Ticketmaster president Jared Smith has admitted “there’s clearly some things that we’re not doing well enough” following last week’s TradeDesk scandal.
Ticketmaster employees were filmed by CBC News and the Toronto Star claiming that the company “turns a blind eye” to those who have multiple accounts on the company’s inventory management platform and were securing dozens and even hundreds of tickets at a time.
The company has already said it is conducting an internal investigation, but denied the claims of the employees were accurate.
Now Smith, in an interview Billboard, has reiterated the firm’s commitment to identifying and constraining scalping. He also said the company will investigate how TradeDesk can be improved.
“We absolutely do not turn a blind eye to the misuse of our products,” he told Billboard.
“As you know, we spend a ton of money and a ton of time doing things like building software that prevents bots from buying tickets. These tools are not perfect, but we continue to improve those tools that identify suspicious activity. We have gotten pretty effective at blocking people from buying lots of tickets, and we take it seriously.
“Where the distinction has been made and where we have to improve, I think, is on the backside of those products. We probably don’t do enough to look into TradeDesk even though it’s hard and it’s not as obvious as people are suggesting it is.”
Smith said Ticketmaster does not give resellers it works with the chance to pull tickets before fans. He also defended the existence of TradeDesk, noting StubHub’s Ticket Utils and Vivid Seats’ SkyBox.
He said: “TradeDesk is an inventory management tool that allows professional sellers, which do not cheat, to pull all of the inventory that they have, which is mostly gathered in very, very legitimate ways.
“There’s lot of these tools out there; Ticketmaster is not the only one.”
Image: Free-Photos
Share this