“We do not condone the statements made by the employee as the conduct described clearly violates our terms of service.”
Ticketmaster is denying it has any secret scalping programs that were unveiled by undercover reporters earlier this week. The company has released a statement about the CBC News/Toronto Star undercover report that the largest ticketing company in the world has launched two reseller programs that makes them double their money with each ticket sold.
“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,” the company says in a statement.
“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.”
In July, CBC News/Toronto Star sent undercover reporters with hidden cameras to Las Vegas to pose as scalpers at Ticket Summit 2018, a ticketing and live entertainment convention. There, representatives told the reporters that Ticketmaster turns a “blind eye to scalpers who use ticket-buying bots and fake identities to snatch up tickets and then resell them on the site for inflated prices” as it makes the company more money with the fees it charges.
