As ticket sales and other appointments have moved online, so have scalpers, eager to help you cut the virtual line — for the right price. Online scalping now extends to Broadway tickets, restaurant reservations, even immigration status meetings, DMV appointments, public camping sites and golf tee times, often at considerable markups. In the process, it is breaking the systems meant to ensure fairness and accessibility.
A third congressional proposal, the TICKET Act, would require more disclosures and ban deceptive URLs on resale websites. All of these bills would strengthen provisions of the BOTS Act, which President Barack Obama signed into law in 2016 because of concerns about bots’ reselling tickets to “Hamilton” and the Floyd Mayweather Jr.-Manny Pacquiao boxing match. Economists say it’s important that any fixes don’t make ticket reselling too onerous, as it has some benefits.