Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes • Hacker News Board

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#351

Post by sethaurus » Mon, Jul 08, 2024, 10:26 PM UTC

Decker87 wrote: post #304

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #269

I am sure this is pointed out elsewhere, but ticketmasters business model is based on lying to the public so that the artists and venues don’t have to. Taylor Swift is a nice-ish person and wants her fans to think they can buy tickets for her shows at about 25 bucks because that’s a lot of money for a 12 year old and she does not want to alienate her fans. Her manager is an evil cackling bastard and wants to get as m…

Taylor Swift's manager is a woman. And an artist like TS is going to know exactly how it works behind the scenes

The grandparent is implying that "Taylor Swift" and the "Evil Manager" are two sides of the same coin; they don't need to even be different people. The system lets a (big) artist extract value while keeping their public image clean. It's a shell game, and Ticketmaster plays the role of bad-guy-as-a-service.

Of course, their insane monopoly means they also get to take advantage of smaller artists, venues etc. None of this is good.

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#352

Post by ssl-3 » Mon, Jul 08, 2024, 10:26 PM UTC

IncreasePosts wrote: post #319

ssl-3 wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem isn't scams. The problem is that Americans are not required to have an ID -- at all. No federal law requires it, and there is none issued by default. (This is not the same as saying "Americans don't have to carry an ID" even though that is also true.)

Americans aren't required to have an ID, but that is only relevant to government related services. Private businesses like concert venues are within their rights to card you in some manner, and refuse admittance if you don't provide ID.

Yes, that's all true.

But none of that somehow makes this side of the pond the same as the other side of the pond.

An idea that works in one place doesn't necessarily work in the other.

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#353

Post by hunter2_ » Mon, Jul 08, 2024, 10:27 PM UTC

LeonM wrote: post #315

Let's face it, the real problem with ticket sales is scalping. OP may not like Ticketmaster, and doesn't want to install the app, but the majority of fans don't have a problem with that. The real problem for most fans are the scalpers who push prices out of their budget. Of course we all like to dream up all sorts of technical crypto solutions to this, preferably decentralized to remove evil Ticketmaster from the equ…

> tickets are currently sold under the wrong terms, which encourages scalping

The incentive to scalp arises from the likelihood that a ticket will be worth more in the future (buy low, sell high) and that future worth is established by scarcity (sold out shows). To help eliminate this likelihood, the original price (face value) needs to decrease over time, ideally in such a way that the final original ticket sale occurs right when doors open, because the sooner that occurs, the bigger the opportunity for scalping. "Dutch auction" [0] is one implementation of this concept, though it's typically to find the most money a single buyer will pay, whereas in this case we have thousands of buyers. Perhaps the rate at which the price declines could be dynamically adjusted to aim for N% sold when N% of the on-sale timeline has elapsed, for any N.

The problem is convincing promoters/etc. that this would be as profitable for them as the status quo. But it might be!

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_auction

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#354

Post by xp84 » Mon, Jul 08, 2024, 10:29 PM UTC

xhkkffbf wrote: post #287

IncreasePosts wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you provide a source for artists getting a cut of the greater-than-MSRP resale market?

Why shouldn't the artists get a cut of the greater-than-MSRP resale? Yeah, I realize that some pretend that the MSRP is the real price, but if anyone should get a cut of the jacked up fees, it should the people on the stage or producing the show.

I mean, they should have that revenue, and a lot of us want them to just raise the prices for that reason. What's arguably kinda dishonest is when they have deals with Ticketmaster's scam of a resale scheme that result in them getting a large amount of the 'scalping margin' while also yelling about how they price their tickets SO low, and it's scalpers to blame for 'stealing the tickets from all you Real Fans!'

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#355

Post by scottfits » Mon, Jul 08, 2024, 10:30 PM UTC

Very cool post, but as someone who has been on the other side of the situation, I do have sympathy for what they are trying to accomplish.

I bought a ticket that someone had double sold, and by the time I got to the door, they turned me away and said the ticket had already been used. So their system has good intentions, they just need to make it work offline.

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#356

Post by GuB-42 » Mon, Jul 08, 2024, 10:31 PM UTC

bonestamp2 wrote: post #338

GuB-42 wrote: post #298

Does anyone knows how Ticketmaster works, really? I have been to Ticketmaster events that use reasonably priced, printable tickets, you could even buy a printed ticket with cash. In fact, even though there are so many Ticketmaster events, they are not all working the same way. And Ticketmaster doesn't have the monopoly on shitty practices, the article gives a good example in the beginning. What I suspect is that Tick…

> but I am sure people have a choice Often, they do not. The DOJ is currently suing TicketMaster because they have exclusive agreements with nearly all of the large venues and that prevents those venues from using other ticket providers. To be fair to TicketMaster, they argue they are not a monopoly because there are many smaller venues that they are not exclusive with. But, TicketMaster even requires that artists us…

I wasn't talking about having the choice of using another agency, Ticketmaster is predatory and this is a problem.

I was talking about using Ticketmaster (for the lack of other choice) but using one of the more consumer friendly services Ticketmaster appear to provide. I am sure Ticketmaster won't mind, they get their share anyways.

What I wanted to say is that Ticketmaster may be responsible for your ticket costing $70 and not $60, but for all the other bullshit, they just do what is asked of them (by the artists, venue, event organizers, etc... maybe even the fans themselves). Or at least, that's how I think it is.

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#357

Post by tacker2000 » Mon, Jul 08, 2024, 10:32 PM UTC

Would be interesting to see the same done for the UEFA ticket app. They use QR codes that are activated/visible only when the user in on site, detected via Bluetooth. They claim that secondary use is then not possible.

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#358

Post by jjmarr » Mon, Jul 08, 2024, 10:35 PM UTC

miki123211 wrote: post #229

xp84 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People will scream (including in this thread) that it’s “unfair” that ‘only the wealthy can afford them then’ but their beef is with scarcity and thus with reality. It’s always “unfair” to the 10,001st person who wants to attend the concert with 10,000 capacity. Today it’s a weird lottery with 6 different fan and credit-cardmember presales, which each sell out immediately, and the “backstop” at the end which is the a…

A dutch auction is really hard because different tickets have different prices, different people have different requirements about where they want to sit (a committed disabled fan may be willing to pay any price, but they can't do standing only) and there are many different price tiers. A better idea is an airline-style dynamic pricing system that considers different variables, current demand, projected demand, type…

The simplest way of implementing dynamic pricing is a resale market, where the price of tickets changes based on supply and demand.

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#359

Post by MattGrommes » Mon, Jul 08, 2024, 10:36 PM UTC

noodlesUK wrote: post #27

This sort of ticketing thing is a trivially solvable problem. It is solved at every airport in the entire world millions of times per day. You provide the name of each concertgoer when you buy a ticket, and they show up with their ticket and ID. You often need to show your ID at these kinds of venues to prove you're old enough to drink beer anyway.

Some venues do this already and the scalpers buy an additional ticket to burn on themselves so they can get their customer in the gate. It just goes into the cost of doing business. I agree this is probably one of the best ways to stop scalpers but it's not foolproof.

Re: Reverse engineering Ticketmaster's rotating barcodes

#360

Post by rzr2000 » Mon, Jul 08, 2024, 10:37 PM UTC

lakerz16 wrote: post #94

I hate TM and ridiculous fees as much as anyone, but this article is overly hyperbolic. There's a section named "Pirating Tickets", that just explains how to re-create a barcode that you already paid for. You're not using this to rob anyone of anything. And at the end, "Have fun refactoring your ticket verification system". Why? There are no vulnerabilities here. A rotating barcode (even if following a known pattern)…

The way this is already being exploited in the wild is that a scalper/scammer buys 1 ticket, then resells the same ticket multiple times. Multiple people believe they have a valid ticket, show up at the event, but only the 1st ticket works. The other people who try to use the ticket are turned away saying that their ticket has already been used.