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SALT LAKE CITY — Have you ever gone online the minute ticket sales open for a popular act and discovered the only seats remaining are in the back rows?
You may be competing not only against other fans for the prime seats, but against automated programs called bots — short for robots.
Buying a concert ticket online isn't easy, especially for the big tours. Even stops in Salt Lake grab the attention of ticket brokers. They unleash armies of bots to grab the best seats at the virtual ticket window. Brokers then sell those tickets for a premium price.
The bots are designed to buy tickets at lightning speed.
“They’re a big part of the ticket business,” said Dierdre Hill, general manager of Smith's Tix.
Smith's Tix sells tickets for several teams and venues in the state, including EnergySolutions Arena, Sandy Ampitheatre and The Depot. When a big show comes to town, Hill prepares for the bots.
“They come in and grab massive amounts of the ticket inventory the minute they go on sale,” Hill explained.
She said Smith's Tix ran into bots headlong when tickets for U2's 2011 performance at Rice-Eccles Stadium went on sale.
“(We got) over 60,000 hits right away,” she said.
Bots can scoop up the prime seats before regular fans have a shot at buying any. Then the bots usually will hold the tickets for awhile to maximize value.
“They’ll keep the creme and release everything else. So the person who ended up on row 52 15 minutes after we went on sale, might be able to get back to row 20,” Hill said.
Hackers often program bots to buy tickets for the best seats. Those tickets end up on secondary markets, where they can sell for three, four, or many more times the face value.
“Tickets to a show for the first five rows, or the first row, could be $200 a seat. They could be selling it for $1,500,” Hill said.
Smith's Tix and other vendors continually develop obstacles for bots, Hill said. For example, Smith's Tix kicks out anyone holding tickets longer than a few minutes.
- Join the artist's fan club. Many of those clubs offer ticket pre-sales.
- Get a credit card from a company that sponsors concerts and events. For example, American Express sometimes has pre-sales that allow customers to get the jump on automated bots.
“The bots will hold on to them a lot longer, that much we know,” Hill said. “The average human might take three minutes while the bot could still be holding seats.”
When time is up, the bots release the tickets, but they can snap them up again in an instant.
Also, most vendors ask small questions that only humans can answer to try to slow down ticket-buying bots. Still, hackers can get around those.
“It’s cat and mouse,” Hill said. “You develop something and they develop something else.”
The use of bots is legal in Utah. Hill would like to see that change, but challenges may remain.
“How are you going to enforce it?” she asked. “Some of the bots are being created in Russia.”
Hill said the Salt Lake market is less affected by ticket bots than cities like Los Angeles, Chicago and New York, but the problem is here.
