Have you been Duped?

Imagine your birthday is coming up, and your grandma wants to buy you tickets to a Yankees-Red Sox game to celebrate. It’s a huge rivalry, and so tickets are a little hard to come by. She googles ticket sites and clicks one of the first to appear, she enters her credit card information, and never receives the ticket. Grandma has just fallen victim to ticket fraud.

Feeling sorry for your grandma, your mom tries to buy you tickets to the game. This time the face value is $178, which is a little high, but she loves you and wants to get you two tickets. Your birthday present should come out to around $356 right? Not exactly. She spent $652 because, although this site actually had the ticket is claimed to, it decided to tack on insane fees. Your mom fell victim to a White Label site, a website that sells the same ticket under the guise of many different websites to give the illusion of comparison shopping.

“White label” ticket resale websites use the ticket inventory and other technologies of larger ticket resale sites. They set their prices for tickets and impose fees and surcharges at their discretion, profiting from any markup. Both Vivid Seats and TicketNetwork operate expansive networks of white label sites.

These sites are a scourage for fans. Tickets are already exorbitant without these sharks lurking, waiting for a loving, grandmother to feast on.

These sites offer the same inventory as unique, giving the illusion of choice and dominating search engine results and advertising slots. They charge exorbitant costs with inflated ticket valuations and enormous fees, often hidden until a buyer’ enters their credit card info. And, they deceive fans into thinking they’re buying directly from a venue box office at face value, with misleading URLs, link titles, imagery, etc.

This is a fraudulent business practice that is being called out by members of both parties in Congress. We will be working with them to end this practice. But, we need your help. If you or a loved one has been duped, comment below to share your story with us.