Presales will be microtargeted at specific groups in hopes of keeping scalpers out, and tickets won't be sold to known scalpers.
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And more scalpers means more disappointed fans in the queue.
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Presales serve, in part, as a way to thwart scalpers.
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Scalpers perform a necessary function in the market for tickets.
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Resident Advisor's ticketing platform tries to cut scalpers out entirely.
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When I talked to Rapino for the Recode Media podcast last year, he was skeptical that tech could ever defeat scalpers, because scalpers were able to generate some $8 billion in secondary sales each year.
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What scalpers of Cleveland tickets are asking, I have no idea.
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Our sources say scalpers are already trying to mess things up.
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Scalpers reportedly tried to sell them for as much as $150.
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She has received threatening calls from scalpers, the Beijing Youth Daily reported.
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Fans were required to bring ID as a way of blocking scalpers.
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In the background, other scalpers competed for custom, shouting out their prices.
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While many shows are profitable for scalpers, a lot of them aren't.
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Scalpers probably got $200 out of us; StubHub's fees took another $100.
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This signaled to us that software was helping scalpers maintain multiple listings.
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That allows scalpers to buy products before an official sale becomes public.
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So scalpers and original ticket sellers don't always want the same thing.
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Scalpers begin reselling hard-to-find systems at huge markups on eBay.
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"Long before the sale happens, the scalpers are already ahead," McIntyre says.
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Scalpers count on this emotional vulnerability to drive you into their arms.
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But no scalpers are more detested than those selling tickets for hospital visits.
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Cyber scalpers can made up to $20,000 a week from "Hamilton" tickets alone.
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Subsequent lawsuits extracted settlements and penalties from some nonlicensed or bot-using scalpers.
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Now, fans are upset, scalpers got tons of tickets, and everyone is mad.
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Careful scalpers easily circumvent this by using multiple credit cards with multiple addresses.
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Scalpers hawk waiting tickets to those rich or desperate enough to jump the line.
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Legislation is underway to penalize those using bots, but scalpers remain the main issue.
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But scalpers want to put hundreds of bots in line ahead of any humans.
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Motherboard writer Jason Koebler joins the show to discuss his recent article on scalpers.
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He succeeded, and scalpers using software in New York may now land in prison.
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Virtual reality and artificial intelligence may not completely drive the scalpers out of business.
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"Scalpers completely abuse artists and fans, not to accomplish anything but a profit," Marcus says.
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Five other scalpers were also seized at Peking Union Medical College Hospital and Xuanwu Hospital.
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Tickets are being distributed through Ticketmaster for free, but they're already having problems with scalpers.
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We're told the tickets they have identified as being held by scalpers have been invalidated.
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For those who can afford it, tickets can be bought from scalpers hawking appointment numbers.
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Scalpers sell the toys at ridiculous markups, while counterfeiters dupe desperate families into buying knockoffs.
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Due in part to lobbying by ticket scalpers, many states now favor regulation over criminalization.
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Problem is, the Insomniac browser has no way of distinguishing between real fans and scalpers.
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Because ticket scalpers can buy tickets for any show and are better at buying tickets than fans, the main problem is not banning bots; it's making sure that the opportunity to buy face-value tickets are targeted directly to fans and not at scalpers.
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I don't even want to think what the bloodbath for general sale would've been.Fees. Scalpers. Scams.
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And he wants to make them happier — by figuring out how to solve problems like scalpers.
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With the speed of the internet, scalpers have greater reach into ticket purchasing than ever before.
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By our analysis, scalpers were earning more than six times what they paid for their tickets.
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The second clue: scalpers want over $500 for rear orchestra seats, and over $1,85033 for prime.
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This requirement makes scalpers' lives much harder but is regularly circumvented by the most serious operations.
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The Act will set out laws that criminalize more of the current behavior of ticket scalpers.
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But as the continued success of scalpers demonstrates, they are still far below the market-clearing price. ■
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Leave it to ticket scalpers to key in on that ... because tickets have started popping up online.
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With bots buying up the tickets, desperate consumers turn to resale sites and scalpers — and risk fraud.
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Websites can then choose whether to let certain scalpers list their tickets and how to handle fraud.
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Scalpers have used bots to purchase as many tickets as possible, leading to inflated prices on secondary markets.
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At the Games, scalpers sold tickets to the gymnastics events, originally priced at sixteen dollars, for two hundred.
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"Scalpers are simply selling the doctor's appointment at a price the market is prepared to pay," Wu said.
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Magnises members only got access to Hamilton tickets because McFarland managed to get them last minute from scalpers.
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Many of these tickets were bought by scalpers, who are trying to ditch them at the last minute.
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If venues, artists and sports leagues really want to stop scalpers, the solution is easy: Raise ticket prices.
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SHANGHAI — The Chinese Super League season kicks off Friday, and ticket scalpers working Shanghai S.I.P.G. matches can't wait.
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More public officials should follow Schneiderman's lead in New York and proactively and aggressively go after illegal scalpers.
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Other stars like Adele have recently taken steps to try to prevent scalpers from getting tickets to their shows.
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But the practice lends itself to abuses, particularly when scalpers buy tickets and sell them for much higher prices.
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Tickle Me Elmo The infamous Tickle Me Elmo shopping frenzy of 19833 involved stampedes, scalpers, arrests and multiple injuries.
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Regardless, stocks were so low on these websites that scalpers will easily find buyers for their marked-up consoles.
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Scalpers did well, too — more than $3 million in May and $7 million in June, according to our estimates.
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Scalpers have to adjust prices themselves, though their custom software helps them keep their listings competitive within each marketplace.
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The Frugal Traveler Booking at the last minute, playing "hotel roulette" and even resorting to scalpers can yield savings.
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Producers argue that the higher ticket prices are a way of recapturing money that was previously going to scalpers.
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The Hamilton that theatregoers are paying scalpers' prices to see is a progressive, not the father of Wall Street.
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But the secondary market, worth as much as $8bn worldwide, may be too valuable for virtual scalpers to give up.
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Bots can help scalpers scoop up huge quantities of tickets, leaving sellers trying to identify and block the unscrupulous purchases.
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Cups were limited to two purchases a person to ward off scalpers (the limit is still in place in Beijing).
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Congress introduced the Better Online Tickets Sales Act (BOTS) in 2016, which was meant to help thwart scalpers and resellers.
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"Scalpers are a real headache for us," a spokeswoman for the Peking Union hospital surnamed Chen told Reuters by phone.
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The professional tier of scalpers buys and sell thousands of tickets a year, and leverages millions of dollars of inventory.
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To avoid detection, sophisticated scalpers use bots designed to look like humans, although they use the website far more efficiently.
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"We made a decision early on to be the best ticket buyers, not necessarily the best ticket scalpers," Lowson said.
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Andrada also said scalpers were an issue with some 12,000 tickets of all kind having been confiscated from illegal sellers.
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In the music world, "bot" is often a dirty word, conjuring up the tools used by high-tech ticket scalpers.
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It limits the number of tickets per purchase to prevent scalpers from buying up large chunks of tickets for resale.
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" One traveler wrote on the Twitter-like Sina Weibo messaging service: "I didn't see the difference between snatching apps and scalpers.
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Scalpers are a good choice for a public enemy, but fan club ticketing operations are a good source of secret inspiration.
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Many will wait in vain - "scalpers" like Yu Wei have already illegally bought and sold appointment tickets for the day ahead.
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But when Reuters visited hospitals in Shanghai and Beijing, dozens of scalpers operated in plain sight, loudly offering tickets for sale.
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He finally gave in to scalpers, paying 3,000 yuan for a 10-minute appointment that should have cost just 200 yuan.
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As we reported, Ticketmaster is doling out free tickets for the 7 PM service, but there have been problems with scalpers.
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Scalpers are putting away nearly $240,000 each week off "Hamilton" alone, with at least $30,000 from each show going to resellers.
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What we found was that scalpers took in more than $220 million from the 2000 performances before Mr. Miranda's final show.
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And I learned enough to know that the "anti-scalper" strategies Ticketmaster has deployed in recent years benefits scalpers, not fans.
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When face value ticket prices increase, scalpers generally respond by sitting sales out, meaning less competition for fans during public onsales.
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The concert industry relies on scalpers to buy ticketsAfter the anti-bot law was passed, brokers on the ShowsOnSale forum cheered.
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Ticketmaster's dominance has led to big service fees, scalpers galore and exclusive contracts that some people argue exploit venues and artists.
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Online fan forums had it right: Last-minute buyers could wait for "cheap" resale seats, minimizing the money going to scalpers.
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But they also provide a more efficient sales platform for scalpers—and normally charge a fee from both buyer and seller.
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For this, we can thank a mix of fan demand and ticket scalpers, who are both aided and thwarted by new technology.
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As with all hot items, scalpers quickly started selling the consoles on eBay and Craigslist with prices going from double to outrageous.
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Entertainment Weekly reports that tickets to Swift's shows will be a part of Ticketmaster's Verified Fan scheme to prevent fraud and scalpers.
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Muhammad Ali's family has blasted scalpers who are profiting off free tickets to the boxer's memorial service in his hometown of Louisville.
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In a report titled "Why Can't New Yorkers Get Tickets," Schneiderman addresses numerous abuses to consumers by both ticketing corporations and scalpers.
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Biggest need, biggest rip-off Scalpers buy up tickets in bulk and then sell them to would-be patients at inflated prices.
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CRACKDOWN ON TICKET SCALPERS: The Better On-Line Ticket Sales Act of 2016, or BOTS Act passed in the House Wednesday night.
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Lowson says bands, sports teams, and Ticketmaster can't continue to decry scalping while continuing to cut backroom deals that only help scalpers.
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The railway administration has cracked down on ticket scalpers, and it has become common to order tickets online or from vending machines.
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Indeed, Miranda recently pressed the New York State Legislature to pass its own prohibitions on the use of software by ticket scalpers.
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It could be making millions more if not for scalpers snapping up seats and hawking them for $267,2500 a piece or more.
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Scalpers generally have real tickets to sell while scammers do not, said Katherine Hutt, a national spokesperson for the Better Business Bureau.
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"If I'm at $849, I think we may succeed in taking the motivation out of the scalpers to buy those tickets," he said.
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In a highly unusual set of circumstances, scalpers are reportedly losing money on this year's ceremony, having severely overestimated the demand for tickets.
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Even the scalpers were unhappy, having reportedly overestimated people's willingness to shell out to see Mr Trump sworn in as the 45th president.
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With this level of popularity, the drugstore primer has even caught scalpers' interest and is going for double the retail price on eBay.
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As we reported ... the free tickets were gobbled up within minutes and AXS, which handled ticket distribution, says it's cracking down on scalpers.
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Nintendo of America head Reggie Fils-Aime even told fans not to pay up to the demands of SNES Classic resellers and scalpers.
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Feng Jianqi, a police officer involved in leading the crackdown on scalpers in Beijing, said the police could not resolve the issue alone.
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Or head south on the pedestrian stretch of Calle Fuencarral to discover grittier, more youthful local fashion brands like El Ganso and Scalpers.
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It's possible Apple is trying to avoid online scalpers stocking up on iPhone models, then selling them for more on the grey market.
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With higher prices, scalpers would be unable to profit the way they currently do, and much of the problem would simply go away.
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The US Congress this week passed legislation that would outlaw bots used by scalpers to purchase tickets to concerts, sporting events, and Broadway shows.
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Despite the brisk pre-orders, though, Chinese vendors and scalpers are uncertain if the iPhone SE will be a sure bet like previous models.
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While we might be quick to blame our reflexes, scalpers employing bots have been wreaking havoc in the now mostly digital ticket selling business.
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Dave says it's a tricky situation, but his band has had a long-standing policy to require ID as a way of blunting scalpers.
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Despite Ticketmaster repeatedly saying it cares about fans and hates bots and scalpers, there is little reason to believe this is actually the case.
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Others are put on "hold" for promoters, advertisers, radio stations, venues, VIP packages, and corporate sponsors, or sold directly to scalpers by venues themselves.
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The company has been deeply critical of scalpers — people or businesses who buy tickets and then resell them at higher prices for a profit.
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Yet reporters from the Star and CBC discovered that Ticketmaster is secretly cultivating a secondary industry with scalpers, in violation of its own rules.
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Consider this deep dive on Chinese health care, revealing the flaws of the country's medical system, where scalpers hawk medical visits for a fee.
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Shows sold out, and USA Today's Thomas K. Arnold reported scalpers sold them for $500 each at the opener at San Diego's House of Blues.
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Keen to avoid paying scalpers, Cao spent months queuing in hospital lines for repeat tests before doctors eventually said his cancer needed an urgent operation.
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You end up having to pay four or five times face value for that seat because all these bots and these scalpers scoop them up.
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Last year, scalpers in Hong Kong were reselling some iPhone 7 Plus handsets for as much as $1,933 versus Apple's suggested retail price of $769.
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In the end, without actual sales figures from StubHub, Ticketmaster and the like, there's no way to know the actual profit range for "Hamilton" scalpers.
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And as long as ticket resale software provides the opportunity to buy and resell tickets, scalpers are doing most box offices and consumers a favor.
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Scalpers like this industrious young man were found selling McNuggets dipped in the the stuff for $73 a pop to capitalize the rabid desperation of fans.
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Apple products, which have been snapped up for years in the city by locals, international travelers and mainland Chinese scalpers alike, had suddenly become more expensive.
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Scalpers hawking mooncake gift coupons have taken to Shanghai's streets in recent days, as they do every year, standing outside busy subway stations and popular bakeries.
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Demand for "Hamilton" far exceeds supply but the additional revenues either go to scalpers or are not realised at all, as lucky theatregoers enjoy a bargain.
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Some scalpers use custom-written software to manage their inventories and adjust their prices based on real-time market analysis, much like traders on Wall Street.
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The show had hoped to keep prices down by using Verified Fan, a new technology from Ticketmaster meant to weed out bots and high-volume scalpers.
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The answer is Verified Fan, a new technology from Ticketmaster that is meant to weed out bots and high-volume scalpers from the ticketing-buying process.
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In effect, those who have decided that they don't want scalpers purchasing their tickets would be forcing that decision on every other venue in the country.
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In 2015, he canceled a pair of sold-out performances of "Carmen" at the Metropolitan Opera, to which scalpers were selling tickets for nearly $1,000 apiece.
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Still, the crowds at Hofstra have been a far cry from the days when ticket scalpers sold tickets to see Claxton play in the late 1990s.
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Even Pope Francis was exploited when online scalpers hawked free tickets to his appearance in New York City's Central Park in September for hundreds of dollars.
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Organisers reportedly tried selling tickets just a day before the match commenced, in order to prevent scalpers from having enough time to scoop up tickets for resale.
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Scalpers turned around and put the tickets up for sale through third party resellers like eBay and Stubhub with individual ticket prices ranging from $150 to $1,000.
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Unfortunately, a lot of fans who missed out on getting tickets in the normal sale likely won't be able to go thanks to the greediness of scalpers.
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So it's not surprising that some quick-thinking entrepreneurs (okay, scalpers) are aiming to skim a little bit off the top of the frenzy while it lasts.
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By placing initial box office sales and secondary market resales side by side, they provide a veneer of legitimacy (and an illusion of regulatory transparency) for scalpers.
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But success has a side effect: Both shows have fallen prey to high-tech scalpers who harvest large quantities of seats and resell them at exorbitant markups.
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Scalpers are good at spotting when the balance isn't right, which is often; when popular artists sell tickets for accessible prices, demand will almost always outstrip supply.
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A user on Weibo pointed out that the new booking system would open up opportunities for ticket scalpers — a notorious phenomenon in China prevalent in hospitals and concerts.
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The official prices ranged from 400 renminbi ($59.9) to 5,000 renminbi ($748.5), whereas the scalpers raised that number to as much as 20,000 renminbi in some online marketplaces.
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Scalpers who use bots to slam ticket websites and snatch up a huge proportion of seats at popular shows may soon find themselves in violation of federal law.
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Last month, soon after the woman's video went viral, the Beijing police appeared to step up raids, storming five hospitals in the Haidian district and arresting 11 scalpers.
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Of course, most Swifties were able to gain access to Swift's pre-sale portal last week, which was made to prevent scalpers from buying up all the tickets.
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The unidentified woman in the widely shared video said scalpers wanted 4,500 yuan ($685) for a ticket worth 300 yuan ($45) had she been able to register herself.
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Free inauguration tickets that are doled out to the public are hot commodities for scalpers, who are hawking passes for up-close-and-personal views of the Jan.
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In line with this drive, authorities have tried to crack down on healthcare corruption and police say they have detained some 240 scalpers in Beijing alone this year.
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A viral video earlier this year of a woman with her sick mother raging against scalpers brought a public outcry and calls for arrests and tough jail sentences.
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"Hopefully by making [scalpers'] lives difficult, by canceling orders, by making it hard for them to even get a ticket they'll just move onto something else," Church explains.
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The 22010 performances between the June 290 Tony awards — where "Hamilton" won 20183 statues — and July 22018 may have brought in more than $230 million for scalpers alone.
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The news sparked debate among Times readers about the continued high cost of going to Broadway, and what should be done to combat scalpers from making a killing.
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Some box offices have decided that they are unwilling to allow scalpers to purchase tickets in large quantities, and they are more than free to make that decision.
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"Of course these scalpers are awful, but it's the system that creates them," one person from the northeastern city of Tianjin wrote in a social media post on Weibo.
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Today, the tickets are once again sold out, but Chance has taken to Twitter to proudly reveal that he purchased nearly two thousand tickets to the festival from scalpers.
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Scalpers would set up networks of computers (likely virtualized) armed with credit cards and fake buyer info to hammer sites like Ticketmaster as soon as ticket sales went live.
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While hospitals charge a 300 yuan ($45) fee for registration, scalpers had taken all the registration tickets, and were reselling them at 4,500 yuan ($686) to patients in line.
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For patients like Cao or Zhang Pengyu, a 38-year-old realtor from the outskirts of Beijing, scalpers are source of frustration and anger, but sometimes a necessary evil.
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So to figure out just how much scalpers were making from "Hamilton" tickets, we created a database by collecting publicly available information on ticket prices on secondary market listings.
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When Ticketmaster tweaks how sales work, scalpers have lots of time and incentive to learn how to optimize for its new systems and to circumvent its anti-scalper tech.
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But these days he's obsessed with TIXFAN, a new venture that he says will help artists, venues, and sports team owners sell tickets directly to fans instead of scalpers.
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But a podcast can reach a lot more people than even a Broadway long-runner, without the lotteries, the rushes, the scalpers, the hurried preshow meals and obstructed views.
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When asked about those stats, Ticketmaster was unable to provide an update but said that the Adele ticket sales received a massive amount of demand from fans and scalpers.
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Free tickets to Nipsey Hussle's public memorial service were gobbled up within minutes, and now the scalpers trying to profit from the slain rapper's death are being shut down.
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The rules didn't stop scalpers from trying to take advantage of people who missed the boat ... but Craigslist ads have been removed or flagged for removal throughout the day.
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We also got Teyana Taylor at LAX Wednesday and asked her thoughts on Thursday's memorial service ... which scalpers have tried to exploit by charging big money for the free tickets.
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As such, the scalpers who come with local ID cards can offer a quicker route to registration, and present an attractive offer to those desperate to see a doctor sooner.
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As outlined in an early concept video obtained by VentureBeat, the technology also has the potential to eliminate fraud, bots, scalpers, and, by speeding up the process, discourage long lines.
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"You have these scalpers that are located outside the U.S. They buy all these tickets to performances and shows, and then they go onto secondary sites and resell them," Rep.
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With a self-contained virtual reality experience and live 360-degree video, millions of fans could sit in the same virtual "seats" for which scalpers currently charge thousands of dollars.
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But according to a January 2016 report by the New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, bots are still widely used by scalpers—and they're becoming more sophisticated than ever.
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The scalpers, from mainland China and Hong Kong, were offering premiums ranging from hundreds to thousands of Hong Kong dollars, depending on the model and the time of purchase from Apple.
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The ministry said it would speed up reforms, improve regulatory systems and standardize how operators published information to "get rid of the soil in which ticket scalpers and online touts survive".
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Ticket scalpers who use bots to bulk -buy tickets online and resell them at inflated prices will be subject to "unlimited fines" under new plans laid out by the U.K. Government.
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Rapino talked at length about what Live Nation's subsidiary Ticketmaster is trying to do to undercut scalpers, but acknowledged that the ticket-reselling business is too big to shut down completely.
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A number of start-ups have evolved to try and tackle the problem of scalpers and bots snapping up the best seats, resulting in sky-high prices, which don't benefit artists.
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It claims that more than 15 million fans use its platform every month and has prevented more than 100,000 tickets from entering the secondary market via scalpers and bots last year.
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This means that scalpers can and do buy in every presale that's supposedly meant for fans, and the average scalper probably knows about more presale opportunities than a casual fan does.
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Because paperless tickets weed out casual scalpers, operations that are able to bypass the requirement are usually able to make more profits because there is less competition on the secondary market.
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The fact is scalpers buy millions of tickets every year, and Ticketmaster gets fees from every ticket sold, and StubHub gets money from every ticket bought and sold on its site.
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It's at least the second time we've seen folks try to use Nipsey's memorial to cash in ... scalpers tried to sell the free tickets for astronomical prices before getting shut down.
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But one aspect of it has still held some suspense: How would Mr. Springsteen, who has had well-documented frustrations with scalpers, handle what will surely be a crushing ticket demand?
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"The entertainers go to great lengths to build relationships with their fans and ensure that they will have access to shows, but scalpers are decimating this experience," said Blackburn in a release.
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Entertainment company Ticketmaster has been secretly setting up deals with scalpers even while publicly criticizing the practice, according to a new report from Canadian media groups The Star and Canadian Broadcast Company.
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Ticket scalpers lurked outside, trying to squeeze a few extra bucks out of what was fundamentally a charity show (proceeds went to benefit City Harvest), with an original ticket price of $25.
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Thanks to the growth of online marketplaces, accessible technology for getting around security restrictions, and the decriminalization of ticket resales in some states, scalpers can cash in without leaving their living rooms.
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During this short interval of time, seats are effectively closed off to other customers, allowing scalpers grab hundreds of tickets simultaneously and choose the best ones before ordinary humans get a chance.
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Mr Abel's targets were not only foolish hacks and lazy fact-checkers—as well as the scalpers who ran the Lotto—but anyone eager to censor what the press could say or show.
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In the video, the woman furiously rails at scalpers at the lobby of the Guang'anmen Hospital, where she had been waiting for two days to get an admission ticket to see the doctor.
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Three of them had been security guards employed by the hospital, and local media posing as patients managed to jump the line by bribing scalpers, who then paid security personnel at the hospital.
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And, by the way, if the team tries to be nice and chooses the latter option, a lot of that extra money just goes into the pockets of scalpers and the secondary market.
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Hordes lined up before dawn for limited-batch runs that vanished within the hour, to be resold on the black market by scalpers at a 1,900-percent markup (as much as $100 each).
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To sell concert tickets, she is using Verified Fan, a new system from Ticketmaster that screens prospective buyers to block bots and scalpers; Bruce Springsteen, Harry Styles and "Hamilton" have all used it.
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As a type of speculator seeking to match buyers and sellers, scalpers adjust their prices to account for supply and demand in a way that box offices and venues choose not to do.
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On the latest episode of Recode Media, Hubbard outlines how his new startup Rival aims to help teams, performers and event venues lose less money to scalpers — and know more about their customers.
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Behind the scenes of live music concerts and sports events, Rival will partner with the teams, performers and event venues to help them lose less money to scalpers — and know more about their customers.
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That high ticket price has been put in place to prevent online ticket bots – which are now illegal in New York – from buying seats in bulk for scalpers to resell at a higher price.
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The scalpers, also called "huangniu" (黄牛), are a common sight especially at entertainment shows, and even outside train stations, where they resell tickets they've booked out for a higher price to the public.
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Authorities have sent scalpers to jail in the past decade, but going by media reports, this spate of arrests is a step up in its efforts to demonstrate its stance against the rampant practice.
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Many fans failed to get tickets through official channels despite spending hours online attempting to secure seats, but successful ticket scalpers have been able to mark up the price on popular re-sale sites.
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Then Colombia lost on penalties to England on Tuesday last week, and now he, along with dozens of other ticket scalpers in the Russian capital, is trying to resell his seat at a profit.
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Within minutes, ticket scalpers have posted them on Craiglist for over double or triple the original price, leaving fans to deal with the dodgy repercussions while they laugh all the way to the bank.
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SHANGHAI (Reuters) - A Chinese court in Beijing has jailed 15 hospital "scalpers" for allegedly scamming unsuspecting patients by posing as medical staff without qualifications, exaggerating positive effects of treatments and then prescribing expensive drugs.
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Brokers who don't use bots hate the "BotBoys" who do, and brokers who hire human ticket pullers or pull tickets themselves hate that scalpers are automatically assumed by the public to be using bots.
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Scalpers will thrive as long as artists and promoters set official prices at levels that are too low compared to what people are really willing to pay, says John Zhu, a former HSBC economist.
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Pokémon Go Fest is coming to Chicago next month, but if you missed out on getting a ticket in the initial sale, you're gonna have to shell out a couple hundred bucks to ticket scalpers.
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So basically we do none of these credit card pre-sales, radio pre-sales, venue pre-sales because that's a lot of avenues for scalpers to get in where we don't know who they are.
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All of its changes to ticket onsales actually benefit scalpers (for a lot of different reasons), and there is simply no reason to believe that Live Nation, which owns Ticketmaster, even remotely cares about fans.
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Armen Shaomian, a professor of entertainment at the University of South Carolina, pointed out that fans used to paying scalpers for last minute concert tickets may not even bat an eye at the set's price.
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What has gotten the most attention, positive and negative, is Ms. Swift's use of Verified Fan, a Ticketmaster system intended to identify dedicated fans and weed out bots and scalpers from high-demand ticket offerings.
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Ticketmaster claims to have blocked more than 1 million purchase attempts by bots — computerized programs operated by scalpers that attempt to buy tickets in bulk with the goal of flipping them for more money online.
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Scalpers quickly flip these prime tickets for a profit on resale sites like Stubhub, which generally market themselves as "fan exchange sites," claiming to offer a reliable marketplace for music lovers with tickets to spare.
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The one thing this knowledge can't fix is the feeling that scalpers and the industry players they work with are making live music experiences—supposed to be open and unifying—less accessible and more divisive.
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The woman who complained in the video later received harassing calls from scalpers and feared she might not be able to take her mother back to the hospital, a friend of hers told Beijing Youth Daily.
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In the spring, he set up loudspeakers warning visitors about scalpers and pickpockets who target tourists waiting in the perennially long lines outside Italy's most-visited museum, famous for its magnificent treasures by Botticelli and Raphael.
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Consumers lined up for hours to buy hamburgers at Shake Shack when it opened its first China store in Shanghai earlier this year, and scalpers reportedly held places in line or hawked burgers at huge markups.
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A House subcommittee will look to advance a bill this week that would give a government agency the power to target online scalpers who use computer programs to buy up swaths of tickets to live events.
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Despite constant complaints and outrage from artists and fans alike, the ticket scarcity problem only seems to get worse—with neither the authorities nor the music industry seemingly able to keep up with increasingly sophisticated scalpers.
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Another scalper admitted that operating smoothly requires bribing hospital security guards and doctors, although at times when this wasn't possible, he found ways around it by teaming up with other scalpers to evade security or undercover cops.
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We've seen this kind of thing before ... scalpers tried charging astronomical prices for free tickets to Nipsey's celebration of life, and people who went to the service tried selling the free programs for huge profits on eBay.
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I didn't hate the Switch when I reviewed it last year, but after spending an entire day hunting it down in stores I could easily say it wasn't exceptional enough to warrant camping out or paying Craigslist scalpers.
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Ticket scalpers have been quick to capitalize on the park's popularity, with thousands of soft-launch tickets for sale this week on Alibaba's e-commerce platform Taobao for more than three times the 300 yuan ($45.70) turnstile price.
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But the spotlight on the illegal practice is on the resellers outside hospitals right now, in large part prompted by a social media uproar after a video of a woman in Beijing decrying scalpers emerged and went viral.
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A study by The New York Times found that in the 100 renditions of "Hamilton" before the final performance of Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creator of the show, in July, scalpers made more than $15.5 million reselling tickets.
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Historically, Ticketmaster's stated ticket limits have been rarely enforced and are easily circumventedTicketmaster has a "ticket limit" for almost every show it puts on sale, which is ostensibly designed to stop scalpers from buying a ton of tickets.
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So when a casual side project morphed into a full-fledged journalistic study of supply and demand — and, subsequently, a study of the profits "Hamilton" has lost to scalpers — it's easy to see why I dragged my feet.
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Whether this is a bellwether of a comeback is another matter: a Los Angeles Times reporter recently bought a ticket to one of the comedian's sold-out shows in Virginia for $4, which suggested scalpers misjudged audience appetite.
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Ticketmaster and other ticket companies have worked to limit these digitally-saavy scalpers, but admit that the imbalance between how much artists are charging and how much fans are willing to pay means a secondary market is inevitable.
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"Knowing the number of tickets on sale gives scalpers a road map for deciding how many tickets to buy, and how to price the tickets," Jody Mulkey, Ticketmaster's Chief Technology Officer for North America, told me in an email.
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"The biggest issue why fans can't get tickets is not bots or even because there are professional scalpers involved," Dean Budnick, coauthor of Ticket Masters: The Rise of the Concert Industry and How the Public Got Scalped, told me.
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Songkick has now won over acts including Paul McCartney, Adele, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Metallica, who prefer the control the platform gives them and its ability to detect when tickets are mostly likely being bought by scalpers.
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But it's frankly depressing to realize how many machines will be flipped onto eBay, lining the pockets of clever scalpers, rather than finding their way into the hands of the people who made Nintendo a household name in the first place.
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Chance took to Twitter this week to announce that he had taken floor-seat tickets back from scalpers and made the tickets available on his website for $45 or $75 — much cheaper sums than the exorbitant prices listed on resale sites.
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China is cracking down harder on scalpers selling tickets for hospital appointments in large cities like Beijing and Shanghai, and police have carried out several high profile raids in the past weeks to drive home this point, according to state media.
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In a separate statement, the ministry said an inter-agency team would be set up to crack down on hospital ticket "scalpers" and online healthcare touts, a grey market of buying and selling access to healthcare which has drawn public anger.
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Kanye West's appearance at Joel Osteen's Lakewood Church in Houston Sunday will be the most important appearance Ye has made since devoting himself to God, and there's such a demand for tickets we've learned scalpers have reared their ugly heads.
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But it would at least theoretically possible to identify scalpers and prevent them from buying tickets using a person's purchase history; if a customer is buying hundreds of tickets to shows all over the country, they are likely a scalper.
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"With The Chainsmokers, we've been outspoken about the issue of scalpers for years, and are excited to partner with YellowHeart to provide a smart and effective solution that gives control back to artists and fans," Alpert said in a statement.
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But by radically expanding the supply of experiences and introducing more efficient ways to match consumers with those experiences, they could serve to make the recurring moral panic about scalpers, bots and high ticket prices generally seem a lot less important.
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But, anyone trying to make a quick buck off the memorial is out of luck ... AXS tells us it's cracking down on scalpers and ticket fraud because tickets are being distributed through the company's mobile app and are non-transferable.
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The Democrat posed with voters as a band played a punk version of Elvis Presley's "Fools Rush In." Sinema teaches two courses on social work at the university and has multiple degrees from the school, and was widely recognized, even by ticket scalpers.
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It's not easy to get an overall picture of all the players involved, from the casual fan selling a ticket, to professional brokers, to unscrupulous "scalpers," to the corporate primary and secondary sellers who are able to heavily influence the secondary market.
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Fans can still get a seat at "Hamilton" for less than a thousand dollars, if they are willing to wait for it — either buying months in advance from the theater or just hours before a performance, as scalpers drop their asking price.
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The startup is attempting to do this by offering a technologically advanced ticketing platform that not only handles sales and check-ins, but acts as a full-stack Salesforce for concerts that can analyze buyers and run ad campaigns while thwarting scalpers.
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YellowHeart is trying to solve a problem that should be familiar to anyone who's ever tried to buy a ticket for a popular concert: Those tickets will often get snatched up by scalpers, who then resell them at a much higher price.
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The producers have hired a group of workers who are combing through sales records and broker sites, looking for evidence of unauthorized bulk buying — often via bots, which are computer programs used by scalpers — as well as for tickets offered on resale websites.
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All that change has not, however, affected the central problem for concertgoers: Massive demand for a limited supply of the most popular events, where scalpers operate bots to scrape ticket sales and resell them at a ridiculous markup on StubHub and SeatGeek.
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Digital Minister Matt Hancock, who signed a commencement order for the Act, said work would immediately begin on age verification for porn, cracking down on entertainment scalpers, better subtitling on catch up TV as well as improving internet connectivity for rural areas.
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No one I know was able to get Radiohead tickets at their original price that morning, likely because of bots—computer programs used by scalpers to scoop up the best seats on official sites like Ticketmaster and Eventbrite quicker than any human can.
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As a result, many formerly illegal scalpers moved above ground, becoming licensed brokers who have to pay a $20113 annual fee to the state and abide by certain guidelines, including disclosing sales to the state regulator and offering insurance against fake tickets.
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When Chance The Rapper's star-studded "Magnificent Coloring Day" music festival in Chicago sold out and scalpers began to set high resale prices for tickets, the 23-year-old artist decided to take matters into his own hands for the sake of his fans.
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"I've waited forever to do this kind of show," Church says in a conversation with Noisey during which he outlines his attack-plan against scalpers, his over-the-top new tour and why he never could have predicted how well his career has panned out.
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"Songkick will continue with its legal case and remains committed to providing artists with an alternative that puts tickets in the hands of fans at a lower cost and helps keep them out of the hands of scalpers," the company said in a statement.
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The issue of hospital-based fraud flared up in January when a woman in Beijing posted a video denouncing other scalpers for buying up "tickets" often needed to ensure an appointment with a doctor and then inflating the price to re-sell them to patients.
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Most importantly, he's just generally good at talking; I would regularly call up Lowson to clarify a small point for the article and 103 minutes later he'd still be explaining Ticketmaster's CAPTCHA system or the reasons why presales are built for scalpers, not fans.
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Perhaps what Ticketmaster and bands like Pearl Jam are actually afraid of is fans knowing that, on average, more than half of tickets to in-demand acts are held back for connected insiders (including scalpers) instead of being made available to the general public.
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Unfortunately, it looks like the Marvel fans who didn't get in before AMC's website shit the bed will have to dig deep into their savings if they still want to make it to opening night—because scalpers are currently selling tickets for as much as, uh, $15,000?
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If he had not strapped the sport to his broad back and climbed to the Olympic summit six times in Athens in 2004 and eight times in eight nights in Beijing in 2008, there would be no pre-finals light show at CenturyLink Center, no ticket scalpers.
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"Hamilton," the hit musical that has struggled to combat profiteering by scalpers, is trying a new tack with its next block of Broadway tickets: a technology from Ticketmaster that scrutinizes the purchase histories of potential ticket buyers in an effort to eliminate bots and high-volume resellers.
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"This should be the best season for business yet," said one of the many scalpers operating under the indifferent eye of security at the club's Asian Champions League match against Australia's Western Sydney Wanderers on Tuesday, one fist full of tickets and the other stuffed with renminbi.
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Just a few feet from the Apple store, scalpers armed with empty suitcases, fists full of cash and chairs in readiness for a long day, were offering as much as $238,27 for an iPhone 27 Plus, which was priced from 27,29 Hong Kong dollars ($225) in the store.
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"I spent two-and-a-half days having an anxiety attack and talking to scalpers" online, said Reinhardt Wende, 27, a nurse, who arrived with hundreds in cash for a ticket but got a tip that the band was selling extras at a nearby bar, and spent only $40.
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" Matt Latimer, who works at literary agency Javelin which is representing Comey, said: "The ticket prices for these events, which are generally below $50 and include the cost of a book, are determined by the various venues or, in some cases, by scalpers taking advantage of the excitement.
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BOTS Act punishing online scalpers passes Senate, moves on to the House Katz argued that the blockchain approach has other benefits, like the fact that each ticket will have "a unique key that is tied to a user's identity and sits in their virtual wallet," which should eliminate forgery.
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Those reports turned out to be true, and for at least a month, after the phone's November 3 ship date, it was indeed very difficult to obtain in iPhone X. This also meant that people were paying scalpers on eBay close to $2,000 to get the device during the shortage.
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I lived in Lakeview when I first moved to Chicago in the winter of 2012, and the environs directly outside the stadium—once a bustling ecosystem of hawkers selling peanuts, shirts, and water "cheaper on the outside"; scalpers wandering about; and the lovably grimy McDonalds—have been replaced by towering behemoths.
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But the change in the cast was notable for more than matters of casting: It could well have been the high-water mark for demand for "Hamilton" tickets — and for profits reaped by ticket scalpers who make up part of what is known as the secondary market in ticket sales.
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If you've ever tried to buy a concert ticket the second it goes on sale only to find it's immediately sold out, it's impossible, probably, to read about the success Wiseguy had and not feel as though bots, scalpers, and people like Ken Lowson have been screwing you for decades.
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You cannot put more seats in Madison Square Garden or the O2 Arena—although you can add more shows, as LCD Soundsystem did in 2011 after scalpers gutted fans for tickets; or, in the case of some venues, deliberately oversell the show on the down-low and slap on more dates later.
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The paired moves — raising the price for premium seats to $849 while offering 783 seats per show at $10 each — are part of a broader effort to stanch the loss of tens of millions of dollars in potential revenue to scalpers, and to make the show available to people who can't afford costly theater tickets.
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The attorney general also recommended that the state's Legislature remove its restrictions on so-called paperless ticketing, a technology that was introduced to thwart scalpers but, according to the report, is subject to a "de facto ban" because any show using nontransferable paperless tickets is also required to offer them in transferable form, undercutting their purpose.
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The scourge of ticket bots and the immorality of the shady ticket scalpers using them is conventional wisdom that's so ingrained in the public consciousness and so politically safe that a law to ban ticket bots passed both houses of Congress unanimously late last year, in part thanks to a high-profile public relations campaign spearheaded by Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda.
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"When you have thousands of people who are all trying to get in to see a big-name act like U2, or Beyonce, or Major League Baseball playoffs, for example, chances are you're going to have scalpers out there who are going to try to defraud consumers," said John Breyault, vice president of public policy, telecommunications, and fraud at the National Consumers League.
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"If you're gonna bark at the big dog boy / Then you're gonna get to feel the bite," the country singer shouted, all whiskey breath and manic energy, on Chief's "Keep On." And while the chart-topping, Grammy-nominated singer has every reason to be feeling good about this career, there's one nemesis he can't seem to shake and has turned his full-throated aggression towards: scalpers.
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Per TechCrunch, a class action website will be posted in the coming months for attendees to register for their slice of the pie, but it will have at least some safeguards to prevent those scalpers or other randos from claiming rewards:According to documents filed in a Chicago court, an official website for the settlement should be up by May 25th, 2018, with an email sent to let attendees know.
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The free Lugia is in addition to attendees being offered a $20 event entry refund and $100 of in-game PokéCoins, which Niantic hopes will satisfy fans of the game (unless they paid a whole lot more for their entry tickets via scalpers.) The company formally recognized the network issue via Twitter at around 2PM ET yesterday, though players had complained they'd been unable to log in since lining up as early as 6AM local time.
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In the past, scalpers have been able to charge a premium of roughly $300 over the official price for a newly released iPhone, but one Hong Kong smuggler who refused to be named said he expected to charge just $30 above the listed price for the iPhone SE. Vendors on Alibaba's Taobao site are offering the new phone at a discount of as much as $100, claiming the phones are being purchased from the U.S. where the SE sells for $399.
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