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Ontario attorney general to consult fans about event ticket selling, buying


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Attorney General Yasir Naqvi says the Ontario government wants input from the public to develop "practical solutions" for giving people a "fair shot" at buying tickets for concerts, sports and other events.

Navqi said the government will consult fans about accessibility, affordability, transparency and enforcement, with the goal of introducing legislation in the spring. 

"Ontario has some of the best artists, performers and athletes in the world, from the Hip to Drake to Bieber to the Jays, the Raptors. We have a lot to be proud of. But we also have a problem with fans getting a fair shot at buying tickets," he said.

Naqvi, speaking at the Ed Mirvish Theatre in Toronto, urged fans to go to ontario.ca/tickets.

 

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-ticket-sales-1.4002388

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Any ideas on how that can be enforced?  Does it help at all to enforce a delay in when tickets can be sold on Stubhub at the very least?  I'd like to fill out the survey (as opposed to doing nothing at all...an idealist maybe), but ideally would like to do more than just complain and offer up some potential solutions even if they are partial at best. 

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Article I had saved a few weeks back, that I meant to share. This thread reminded me I hadn't.

Quote

The Man Who Broke Ticketmaster

The most infamous ticket scalper of all time used bots to buy millions of tickets. Now he wants to stop them.

 

Quote

In February 2005, after the band won its third Grammy of the night, U2 drummer Larry Mullen Jr. stepped to the microphone and made an announcement about the band's upcoming Vertigo tour: "Due to circumstances beyond our control, a lot of our long-suffering fans didn't get tickets," he said. "And I'd like to take this opportunity on behalf of the band to apologize for that."

There was a very specific reason die-hard fans couldn't buy tickets. Ken Lowson, the most successful and notorious ticket scalper in history, had bought nearly all of the 500 general admission tickets that were made available to the band's fan club for each show.

"When the sale dropped, we took 496 in New York, 492 in Boston, 496 in LA," Lowson, the former CEO of Wiseguy Tickets, told me in one of our many phone calls over the course of the last six months. "They apologized on the Grammys because of us, and then they had a second round of sales to make up for it. We took all the good tickets in that second round, too."

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/the-man-who-broke-ticketmaster

 

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Thanks a lot for posting that link Esau.

It was very revealing.

Supporting lesser known bands, and buying tix from places like Rotate This are a good way for me to at least feel better about where my money goes.

Having said that, I travel constantly for my job and rely on ticketbastard and the like for shows I want to see in cities I'm visiting (just picked up a Robert Randolph ticket for his Seattle show last night).

I loved the mail order Fare Thee Well retro approach a couple years ago (especially because I lucked out and scored 4 tix for all 3 nights).

I've certainly had my share of disappointment trying for tix when they go on sale in the past.

I'm not opposed to spending the money on a VIP package, as it's been a great experience in the past (front row centre in Vegas for the Australian Pink Floyd Show).

But I choose those shows very selectively.

The big stadium/ arena shows aren't my bag anymore anyway, and those are usually the ones impossible for me to get lucky purchasing tix.

My next show is likely Dawes on St. Patrick's Day at The Opera House.  Tix still available at Rotate This ???

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23 hours ago, edger said:

Any ideas on how that can be enforced?

This is from the Lefsetz letter from the Newport Folk Festival:

 

From: Jay Sweet (Newport Folk Festival)
Subject: Fwd: Eric Church's Manager Explains How He Cancelled 25,000 Tickets Held by Scalpers

Yah, I saw this article as well.

We actually did far cooler stuff:

1. We used a technology algorithm approach plus the expertise of our fraud team instead of only a manual approach affording us accuracy, scale and speed. Basically repurposing our fraud fighting decision service technology against people who violated the ticket rules.

2. Our partner technology allows us to stop scalper orders during the purchase flow and directly post purchase before tickets sold out getting those tickets back in the hands of fans more swiftly and also avoiding the problem of them ever making it to secondary markets and hopefully avoiding the scalper markup problem noted at the end of the article.

3. We did a deeper scrape of their data (again using our algorithms plus a manual review from our fraud experts) to cancel additional orders post purchase and after sell out. We look at far more sophisticated indicators beyond just billing address, email, etc than what Eric's crew is doing.

4. That note about not finding all the really bad actors is true. Scalpers tend to cover their tracks really really well and our algorithms are most likely far more effective than human eyes.

5. We hold back release the barcodes for months while we then scrub and re-scrub the tickets for any more red flags. We then pull those back and offer them on our safe re-sale platform, Lyte.

6. People can get into a cue on Lyte, where we set the re-sale price limit at face value. In other words we've taken the stub hub resale market for Newport Folk tickets down by 75% from last year, and made sure our fans don't get gouged.

Our partner, Eventbrite did pitch the story to Billboard way back after the on sale, but they didn't bite back then.  Funny how having a big name artist can really get someone to wake up and smell the story...

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  • 1 year later...

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