What are ticket bots? How is AI making it easier for them to snatch up tickets from real fans?
North Carolina fans reported long online queues and inflated prices for Hurricanes games as the team faces off for the Stanley Cup.
One of the big questions is whether bots are at all to blame.
What is a bot?
“A bot is just software doing what you and I do, buying a ticket, but it’s doing it 1,000 times a second,” Jeremiah Smith explained. “It spins up fake accounts using old, leaked passwords, disguises itself to look like a crowd of different buyers, and checks out in a fraction of a second.”
Smith is the artificial intelligence sector lead for the Carolina Cyber Network.
“Those high demand events are what put these…bots…in motion,” he said.
According to Ticketmaster Sport, bots have been around for decades. However, Smith told WRAL Investigates that AI has “changed the game.”
“[Bots are] doing it so much quicker than you can, which is what makes it harder for these platforms to detect, because it really does appear to be human in nature — the actions they’re taking, the mouse movements they’re making, the IP addresses that they live behind, the fake IDs that they’re using to build these accounts — so they really do look human,” he explained.
“They’re buying a high percentage of the seats that become available the moment they become available, before you can even press on your mouse, and they are immediately putting those back out on the resale market.”
Long-time resident Doreen Graham told WRAL she would be cheering on the Canes from a watch party.
“In the queue, I was 38,152…and the resale was $1,400,” Graham told WRAL earlier this month.
Fighting Bots
WRAL Investigates asked Smith if it was possible for law enforcement to find the people creating and deploying the bots.
“Tracking all the way back to the source, the bad actor, is absolutely doable…it’s a practice that they, in cybercrime, have been performing for years now,” Smith said. “It’s slow, and it’s a long, hard slog to trace it all the way back to the beginning…but it is absolutely possible.”
Congress passed the Better Online Ticket Sales (BOTS) Act in 2016, making it illegal to bypass maximum ticket purchasing limits through technological means or by buying tickets under fake identities.
However, multiple lawmakers have called out the Federal Trade Commission, saying the agency has historically underenforced the law. The Trump Administration signed an executive order last March, Combating Unfair Practices in the Live Entertainment Market, calling for more “rigorous” application of the law.
Just a few months later, the FTC sued a group accused of buying hundreds of tickets across nearly 50 accounts for Taylor Swift concerts in 2023.
“The push behind that is finally catching up with this technology,” Smith said. “If you have the law enforcement pairing nicely with automated defenses that are being built, I think that’s a reason to be optimistic as a consumer.”
Attorneys General can also enforce the BOTS Act.
North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson demanded answers from Ticketmaster on behalf of Caniacs earlier this month.
One of Jackson’s questions was whether bots played a role in ticket sales. It’s the same questions WRAL has asked both Ticketmaster and the Hurricanes multiple times.
Neither Ticketmaster nor the Hurricanes have confirmed whether bots played a role in the Hurricanes ticket sales.
However, Carolina Hurricanes CEO Brian Fork previously told WRAL the team sets a limit of four tickets per purchaser for each game, “and diligently monitor the sales process to ensure that tickets are securely purchased by fans.”
Ticketmaster also sent a statement, saying: “The verified resale tickets you see on our site are listed and priced by individuals. We authenticate every listing on our site so fans know they’re getting a real ticket.”
Jackson’s office also confirmed that the ticketing company did respond to his inquiry, saying it plans to provide additional information about how it monitors and responds to bots in the coming days.
The Arms Race
Ticketmaster said it blocks 20 billion bots each month and rejected 1.6 billion fake account creation attempts last year. The company also said it has already cancelled thousands of tickets this year for violating terms of use.
WRAL Investigates also found Ticketmaster may require fans to undergo a security check during concert presale events. It utilizes a verification app called Persona to confirm a fan’s identity.
“They’ve got to be able to sift between what is a human and what isn’t, and that is a real challenge with AI,” Smith said.
“Ticketmaster supports artists’ right to decide how their tickets are sold and resold,” according to a February news release,. “While artists control ticket prices and limits in the primary market, they often lose that control in resale, where secondary platforms can override their intent. Artists should have the final say in how tickets reach their fans across all platforms in the live event ecosystem.”
While Smith said fans should try not to be discouraged, he said the only thing they can do is be patient and be sure to only buy from verified sellers.
“Until law enforcement catches up with the technology, and then the technology produced by this law enforcement push catches up with what AI is doing for the scam artists, we’re in a tough place as a consumer. It’s just going to continue to be expensive,” he said.
