Will the ticketing industry be fixed by banning scalpers?

No. But let’s get into it, anyway.

Scalping has been a problem in the live event industry for at least 171 years. In 1855, Jenny Lind, a singer known as “The Swedish Songbird” booked a series of performances in the US. Imagine her surprise when she found that all the gigs were sold out. Where did all the tickets go? They were bought up by “sidewalk men,” guys who would cut a deal with theatre box offices to buy up all the tickets and then sell them to punters lined up outside on the sidewalk at inflated prices. We’ve been trying to solve the problem of scalpers ever since.

The latest salvo was fired by the Ontario government, which last month banned the resale of concert tickets above face value. Good luck with policing that. It won’t help. Nor will any other government mandate. People will always crave tickets to big shows, and where there’s demand, someone will figure out how to profit from it, the law be damned. In the case of Ontario, resales will be driven underground where there are ZERO consumer protections.

A big problem is the easy availability of ticket-buying bots. A single bot can buy up to 1,000 tickets a minute. In New York State, an investigation revealed that just bots bought up 15,000 tickets in a day.

And it’s not just professionals using bots anymore. You can rent a ticket-buying bot yourself for anywhere from $75 to $300 a month from a variety of sites. Add-ons include services that can beat any CAPTCHA protections.

Meanwhile, protection against bots has gone overboard. If, for example, you refresh your browser too many times while you’re in line to buy tickets online, the ticket seller’s software may misidentify you as a bot and kick you out. And don’t even think of using multiple tabs or a VPN. That only makes the software more suspicious of who you are.

So you get a spot and stay in line awaiting your turn, right? Go right ahead, but your position in the queue may be randomized by the ticket seller. There are suspicions about hidden ranking systems and other things that might affect your place in line.

And one more thing. Tickets are now priced for superfans, people who will pay ANYTHING to see their favourite artist. Committed buyers will always pay whatever price is asked–and that includes professionals with ticket-buying bots.

I wish I had a solution to the problems with buying concert tickets, but like I said, the problem has been around for over 170 years, and no one has figured out what to do.