Why ticket scalping exists

Ticket scalping has been around since the 1800s when the scalpers used to buy huge quantities of tickets at physical box offices only to put them up for supply at a raised price. In the twentieth century, innovation in technology made ticket scalping more widespread and further widening the gap between the prices set by the primary sellers and what the end consumers actually paid.

Scalpers possess the potential to escalate prices, enough to influence supply and demand substantially. The secondary market industry, that is the industry of the ticket scalpers, was reported to be valued at $8 billion in the year 2016. And because of automation and technology, the number is only growing. In about 24 hours of tickets being only, approximately 25% of the tickets manage to end up on the websites of scalpers, giving them the ability to soar prices to whatever the market demand will bear. This phenomenon has been aggravated by ‘bots,’ a technology that tricks ticket selling websites into believing that they are actual buyers. They efficiently fill out dropdown forms in a matter of seconds and deceive CAPTCHAs to get a hold of tickets as soon as they come on sale. Bots are widespread and that too in huge quantities, giving them a competitive edge over human beings.

While it seems like the scalping of tickets has been around since ticketing as a concept was introduced, today’s increasing scalping practices have created a gap between the sale of tickets and how the selling can be regulated. Almost every industry in this present day and age is struggling to counter malicious technological practices. But the ticketing industry seems to have transformed into a “cops and a robbers game” altogether.