A lawsuit filed in California by concert giant AXS has revealed a legal and technological battle between ticket scalpers and platforms like Ticketmaster and AXS, in which scalpers have figured out how to extract “untransferable” tickets from their accounts by generating entry barcodes on parallel infrastructure that the scalpers control and which can then be sold and transferred to customers.
By reverse-engineering how Ticketmaster and AXS actually make their electronic tickets, scalpers have essentially figured out how to regenerate specific, genuine tickets that they have legally purchased from scratch onto infrastructure that they control. In doing so, they are removing the anti-scalping restrictions put on the tickets by Ticketmaster and AXS.
So Ticketmaster and AXS are suing to maintain their monopoly on scalping?
Going through a scalper means that the ticket supply is artificially decreased, which pumps up the price. Then you run the risk of your ticket not working when you turn up to the venue.
Scalping increases the liquidity of tickets. This establishes a “market price” that can be higher or lower than the face value.
Not too different from ticketmaster at that point lol