Purchasing concert tickets has long been a high-stakes affair, with popular events often selling out within minutes.
Increasingly, however, fans are competing against automated ticket-buying programs, commonly referred to as bots, that can snap up seats in seconds before reselling them at higher prices.
This has distorted access not only to concert tickets but also to everyday services such as train ticket reservations.
Purchasing a ticket has always been “very luck-based,” said Bryce Sng, a 23-year-old concert enthusiast. The added competition of bots “feels very unfair,” he added. Half the joy when fighting for tickets is the stress, Sng said, using a bot feels like “it takes away from that experience.”
It’s a sentiment shared by nearly 65% of respondents in a December 2025 survey by the Consumers’ Association of Singapore, who said ticket scalping prevented genuine fans from attending events. The survey’s focus group participants also cited bots that snapped up tickets within seconds before reselling them at higher prices.
Governments, including South Korea and China, have responded by tightening rules against automated ticket-buying.
South Korea expanded its anti-scalping laws on Jan. 29 to target conduct that disrupts fair ticket purchasing for resale, while Chinese regulators have repeatedly warned third-party platforms against using automated ticket-grabbing software.
On Feb. 12, Beijing market regulators met with 12 companies, including JD.com, Didi and Tencent, over train ticket sales that had drawn “strong public criticism.” In an April 10 announcement, regulators said seven third-party platforms, including Ctrip, Alibaba‘s Fliggy and Meituan, were summoned for regulatory talks.
In the first three months of 2026, China’s railway system handled over 1.13 billion trips, according to the National Railway Administration.
Passengers are passing through the gate at Fuyang West Railway Station in Fuyang, China, on April 29, 2024.
Nurphoto | Nurphoto | Getty Images
Laws aren’t enough
Ticket scalping is an inevitable “function of supply and demand,” said Marc Hershberg, director of business and legal affairs at Music Theatre International.
While banning bots may help to some extent, Sng said that policies alone may not be effective.
“Knowing humans, they will always find a different way [around the rules],” he added.
For companies defending against bots, there is more to consider than just “a single signal,” said David Irecki, chief technology officer at data software company Boomi.
Detecting bots requires analyzing patterns in user data, including transaction and payment signals, purchase speed, buying patterns and credit card activity, rather than relying on just a single indicator.
To combat bots, Ticketmaster, the primary ticketing platform for many concerts, blocks automated software, identifies and shuts down fake accounts and cancels orders that violate its policies.
“Brute force bot attacks… only represent one part of the battle we’re fighting against scalpers,” the company told CNBC in an email.
“These are highly sophisticated networks that strive to mimic human fan behavior to blend in.”
Beyond bots
Yet bots are only one part of a much larger problem. Hershberg said the limited number of tickets available to the general public often compounds the problem.
In late 2022, Live Nation and its subsidiary Ticketmaster faced widespread backlash after mishandling ticket sales for Taylor Swift’s 2022 ‘Eras’ tour.
The Live Nation website arranged on a laptop in New York, US, on Wednesday, April 17, 2024.
Gabby Jones | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Several lawsuits have been filed against the company, alleging monopolistic practices and harming consumer interests.
Live Nation reached a $9.9 million settlement with the District of Columbia in April over allegations it advertised deceptively low prices before adding mandatory fees and used misleading tactics that created artificial urgency. Live Nation denied wrongdoing as part of the settlement.
“For at least a decade, Live Nation and Ticketmaster boosted profits by charging predatory, hidden fees — taking advantage of DC residents buying tickets for their favorite artist or team and pricing others out entirely,” said District of Columbia Attorney General Brian L. Schwalb.
Face-value tickets for Swift’s “Eras” tour ranged from $49 to $450, while VIP packages started at $199 and reached $899. On the secondary market, some tickets were listed between $800 and $20,000 each.
The same issue extends across the entertainment industry, Hershberg said.
“Shows like Hamilton… are having tickets sold on the resale market for, let’s say, $2,000, but the top ticket price is around $800 on Broadway. That shows that they’re not setting it at an amount that is clearing the market.”
However, demand far outstrips supply, and people are clearly willing to pay higher prices. But producers who still want to make shows accessible are unwilling to charge what they consider unreasonable prices.
Compounding the problem, some consumers do not realize they are buying tickets from resellers online. Hershberg pointed to Broadway.com, a resale ticketing platform whose name often leads many buyers to mistake it for an official distributor of Broadway tickets. CNBC reached out to Broadway.com but did not receive a response from the company by the time of publication.
The problem goes beyond a singular fix, Boomi’s Irecki said.
“It’s not just about one tool because you need regulation or business policy, but it needs to be supported again, by well-connected systems.”
Scalpers are the primary beneficiaries of those markups, Hershberg added, rather than “the actual people who are putting up with the risk and the artists and other people working on the show.”