Where did everyone go?, Beijing police: 143 people have been arrested! Establish a special command center! Concert Ticket Market | Performance | Tickets
Since the beginning of spring, offline performance markets across the country have been very active, and scalpers have taken advantage of this opportunity to intensify ticket scalping. This not only prevents audiences from buying tickets at reasonable prices, but also makes the performance ticketing market chaotic. In Beijing, multiple departments are working together to crack down on the chaos of scalpers scalping tickets.
From the end of May to the beginning of June, the popular band Mayday held six consecutive concerts at the National Stadium Bird's Nest, with hundreds of thousands of tickets sold out upon opening. But some people have found that viewers cannot grab tickets on official ticketing platforms, while scalpers post a large amount of information about reselling tickets at higher prices on some trading platforms and social media platforms.
The official ticket prices for the stands and infield range from 355 yuan to 1885 yuan, while the premium tickets released by scalpers, priced at 1855 yuan per infield ticket, have even been hyped up to 6980 yuan, and in some cases, the prices can reach tens of thousands of yuan. Not only is it a "premium", some media interviews have found that many ticket buyers have reported that they were unsuccessful in purchasing tickets on multiple official platforms at the first time of invoicing, but the number and location of "scalper" tickets can be randomly selected.
Starting from April this year, Beijing's cultural and tourism, public security, online information, cultural law enforcement, and market supervision departments have joined forces with various districts to carry out a special campaign to crack down on the chaos of ticket scalpers in the commercial performance ticketing market, especially when large-scale popular concerts are held intensively in Beijing.
The Beijing police have seized 143 scalpers involved in ticket scalping
During the special rectification process, law enforcement personnel focused on the "hardest hit areas" where scalpers were involved in ticket scalping based on the working mode of the performance ticketing market, and focused on "large-scale popular top tier concerts" and "top tier performances" held in hot performance venues. Since the launch of the special rectification work in April this year, based on reports from the public and clues discovered through their own work, the Beijing police have seized 143 scalpers.
Zhang Yan, Deputy Squadron Leader of the Third Squadron of the Fifth Brigade of the Beijing Public Security Bureau's Public Security Management Corps: During the "Mayday" concert, the Beijing police set up a special command center to crack down on "scalpers" on the outskirts, deployed undercover police forces, and continued to maintain a strict crackdown on such illegal and criminal activities. During this period, 64 scalper ticket scalpers were seized and dealt with. On May 23rd, Liu, Wang, and five others suspected of reselling multiple tickets for the Mayday concert were arrested and dealt with in accordance with the law.
How to grab tickets from "cheats" to "proxy auctions" and "scalpers"?
Unlike the past when scalpers secretly exchanged tickets at the entrance of performance venues, their business has now shifted from offline to online. The operating methods are becoming increasingly complex.
Through investigation, the reporter found that in recent years, some scalpers have developed program scripts and software specifically for ticket grabbing, commonly known as "cheats", in order to significantly improve the success rate of ticket grabbing in official ticketing channels. The reporter logged into the relevant social media platform and found that a user posted a ticket grabbing process using "program scripts" and expressed that they could provide "services".
The investigation by reporters found that after scalpers hoard tickets that can be used for gifting, they will immediately search for buyers on relevant social media platforms under the name of "spot ticket booking" for premium resale. After the resale is completed, they can modify the information of the audience through the official ticketing platform's "gifting function" and transfer the tickets to the "premium ticket buyer" to complete the transaction.
According to the regulatory requirements of the cultural and tourism department, official ticketing platforms should use technological means to counter the phenomenon of "malicious software ticket brushing". The reporter learned that some platforms are already using technological means to counter it.
In addition to cheating to grab tickets, there are also many ticket scalpers who hire a large number of real people to act as agents and hoard ticket sources through official ticket platforms. Some long-term recruitment information of "acting as photographers and acting as looters" is also flooded in various Internet platforms. If encountering high requirements for real name registration or popular concerts, scalpers will charge consumers in advance. Some consumers take the risk of personal information leakage and provide personal accounts and identity information to facilitate scalpers in implementing "robbing". Because the ticket buying behavior of real person proxy buying is consistent with normal ticket buying behavior, it is difficult for the system to make accurate identification.
Zhou Weimin, a first level inspector of the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Culture and Tourism, said that "scalpers" hire people to act as agents to grab tickets, which distorts the supply and demand relationship in the ticketing market. We demand that ticketing sales platforms continuously iterate technology to effectively curb "scalpers" hiring people to act as agents to grab tickets.
