Monday, February 9, 2009

TICKETsage Shuts Out Scalpers in Three Markets Using Anti-Scalping Technology 

FAYETTEVILLE, AR – TICKETsage, Inc. today announced that it has successfully used TicketVERIFY™, a patent-pending anti-scalping product designed to improve venue security to effectively shut out ticket scalpers attempting to acquire and resell tickets for three of the company’s venues in Lubbock - Texas, Tulsa – Oklahoma, and Johnson City, Tennessee. 

Launched in January, 2007, TicketVERIFY works with all major ticketing systems to quickly detect tickets that are resold or transferred outside authorized channels. 

Since trial implementation began at three of TICKETsage’s venues in the fall of 2008, the company claims it has prevented 325 individual scalpers or brokers from acquiring or reselling a total of 3,238 tickets with a total face value of almost $128,000.

Developed to tighten security loopholes in unauthorized resale channels, the TicketVERIFY product uses a combination of patent-pending software, processes, and hardware to detect all resold or transferred tickets with no false positives. 

“While the rest of the industry threw up their hands and gave up the fight, we saw the need to protect our clients’ interests back in 2002,” said Stephen Cassar, President / CEO of the Fayetteville, Arkansas company. “It took a significant investment of time and money to perfect the technology and successfully trial it, but I feel we now have a product that truly works.” Cassar added. 

“A lot has changed in the past two years since we launched (TicketVERIFY). It seems everyone is reselling everyone else’s tickets and it is a full time job just to keep up. Today, our largest competitor is scalping tickets to our events, something we did not anticipate back in 2002. Our venue clients and promoters are fed up and have told us they had had enough.” Cassar explained. 

Cassar added: “Today you have scalpers advertising and selling tickets that are not even in their possession! And you have others that simply do chargebacks if the tickets they tried to scalp did not sell.” Cassar lamented. “Once upon a time you could have made the argument that a sold ticket is a sold ticket, but it has now gotten to the point where the costs of speculation have shifted onto the promoter and venue. In our opinion, this is unacceptable, and we are proud to offer a set of tools that works across all channels to put an end to it.” 

Until now, venues and ticketing companies wishing to control the unauthorized resale of tickets were forced to cancel tickets en-masse, or, resort to legal action. TicketVERIFY integrates into any ticketing system not just the company’s, and solves that problem at the point of admission, shifting control of ticket inventory back to the venue, and effectively shutting down unauthorized secondary market resellers, scalpers and brokers.

Ticketing companies can use the technology in line with their existing technology to ensure that ticket transfers occur on a platform that is within their control. Concert promoters and teams can better regulate pricing and fan access to the best available seats. 

TicketVERIFY is transparent to legitimate ticket purchasers. But speculators selling tickets through unauthorized channels would essentially be selling a worthless piece of paper if venues adopt TicketVERIFY. 

Launched in January of 2007 and in production since September 2008, TicketVERIFY is the perfect combination of innovative design, speed and ease of use. Flexible enough to handle complex group ticket sales and authorized mass transfers, yet fast enough to identify the unauthorized resale of tickets in a large event environment, TicketVERIFY can operate in three modes–bypass mode which allows the product to operate like a traditional access control product; observation mode which allows the product to simply collect data for later analysis (and determine if implementation of the product would be of benefit); and full scan mode whereby all tickets presented for admission are checked for duplicates, forgery, and unauthorized resale or transfer. 

Pioneers of real-time choose-your-own-seat technology, and the first to market with a 64-bit ticketing architecture, TICKETsage is looking to license the anti-scalping product to ticketing companies, event producers and venues wishing to tighten security and eliminate scalping. “We will license the technology to any company that can benefit from it and wishes to regain control of their inventory,” said Cassar.

NOTE TO EDITORS:
If you would like additional information on TICKETsage, Inc. and its services, please call and request the TICKETsage Press Primer at (479) 587-8336. TICKETsage, the TICKETsage logo, TicketVERIFY, UNITY, cinturin Analytics, the cinturin logo, PatronSCOPE, and Distributed Ticketing are trademarks or registered trademarks, in the United States and certain other countries, of TICKETsage, Inc. All other trademarks, product names and brand names are the property of their respective owners.