Ticket scalping: Should we blame bots for the great ticket rip-off?

If you've bought tickets to a big event in the last few years, you've probably seen ticket scalping: the tickets are sold out as soon as they go on sale and then immediately listed for re-sale at ten times the price. Legislation is being prepared to put before Parliament that will: Outlaw the use of bots - software that allows ticket scalpers to buy lots of tickets before anyone else. TBA president and ticket broker, Jay Felix, told Hack its members account for more than half of the tickets being resold in Australia, although this was only "one per cent" of all tickets. "Bots are a kind of boogie man used to portray our members and ticket resellers generally in a negative light, without any meat to it," he said He said the Australian market was too small for the scale of ticket scalping seen in the US and the UK, where there are more sold-out shows. That lack of transparency makes bots a convenient "boogie man" for politicians and the live entertainment industry, the Ticket Brokers Association argues.