Can an App for Concert Tickets Beat Out the Scalper Bots?

So your favorite band is coming to town. Sweet! You show up at the venue, stand in line for 20 minutes, get patted down by a really unofficial-seeming security guard—then spend $12 for a warming Bud Light in a plastic cup before making your way to a seat (if the concert hall even has them), only to find that someone the height of Kristaps Porzingis has purchased the one directly in front of you. By the time the beer has run its course, the opening act is still tuning up; better stand in line for the bathroom now, before the toilet paper runs out. That’s if you’re even able to get a ticket. A report by the New York Attorney General’s Office earlier this year revealed that venues often hold back as much as 20 percent of seats for insiders when a big act comes to town. After credit card company presales, there might be only a handful of tickets left. For a July 2014 Katy Perry concert at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, the report found, only 12 percent of seats were still available at the official on-sale date. A moderately enterprising scalper using automated software can scavenge whatever’s left at the rate of more than 1,000 tickets a minute.

Hard to imagine why you haven’t tried going to see any bands recently, right?