Ticketmaster takes action over reseller accounts that bypass scalping restrictions

September 22, 2018

Ticketmaster’s North American arm has now denied accusations it is colluding with scalpers following the undercover sting perpetrated by Canadian media outlets.

In an initial response to the footage released this week by CBC News and the Toronto Star, Ticketmaster suggested it was not responsible for ticket prices and availability.

However, it has now distanced itself from comments made by its employees at the Ticket Summit 2018 convetion over to the undercover reporters concerning its TradeDesk service. One of the unidentified employees said that Ticketmaster’s ‘buyer abuse’ team will look the other way when certain practices that the company publicly forbids take place on its own platforms.

In a statement, the Live Nation-owned company also said it had already begun an internal review of its reseller accounts prior to the exposé.

The statement advised “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.

“A recent CBC story found that an employee of Ticketmaster’s resale division acknowledged being aware of some resellers having as many as 200 TradeDesk accounts for this purpose (TradeDesk is Ticketmaster’s professional reseller product that allows resellers to validate and distribute tickets to multiple marketplaces). We do not condone the statements made by the employee as the conduct described clearly violates our terms of service.

“The company had already begun an internal review of our professional reseller accounts and employee practices to ensure that our policies are being upheld by all stakeholders.

“Moving forward we will be putting additional measures in place to proactively monitor for this type of inappropriate activity.”

20th September 2018 - Investigation claims Ticketmaster helps resellers bypass scalping restrictions

17th August 2018 - Ticketmaster Australia looks to continue resale operations

19th February 2018 - Ticketmaster Resale ‘deeply offensive to music fans’

8th February 2018 - Google to demand ticket resale site transparency

23rd November 2017 - Google updates AdWords policy to restrict online ticket scalpers

6th September 2017 - AFL urges fans to avoid making Finals series ticket purchases through Viagogo

1st September 2017 - Google urged to block online resellers who dupe ticket buyers

3rd August 2017 - QPAC urges patrons to be cautious when buying tickets from unauthorised sellers

22nd May 2017 - Inflated ticket resale prices impacting consumers’ discretionary entertainment spending

9th March 2017 - Ticketmaster defends resale website

27th May 2014 - Ticketmaster Australia begins soft launch of Ticketmaster Resale

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