They government has made bots illegal in concert ticket sales and cracked down on US companies that were buying tickets bots and then re-selling. Which has just caused a lot of them to move their base of operations out of the country.
This was a big international business where people were making millions of dollars using bots to buy concert tickets all over the world and than re-sell them and make millions.
Did they even move out of the country?
Or is it just unenforceable?
https://queue-it.com/blog/ticket-bots/5. Has legislation been effective?
Enforceability isn’t easy
Enforceability is an ever-present issue with ticketing legislation. Just because a law is on the books doesn’t mean it’s followed. Strong enforcement is necessary to curb illegal behavior.
Indeed, when the Ontario ban originally passed, attorney general Yasir Niqvi acknowledged the difficulty of enforcing the bot ban, as many bot operators are located outside of the province. He cited the 50% resale cap as an easier enforcement tool. Two years later, in 2019, Ontario’s government rolled back the 50% resale cap, saying it wasn’t enforceable. Similarly, in the U.S. the BOTS Act’s bark has been worse than its bite. The Federal Trade Commission—the agency tasked with enforcing the law—couldn’t comment on any instances of enforcement since the BOTS Act’s passage. And even when the law was passed, the Congressional Budget Office judged it unlikely that any enforcement would take place. “CBO estimates that [revenues from civil penalties] would be insignificant because of the small number of cases that the agency would probably pursue.”
The financial incentives are too lucrative
Using bots to scalp tickets is a perfect example of rent-seeking behavior (economist talk for leeching) that adds no benefit to society. But as long as there’s a secondary market to sell tickets at markups of over 1,000%, bad actors will fill the void to take advantage. Indeed, the U.S. ticket resale market alone has ballooned to $5 billion. Ticketmaster reported that it blocks 5 billion bot attempts every month. The financial incentive is simply too strong and the threat of legal action too weak to stop malicious bot operators. Legislation can’t keep up with the technology
In such a rapidly evolving space, legislation becomes outdated as soon as it’s passed. The U.S. BOTS Act, for example, doesn’t appear to apply to people who purchase tickets where they’ve only used bots to reserve the tickets (as Denial of Inventory bots do). The newest iteration of bots will continue to outpace and outmaneuver the legal roadblocks.
It’s clear that the ticketing industry cannot rely on legislation to solve the ticketing bot problem. The onus remains on venues, ticketing organizations, and online platforms to defend against malicious bots during online ticket sales. And companies that aren’t perceived as doing enough to battle bots are playing with fire. Public outrage can quickly turn on such organizations, and potential legal actions can follow in its footsteps.
Sounds from that like there has never been a single enforcement case against the people behind bots. Maybe that's because it went overseas. Or maybe that's because it's a toothless law?
The street-wear/sneaker/ps5/xbox thing is teenage nerds in moms basement on twitter/youtube. It could be cracked down and shut down in two seconds flat.
I'm not sure I believe in this either. How many teenage nerds have access to the sort of capital or credit necessary to pull this off at a large scale?
Teenage nerds are known more for access to time than to capital. It might not even be bots. It might be hordes of them spending countless hours clicking "refresh" on sites trying to find stock and order 1 or 2 of something with the expectation of resale, rather than bots who might be able to collect 10-20 units. Especially at the order of something like a PS5 or XBox where 20 units might run you 10 grand...
You might have a bunch of guys like me or utee, who are old and successful enough nerds that we have significant access to credit, who do something like this on the side. But I'm pretty sure it's not teenage nerds in mom's basement.
