A scalper who used bots to buy millions of tickets, now wants to stop them

Post by austenallred » Tue, Feb 14, 2017, 10:01 PM UTC

gpawl wrote: post #227

austenallred wrote: post #22

I spent some of my formidable years scalping and brokering event (mostly broadway) tickets in various forms. The company I co-founded made a few million and I learned an expensive lesson in equity at age 18 (I opted instead for the $14/hr salary). We worked in broadway (meaning the style of show, not just the street), and I met the Wiseguys folks at secondary market trade shows, but I had no idea they were this big,…

> The company I co-founded made a few million and I learned an expensive lesson in equity at age 18 (I opted instead for the $14/hr salary). Don't feel bad; even if you got equity, your savvier business partner like would have found a way to devalue it. I once got "equity" in the form of 0.0001% of a 6-person non-VC-funded startup.

Post by austenallred » Tue, Feb 14, 2017, 10:04 PM UTC

TwiztidK wrote: post #238

austenallred wrote: post #22

I spent some of my formidable years scalping and brokering event (mostly broadway) tickets in various forms. The company I co-founded made a few million and I learned an expensive lesson in equity at age 18 (I opted instead for the $14/hr salary). We worked in broadway (meaning the style of show, not just the street), and I met the Wiseguys folks at secondary market trade shows, but I had no idea they were this big,…

> I have never yet seen a system that cannot be beat by scalpers, including paperless ticketing, I have seen such a system. A festival near me has a limited number of tickets available each year (due to site and staff restrictions) with surprisingly high demand. Their solution is to do a lottery that gives people an opportunity to buy tickets, requiring the name of each individual ticket recipient at purchase, then t…

Post by Paul-ish » Tue, Feb 14, 2017, 10:05 PM UTC

criddell wrote: post #147

LordKano wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of the convoluted reasons why scalping must be stomped out have never made sense to me. If people would let the market handle it, things would sort themselves out naturally. If scalpers have to spend more money buying tickets than they can make by selling them, they'll stop buying so many tickets. Also, maybe venues should have some method of selling unredeemed tickets at the door. For example, if a ticked hasn't…

Let the market handle it? You mean sell to those willing to pay the most? If you are a performer, sometimes you want to sell to the biggest fans. What's the market mechanism for that?

Post by Paul-ish » Tue, Feb 14, 2017, 10:18 PM UTC

kodablah wrote: post #236

Paul-ish wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I have never yet seen a system that cannot be beat by scalpers, including paperless ticketing, and I find that most venues and artists want to maximize profits and, more importantly, minimize risk anyway. Say that a tickets market value is $500. What if they charged $500, then gave a $400 rebate after you walk in the door? They would of course limit the number of rebates per person. A more concrete implementation th…

As the article mentioned, they forward customer credit cards to purchase the tickets, even two levels deep. So the bot can use credit card numbers from the actual fans.

Post by acchow » Tue, Feb 14, 2017, 10:23 PM UTC

dsp1234 wrote: post #182

acchow wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a CV arms race - the CAPTCHAs are meant to stay ahead of state-of-the-art CV tech. That's the entire premise behind reCAPTCHA - if you've solved it, then we've sold useful real-world problems and can move onto the next ones.

That's the entire premise behind reCAPTCHA - if you've solved it, then we've sold useful real-world problems and can move onto the next ones. The original premise of reCAPTCHA was to help crowdsource the digitization of books by providing spam bot prevention. It's slogan was "Stop Spam, Read Books." up until 2014.