exposing Ticketmaster on alleged ticket scamming.
Undercover journalists from Toronto Star went to TradeDesk's Ticket Summit in 2018. For anyone not aware of TradeDesk, it's a platform that works similar to StubHub. It's a platform for people who have tickets that they can no longer use to sell in a regulated space. Services like this are meant to protect buyer and seller from scams. The seller knows that the purchase is confirmed, and no one can back out, something that happens all too frequently on sites like Facebook and Craigslist.
Where the service is meant to protect buyers from fake tickets, and to give you piece of mind on your purchase if the tickets DO end up being scams.
One battle that artists and fans alike are fighting are scalpers using bots to buy tickets in huge quantities and then reselling them at high prices once concerts sell out. When the undercover journalists spoke about the issue, one rep spoke about turning a blind eye saying that "I have brokers that have literally a couple of hundred accounts. It's not something that we look at or report."
After the alleged accusations came out, Ticketmaster did respond to the report. In a statement published by Variety Ticketmaster was quoted as saying "It is categorically untrue that Ticketmaster has any program in place to enable resellers to acquire large volumes of tickets at the expense of consumers. Ticketmaster’s Seller Code of Conduct specifically prohibits resellers from purchasing tickets that exceed the posted ticket limit for an event. In addition, our policy also prohibits the creation of fictitious user accounts for the purpose of circumventing ticket limit detection in order to amass tickets intended for resale." The statement then continued on saying that they have already begun an "internal review on ticket seller accounts."
What do you think about this whole mess? Is there any truth behind the statements or just a couple of bad eggs in the ticket seller accounts? Let me know your thoughts!
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