Ticketmaster has denied reports it engaged in collusion with ticket scalpers, after an investigation by CBC News and the Toronto Star found the company had allegedly partnered with ticket resellers in order to double-dip on ticket resale fees.
According to the publications’ joint investigative report, Ticketmaster representatives were found to have allowed scalpers to explicitly violate Ticketmaster’s terms of service, allowing the company to create extra revenue by not reprimanding scalpers who break ticket-buying limits.
Since the report was published, Ticketmaster has denied the accusations and said it had already begun an internal review into its “professional reseller accounts and employee practices”.
In a statement to Music Feeds, the company said:
“It is categorically untrue that Ticketmaster has any program in place to enable resellers to acquire large volumes of tickets at the expense of consumers.
“Ticketmaster’s Seller Code of Conduct specifically prohibits resellers from purchasing tickets that exceed the posted ticket limit for an event. In addition, our policy also prohibits the creation of fictitious user accounts for the purpose of circumventing ticket limit detection in order to amass tickets intended for resale.
“A recent CBC story found that an employee of Ticketmaster’s resale division acknowledged being aware of some resellers having as many as 200 TradeDesk accounts for this purpose (TradeDesk is Ticketmaster’s professional reseller product that allows resellers to validate and distribute tickets to multiple marketplaces). We do not condone the statements made by the employee as the conduct described clearly violates our terms of service.
“The company had already begun an internal review of our professional reseller accounts and employee practices to ensure that our policies are being upheld by all stakeholders. Moving forward we will be putting additional measures in place to proactively monitor for this type of inappropriate activity.”
Watch the undercover footage shot by CBC News and the Toronto Star below, and read more about their investigation here.
