The concert of Britain's popular rock band 'Coldplay' will be held in Mumbai in January next year. The concert tickets were sold out within minutes of ticket booking opening. They then appeared on reseller websites at ten times the price. This is all a game of black marketing of online tickets. Some people buy all the tickets with the help of bots and then sell them at very expensive prices. This has not happened only with Coldplay. Railway tickets for IPL finals, movie premieres, even festivals are sold in black. Coldplay tickets, which were originally priced between Rs 6,450 and Rs 37,000, are now being sold for Rs 38,000 to Rs 8,16,777. Same is the case with Dua Lipa and Bryan Adams concert tickets. Due to black money in tickets, viewers are forced to spend more money to buy tickets for programs of their choice.
How is it played?
Cyber security expert Ritesh Bhatia explains that companies like Viagogo and Gigsburg use their bots as soon as ticket sales start. These bots buy thousands of tickets in milliseconds with the help of high-speed servers and multiple computers. These bots do their work even before the human books the ticket. Bhatia further explained that these bots have been programmed to bypass the captcha code. To buy more tickets at once, hackers use multiple bots from the same IP address so that no one gets suspicious.
PressNews24 provides latest news, bollywood news, breaking news hollywood, top tech news, business standard news, indian economy news, world economy news, travel news, mumbai news, latest news mumbai loksabha election 2024, video viral news, delhi news, Only at PressNews24.in
What do experts say?
According to Rakshit Tandon, Training Director, Future Crime Research Foundation, the website is not able to differentiate between bots and humans because of flaws in their coding. He said, 'Companies often ignore cyber security and hackers take advantage of this. These hackers bypass the code and join the queue by finding flaws in the coding. Tandon said that the same thing happens on the IRCTC website during the festive season. Travel agents often collaborate with hackers to buy more tickets and sell them at higher prices with the help of bots.
What is the solution to this problem?
Tandon says that the coding of the website has to be made better and secure. He further said that all online businesses should check their security regularly. After data theft in Zomato and Big Basket, many Indian companies have started taking cyber security seriously. Expert Nikhil Pahwa says, 'Scalping is actually a digital form of the old-fashioned black market. The film industry has solved this problem through digitalization and accountability, so why not others?
Pahwa believes that if the platforms want, they can stop ticket scalping. “This problem can be tackled by setting a limit on the number of tickets a person can buy and issuing tickets at different times,” he said.
'We have to change the ticketing format'
Paytm Insider founder Shreyas Srinivasan has given a unique suggestion on social media. He said, 'I think for big events we have to change the ticketing format and make it like an IPO membership. The current system is not effective at all. It would be better if all interested customers set UPI mandate and then tickets are issued through the best algorithm. Pahwa suggests that platforms like Book My Show manage the resale themselves. By doing this they can avoid this whole hassle.
