When you want to purchase tickets online nowadays, you'll have to be quick and buy them as soon as you can because scalpers or ticket bots are always lurking. "Alaska" singer Maggie Rogers aims to avoid that by selling tickets in person.
Maggie Roger's Solution to Scalpers
The pop star told her fans that they can buy tickets the way people did before, which was in person. To get one, you can go to box offices this Friday and purchase pre-sale tickets for Roger's US summer tour, which is from July to August.
However, the in-person sales are only for one day, and the process is different in various cities, as mentioned in Engadget. Each person can only purchase a maximum of two tickets, but they can choose to buy any two tickets they want.
In addition to getting the tickets in person, Rogers also mentioned that there will be exclusive merchandise available in the local box offices, along with a special playlist she "cooked up" just for the box office day.
Fans in or around the New York City area may have the chance to see the artist herself, as she plans to visit the Music Hall of Williamsburg box office in Brooklyn, wherein she will greet her fans for her Forest Hills show on July 27th.
In the event that you can't purchase tickets in person, the pop artists said that her website will open registrations for traditional artist pre-sales on April 11th. The tickets will generally be available on April 14th.
What's Ticket Scalping?
Ticket scalping is when people attempt to use bots to buy tickets so that when they're sold out, they can sell the ticket for a profit to those who really want to attend the event. According to SEON, 40% of ticket purchases online are scalper bots.
What's worse is some of the known ticket sources are known to be complicit in such practices before to profit more from them. Events that are sure or likely to have tickets sold out are the primary targets of scalpers.
They will use software or tools for the ticket grab such as auto refreshers to immediately see once the tickets are up for sale, pre-bots for automatic set up of accounts on websites, fake IDs if identification is needed, and more.
Scalping has been practiced for a very long time. Reports go as far back as the 19th century, during Charles Dickens' tour in the US back in the 1860s. In some cases, artificial shortages are created to resell the tickets at a much higher price.
Although it's legal in some places, scalping is illegal in some states in the US such as New York, Alabama, Georgia, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Massachusetts. There is also the BOTS Act of 2016 that doesn't allow the use of software to "enable scalping."
As for prevention, it could be hard since there are various methods, and tickets also vary when it comes to the process of acquiring them. If you want to purchase a ticket for yourself for a big event, best be quick about it and be there the moment tickets go on sale.
