Ticket bots are programs that automatically buy tickets for concerts, sport and events in large quantities.
The tickets are then resold at a high mark-up.
Understanding Ticket Bots
For popular events, seconds decide who gets a ticket.
Bots are faster than any human and buy up allocations before real fans have a chance.
How Ticket Bots Work
The bots watch for the start of sales, fill in forms automatically and use many accounts, addresses and payment methods at once.
Proxies hide the fact that all requests come from one source.
Types of Ticket Bots
- Purchase bots that bypass queues and put tickets in the basket
- Reservation bots that hold tickets without buying them
- Monitoring bots that report releases and returns instantly
- Account bots that create customer accounts in bulk
The Impact of Ticket Bots
Ticket bots distort the market and harm everyone except the resellers.
Impact on Consumers
Fans miss out at the start of sales and pay many times the price on the secondary market.
The risk of buying fake or invalid tickets also rises.
Impact on Vendors
Organisers and ticket platforms lose their customers’ trust and have to size servers for bot traffic peaks.
Empty seats from unsold resale tickets hurt the event.
Countermeasures Against Ticket Bots
A combination of technology, sales rules and laws is effective.
Technological Countermeasures
Virtual queues, purchase limits per person, personalised tickets and behavioural analysis make buying harder for bots.
Bot protection such as CDPCaptcha makes every request cost computational work and mass use expensive, without holding fans up with puzzles.
Legal Countermeasures
In the USA, the BOTS Act of 2016 prohibits using software to circumvent purchase limits.
The EU and the United Kingdom also have rules against automated buying and overpriced resale.
Conclusion
Ticket bots take tickets away from real fans.
Technical hurdles for bots, fair sales rules and clear laws ensure fair sales.