CMU School of Drama


Tuesday, October 03, 2017

Ticketmaster Says Bot Army Bought 30,000 ‘Hamilton’ Tickets

Variety: A ticket broker used an army of bots to buy up 30,000 tickets to “Hamilton,” along with hundreds of thousands of other orders, according to a federal suit filed by Ticketmaster on Monday.

2 comments:

BinhAn Nguyen said...

This angers me so much! It is a blatant violation of human decency. There are so many people who want to see Hamilton (me included) who would not be able to because they cannot afford it. The ticket prices are high enough as it is without the use of bots. This incident takes the enjoyment out of live performances by limiting access to it. I think that there needs to be a more sophisticated way of scanning for bots than just reading letters because the current solution seems mediocre and rudimentary. But, even without this technology, I think companies like Prestige need to abstain from using these bots because it is unfair and violates their contract. Its illegal and, just because they are a rich company, they are able to continue this practice after paying an amount of money that is honestly insignificant to them. Why would they change if there aren't any real consequences?

Megan Jones said...

Ticket bots are so infuriating because all they do is take away many people's opportunity to see a performance or go to an event that they're really passionate about. I understand that people want to make money by reselling tickets, but I wish they would take a step back and consider the ethics of what they are doing. The reality is that with the marked up price that scalpers are charging people just simply can't afford to buy tickets. This is especially upsetting for shows like Hamilton that so many people want to be able to see. I'm happy that there's finally some legal action being taken against this practice, and I hope that it will help to scare other people who are thinking about using bots away. Recently I also saw that Harry Potter and the Cursed Child was doing pre-authentication for people who wanted to buy tickets in order to stop bots from purchasing all of the tickers. Hopefully this will help the fans of show be able to afford tickets and will let more people have access to the performances.