How to buy on the secondary market | #datingscams | #lovescams | #facebookscams

A big concern for consumers: The secondary market has seen a “rise in fraudulent, unethical and illegal activities” like ticketing scalping and ticket touting, according to Technavio, a market researcher. The firm estimates the global secondary market share will rise to $2.2 billion by 2026, representing a growth rate of about 8% a year; 44% of the revenue growth is expected to come from North America.

Of course, this isn’t to say secondary sellers are grifters in all circumstances. But it becomes a “buyer beware” type market, experts said.

Exit/In had a string of sold-out shows recently — and had to turn away groups each night, Cobb said. They’d inadvertently bought fake tickets.

Sometimes, that might happen if a reseller sells multiples of the same ticket; only the initially scanned ticket will work at the door. In other cases, a reseller may be selling you tickets they haven’t even secured yet.  

It’s easy to see why consumers get confused: Google results for “Taylor Swift concert tickets” on Thursday afternoon brought up ads for StubHub and Vivid Seats — both secondary sellers — before those of Ticketmaster and Taylor Swift’s own website. And it may not be clear how to differentiate the two groups.

The question for consumers becomes how to know whether they’re making an error before buying.

There’s a surefire way when buying online, experts said: First, navigate to an artist’s or event venue’s website and click through from there for tickets. Doing so will bring you to the primary seller’s page.

Before buying, do one last check of the website’s URL domain name — to ensure you’re buying from “ticketmaster.com” and not “ticketfaster.com,” for example, Cobb said.

Of course, there’s a chance a given show may be sold out or that face-value ticket prices may be higher than hoped via Ticketmaster when fans go to buy.

“When there are simply no tickets available, I understand fans want to see a show, but they run risk of overpaying or running into fake tickets, scammers,” said Tim Gray, CEO of Grayscale Marketing and vice president of marketing for Romeo Entertainment Group, a talent buyer and concert promoter.

Social media is another potential landmine for fans, Gray said. Since the pandemic, he’s seen a “gargantuan amount, an absurd, crazy amount” of fraud through Facebook and other platforms.

In these cases, a bot (which may even pose as someone you know) might entice you to click on a fake link for a livestream to a sold-out concert, or tell you they can no longer use event tickets they’d purchased. These are often attempts to steal your personal information or credit card number, Gray said.

He encourages fans who buy tickets this way to click on the social-media profile in question and look for potential red flags, such as very few prior posts, which signals the account was likely just created. Fans can also do a Google search for consumer reviews of the seller in question, which may give an indication as to whether others have suffered a scam.

It’s likely that even legitimate Taylor Swift tickets bought on the secondary market will see prices fall dramatically from the current levels after the initial rush of demand filters out, experts said.

“A broker is fishing to see what they can get,” Cobb said. “Those numbers will continue to go down once all of this false demand is gone and there’s a correction.”