Ticketmaster Faces Down RMG Technologies

By Alfred Branch, Jr.

A court hearing slated for Oct. 1 in Los Angeles involving Ticketmaster and RMG Technologies is shaping up to potentially have far-reaching ramifications on the ticketing industry.

The primary ticketing giant is suing RMG and others over software RMG has developed that utilizes “bots” to find and purchase large blocks of tickets from Ticketmaster’s websites. The others being sued are ticket brokers that have allegedly used the applications, and Ticketmaster is seeking an end to the use of such types of software programs.

Over the past few years, Ticketmaster has watched as StubHub! and countless secondary ticket brokers have chipped away at its event ticketing empire, in what has become one of the fastest growing segments in the entertainment industry.

In addition, with parents of “Hannah Montana” fans up in arms over ticket prices on the open market, the timing of Monday’s hearing in district court in Los Angeles could not be more pertinent.

To hear critics of brokers, ticketers using such back-door technology are part of why tickets for hot events often become scarce quickly, but what that view point does not take into account is the inherent risk involved in such a speculative enterprise.

testimony in the RMG case by at least one broker, who allegedly settled with Ticketmaster, described in detail how the bots worked, allowing him to buy 24,000 tickets from Ticketmaster in about two years, according to published reports. RMG software allegedly allowed brokers to make hundreds of thousands of ticket requests and purchases on Ticketmaster websites.