For as long as ticket brokers have been in business, they’ve sought to gain an edge over their competition. One of the most common ways they’ve tried to do this is by utilizing complex ticket broker software. These software packages claim to fly you through the Ticketmaster purchase window and secure the highest possible value tickets.
Just one problem: they don’t work. And even if they do, it won’t be long before they don’t anymore.
Ticketmaster Isn’t Stupid
The biggest problem with so-called “Ticket Broker Software” is that Ticketmaster catches on very quickly. As a company, Ticketmaster processes billions of dollars in tickets every single year. The last thing they need is a piece of software compromising their bread and butter cashcow, which is their ticket purchasing process.
Ticketmaster employs a team of website professionals who would easily catch on to any automated activity happening on their website within minutes of it happening. (It’s rather trivial to detect if you know what to look for.) If they catch anything fishy once or twice, nothing is likely to come of it. But if they see a pattern day-in, day-out, you can bet the party won’t last long.
Ticketmaster Isn’t Predictable
The other big problem with ticket brokering software is that it doesn’t even solve the most difficult aspect of ticket brokering, which is not about speed, but about diligence. You can have the most advanced software in the world pulling your tickets for you, but the fact of the matter is that not all great seats will be available on the exact second that tickets go on sale. You’ll need to persist and keep pulling before the truly valuable seats show up, and no software can hep you skip this important step in ticket brokering.
If Ticketmaster truly released tickets in chronological order, ticket broker software would be invaluable. But because they release tickets in a random and sporadic fashion, software will just help you finish first in a race that you don’t need to win.
Conclusion
I’m not saying that customized ticket broker software is incapable of penetrating Ticketmaster’s filters, or that they’re utterly useless in securing top seats to popular shows and sporting events. They can work (quite well) and brokers have used them for years.
What I am saying, though, is that if you intend on making ticket brokering a real business, you should never come to rely on automated software to do the heavy lifting of your craft. Your techniques should be quite more advanced than a simple piece of software. This will keep your business out of the crosshairs of the Ticketmaster giants, and you’ll be forced to devise more intelligent strategies to securing great seats than running a software program.
If you want to learn how to become a ticket broker, don’t worry as much about the temporary loopholes. Think in the long term, and focus on growing your ticket brokering empire the right way.
