Sunday, December 15th, 2024

From Coldplay to IPL, ’10 Ka 30, 10 Ka 30…’ the era of black tickets is back again

New Delhi: The concert of Britain’s popular rock band ‘Coldplay’ will be held in Mumbai in January next year. The concert sold out within minutes of booking tickets opening. Then they appeared on reseller websites at ten times the price. This is all a game of black marketing of online tickets. With the help of bots, some people buy all the tickets and then sell them at very expensive prices. This has not happened only with Coldplay. IPL finals, film premieres, even railway tickets at festivals are sold in black. The original price of Coldplay tickets was between Rs 6,450 to Rs 37,000, which are now being sold for Rs 38,000 to Rs 8,16,777. Same is the case with Dua Lipa and Bryan Adams concert tickets. Due to black money in tickets, viewers are forced to spend more money to buy tickets for the programs of their choice.

How is it played?

Cyber ​​security expert Ritesh Bhatia explains that companies like Viagogo and Gigsberg use their bots as soon as ticket sales start. These bots buy thousands of tickets in milliseconds with the help of high-speed servers and multiple computers. These bots do their work even before the human books the ticket. Bhatia further explained that these bots are programmed to bypass the captcha code. Hackers use multiple bots from the same IP address to buy more tickets simultaneously so that no one gets suspicious.

What do experts say?

According to Rakshit Tandon, Training Director of Future Crime Research Foundation, the website is not able to differentiate between bots and humans because there are flaws in their coding. he/she said, ‘Companies often ignore cyber security and hackers take advantage of this. These hackers bypass the code and queue by finding flaws in the coding. Tandon said that the same thing happens on the IRCTC website also during the festival season. Travel agents often collaborate with hackers to buy more tickets with the help of bots and sell them at higher prices.

What is the solution to this problem?

Tandon says that the coding of the website has to be made better and secure. he/she further said that all online businesses should check their security regularly. After the data theft in Zomato and Big Basket, many Indian companies have started taking cyber security seriously. Expert Nikhil Pahwa says, ‘Scalping is actually a digital form of the old-fashioned black market. The film industry had solved this problem through digitization and accountability, so why not others?

Pahwa believes that if the platforms want, they can stop ticket scalping. “This problem can be tackled by setting a limit on the number of tickets a person can buy and issuing tickets at different times,” he/she said.

‘We have to change the ticketing format’

Paytm Insider founder Shreyas Srinivasan has given a unique suggestion on social media. he/she said, ‘I think for big events we will have to change the ticketing format and make it like an IPO subscription. The current system is not effective at all. It would be better if all interested customers set the UPI mandate and then tickets are issued through the best algorithm. Pahwa suggests that platforms like Book My Show manage the resale themselves. By doing this they can avoid this whole mess.

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