Original article published on Financial Post (01/02/18) by Josh McConnell
Ticketmaster aims to control the pace of ticket sales with its Verified Fan technology in an attempt to fight scalpers and users of ticket-buying software bots. Fans are required to register their interest in an event, and then Ticketmaster's machine-learning algorithm analyzes each individual to determine who is most likely to attend based on their past history of following through. Selected fans get a code and specified purchase window, discarding the previous policy of one general on-sale time. "What we are trying to do is slow down the process, but, also knowing that demand inevitably outpaces the supply sometimes, the question is how do we try to predict the propensity of that fan to actually go to the event as opposed to reselling that ticket for an opportunity of arbitrage, using the data science both us and the artist have," says Ticketmaster Canada's Patti-Anne Tarlton. Last year, Verified Fan was used on 65 tours, and it accurately selected fans 95 percent of the time. Ticketmaster also is deploying technological solutions to ease fans' access and purchase of tickets, having integrated with platforms including Facebook, YouTube, Spotify, and Google Assistant to help users find events, leading to the sale of 10 million tickets. Meanwhile, Ticketmaster is replacing bar codes with Ticketmaster Presence, a digital tokenized system that is secure and individualized to each ticket buyer.
Read the full article on the Financial Post website.