Ticketmaster Calls Resale Collusion Reports "Categorically Untrue"

"We do not condone the statements made by the employee as the conduct described clearly violates our terms of service"

BY Calum SlingerlandPublished Sep 20, 2018

Ticketmaster is denying allegations that it recruits scalpers who cheat the company's own system to expand its resale business, revealed in a pair of articles published earlier this week as part of a joint investigation between the CBC and the Toronto Star.

In a statement [via Variety] the company called the allegations "categorically untrue," writing, "Ticketmaster's Seller Code of Conduct specifically prohibits resellers from purchasing tickets that exceed the posted ticket limit for an event.  In addition, our policy also prohibits the creation of fictitious user accounts for the purpose of circumventing ticket limit detection in order to amass tickets intended for resale."

In an article published yesterday (September 19), the news outlets revealed they had sent two undercover reporters to a live entertainment conference in July, where Ticketmaster informed them of a professional reseller program and a web-based inventory management system for resellers named TradeDesk.

A Ticketmaster employee at the conference told the reporters that the company's resale division doesn't concern itself with scalpers you use ticket-buying bots and fake identities to hoard tickets to resell at inflated prices, saying, "It's not something that we look at or report."

Ticketmaster's statement also mentions that they had begun an internal review of their professional reseller accounts prior to the CBC and Star publishing their investigation.

Read Ticketmaster's statement below.

It is categorically untrue that Ticketmaster has any program in place to enable resellers to acquire large volumes of tickets at the expense of consumers. Ticketmaster's Seller Code of Conduct specifically prohibits resellers from purchasing tickets that exceed the posted ticket limit for an event. In addition, our policy also prohibits the creation of fictitious user accounts for the purpose of circumventing ticket limit detection in order to amass tickets intended for resale.

A recent CBC story found that an employee of Ticketmaster's resale division acknowledged being aware of some resellers having as many as 200 TradeDesk accounts for this purpose (TradeDesk is Ticketmaster's professional reseller product that allows resellers to validate and distribute tickets to multiple marketplaces). We do not condone the statements made by the employee as the conduct described clearly violates our terms of service.

The company had already begun an internal review of our professional reseller accounts and employee practices to ensure that our policies are being upheld by all stakeholders. Moving forward we will be putting additional measures in place to proactively monitor for this type of inappropriate activity.

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