Six ticket brokers have agreed to pay $4.2 million following allegations they bought up hundreds of thousands of seats to sell at profit, the New York authorities said.
One of the firms, Prestige Entertainment, managed to buy 1,012 tickets within one minute for a U2 concert at Madison Square Garden in 2014, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s office said.
In the settlement announced Thursday, Prestige and five other firms will pay $4.2 million in past profits and penalties for either selling tickets without licenses or using illegal software to snatch up tickets before consumers.
Schneiderman’s office said that another company, Componica, had agreed to stop developing and using software that enables brokers to bypass warnings with clickable messages such as “Are you human?” that sites use to weed out bots, or automated programs.
“It’s hard enough competing against other fans for concert tickets in New York,” Schneiderman said in a post on the blog site Medium. “You shouldn’t also have to compete against lightning-fast bots.”
His office announced efforts in late 2015 to crack down on speculators amid growing fan outrage over struggles to find affordable tickets.
Up to half of tickets for major entertainment events are routinely reserved for promoters, fan club members, holders of particular credit cards and others, Schneiderman said.
Brokers use inside knowledge or computer deception to gain access to available tickets, which they resell on sites such as StubHub at premiums that average 49 percent, he said.
New York, with its giant ticketing industry for music, theater, sports and other events, has some of the toughest rules for resellers, including requiring licenses.
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