(Tiper Stock Exchange) – The AgCom and the Guardia di Finanza start a crusade against online scalping of concert tickets, an illegal practice known as ssecondary ticketing. The investigations carried out led to the discovery of 26 serial resellers which, through fraudulent methodologies, they would have bought 15 thousand tickets of 278 concerts and they would have resold them to prices also multiplied by 10with an illegal profit of over 2.5 million euros.
The operation involved all main concerts of 2022 and 2023 in Italyblocking online touting before shows for the first time.
Last September, following the news of online scalping phenomena for the Italian concerts of the Coldplay scheduled for 2023 – which immediately sold out and whose tickets were resold on unofficial channels at prices up to 10 times higher – the Authority launched a supervisory activity with the support of the Guardia di Finanza, also to find out how concert tickets are actually sold in Italy. The focus of the investigation he focused on the organizational aspects and on the marketing methods of concert tickets for Coldplay’s Italian tour and those of Blanco.
Examination of the ticket distribution processes for the two events highlighted the presence of 26 subjects who have acted, using it improperly multiple “accounts” about 150) to generate anomalous ticket flows (over 700), half of which are registered to “non-existent, “apparently foreign” natural persons or validated with data of unaware or deceased persons, circumventing the technical and security measures established by the Revenue Agency for the issuance of electronic certificates of access to show events.
The GdF carried out further investigative insights on the positions identified, analyzing the billing flow generated by the various activities and calculating that the 26 subjects would have acquired over 7,000 tickets using only existing accounts ed over 15,000 tickets also with the use of “fake accounts”, for an estimated cost of over 1,000,000 euros and possible illegal profits exceeding 2,500,000 euros.
This modus operandi was also followed for many other concerts held in 2022 (Maneskin, Vasco Rossi, Andrea Bocelli, Blink 182, Bruce Springsteen, Elton John) and for those scheduled for 2023 (Coldplay, Madonna, Vasco Rossi, Peter Gabriel, red hot
Chili Peppers).
In fact, considering the numbers recorded, these individuals can be defined as “serial” resellers or “digital touts” who operate in irregular secondary marketwhose “illicit activity” has characteristics of continuity and habituality, highlighting fraudulent behaviors that feed a illegal system complex also represented by unauthorized ticket resale platforms operating on the web.
In fact, in addition to identifying those who have committed irregularities or violations and adopting the sanctioning measures envisaged by law, the objective of the intervention of AGCOM and the Guardia di Finanza is to Preventively prevent the spread of the phenomenon of online scalping.