The issue of fake tickets

 

In 2024, one of the world's most popular sporting events took place in Paris: the Olympic Games. Some lucky sports fans managed to score tickets, but some of them didn't make it past the entry gates. Why?

 

Because their tickets were fake.

 

Unfortunately, highly coveted tickets in short supply are vulnerable to various types of ticket scams, not only during the biggest sports competition on Earth. Let’s take a look at the most prevalent scams on the global ticketing market.

 

 

Ticket scams across the globe

The global events ticketing market is expected to rise to US$82 billion by 2027. With a value like that, it’s no wonder that fraudsters try to carve out a share for themselves with various types of scams.

 

 

Illustration of a spectacular music concert

 

 

Using fake ticket webshops is popular with scammers and relatively easy to pull off. All they have to do is register a domain that’s similar to the official one (e.g., it ends with .org instead of .com or has a few different characters in the name, like buytickets24.com instead of buytickets2024.com) and copy-paste information and graphics from the actual site.

 

Users who land on these fake sites are either “only” duped out of the ticket price, or in a worst case, involuntarily hand over their sensitive banking information to fraudsters. The former has happened to the family of a British Olympic champion and resulted in a loss of 2,500 pounds.

 

After a successful fake sale, fraudsters may try to duplicate their winnings and send an error message to the buyer, claiming the payment hasn’t gone through. This way, the victim is scammed out of double the amount of money - and still no legitimate tickets to show for it.

 

Fake webshops often use tricks to create a sense of urgency, like a countdown that ticks away the seconds before an amazing discount disappears.

 

Learn all about unfair selling practices here!

 

Another type of ticketing scam is when fraudsters actually buy you tickets to an event, but instead of the premium seats you were promised, you’ll end up with the cheapest seats in the house. The difference is the “earnings” of the scammer.

 

 

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Similarly, fraudsters possessing a legitimate ticket may sell the same one over and over to different buyers, which means that the first person who actually gets to the event gains entry while all the others are sent home. Since many events operate with electronic tickets and QR codes, this scam is quite easy to pull off.

 

A variation of this is when a person is reselling a legitimately bought ticket on social media without blocking the QR code or barcode on the ticket. This way, fraudsters only have to copy that code and sell the ticket again without ever having purchased anything at all.

 

Whichever scam victims happen to fall for, ticket fraud is a serious issue that generates untold losses for consumers. For example, around 3,000 Taylor Swift fans eager to attend the superstar’s London concerts have collectively lost over one million pounds to scammers.

 

 

Fake 2024 Olympics tickets

The specialised task force of Europol responsible for detecting 2024 Olympic ticket scams found 338 fraudulent sites selling fake tickets to the Games. Since many of these were registered in foreign countries, shutting them down was more difficult than you’d initially think. Therefore, only 140 of these could be served with a formal notice to close down their site, and only 51 of them have been shut down.

 

 

AI-generated illustration of female athletes lining up before a competition

 

 

You could only buy tickets to the Games on the official website, app, or resale site. Ticket prices ranged from 24 to 950 euros, except for the opening and closing ceremonies, where entry may cost several thousand euros.

 

The official sites required registering an account before any transaction, which helped identify legitimate ticket holders. No paper tickets were issued; instead, ticket holders received a QR code that they scanned at the entrance.

 

Despite these precautions, fraudsters have found several ways to profit from the hype surrounding the 2024 Games, so much so that the organisers have issued a statement alerting visitors to potential scams and setting up a dedicated email account to deal with cases of fraud.

 

 

Screenshot of https://tickets.paris2024.org/ displaying a warning about ticketing scams

 

 

Creating fake ticket hubs that look like the official site works for Olympic tickets as well. For example, URL components like “paris24tickets” were used, which were eerily similar to those of the official ticketing website (https://tickets.paris2024.org/) but led to a phishing site.

 

Another easy way to dupe sports fans is to put fake tickets for sale on social media. Since people may try to sell their legitimate tickets to events they can’t attend after all on Facebook & Co., scammers already have an in with would-be customers.

 

Both Europol and organisers try to discourage people from purchasing tickets anywhere but the official site. However, if you do opt for outside channels, be extra careful and keep an eye out for red flags. For example, a ticket for a prime seat at a too-good-to-be-true price is usually just that - too good to be true.

 

Interestingly, that’s also a great way to identify counterfeit products - check it out here!

 

And what if you do fall for a scam? Well, in the “best case scenario”, the fraudster sells you a worthless piece of coding and you only lose the actual ticket price. If you’re more unfortunate and end up giving your sensitive data to a phishing website, contact your bank to stop your card immediately. You’re also advised to contact the police.

 

 

Online brand protection and ticket scams

Although the sale of fake tickets affects mostly consumers, brands whose names get involved in such scams also risk losing their reputation. After all, if your customers are duped out of money in your name, you’ll be affected even though you had nothing to do with the scam in the first place.

 

Luckily, online brand protection measures work just as well in the case of ticket scams. For example, globaleyez’s marketplace monitoring service detects fraudulent listings for any event tickets on over 150 marketplaces worldwide. Our social media monitoring service does the same on major platforms, including Facebook and Instagram, which is especially important for this area of fraud.

 

Since electronic tickets are often photographed for listings, our image monitoring service is excellent for finding copied or stolen images of tickets anywhere online. In addition, our domain monitoring service can come in handy when looking for fake webshops that use a variation of your legitimate domain name to dupe customers.

 

Thanks to our international network of marketplaces, domain registries and registrars, social media platforms, and many other professionals, enforcing your rights and demanding the removal of the infringing content shouldn’t be a problem, even if it’s hosted in foreign countries.

 

 

Conclusion

Ticketing fraud is a major industry with the potential to cause devastating losses to consumers. Don’t let your brand’s reputation be sullied by such a scam!

 

Contact globaleyez and let’s create a tailor-made solution together to perfectly fit your brand’s needs.