How ticket bots are changing concert and train ticket sales

By Finance News On Jun 26, 2026

Purchasing concert tickets has long been a high-stakes affair, with popular events often selling out within minutes.

Increasingly, however, fans are competing against automated ticket-buying programs, commonly referred to as bots, that can snap up seats in seconds before reselling them at higher prices.

This has distorted access not only to concert tickets but also to everyday services such as train ticket reservations.

Purchasing a ticket has always been “very luck-based,” said Bryce Sng, a 23-year-old concert enthusiast. The added competition of bots “feels very unfair,” he added. Half the joy when fighting for tickets is the stress, Sng said, using a bot feels like “it takes away from that experience.”

It’s a sentiment shared by nearly 65% of respondents in a December 2025 survey by the Consumers’ Association of Singapore, who said ticket scalping prevented genuine fans from attending events. The survey’s focus group participants also cited bots that snapped up tickets within seconds before reselling them at higher prices.

Governments, including South Korea and China, have responded by tightening rules against automated ticket-buying.

South Korea expanded its anti-scalping laws on Jan. 29 to target conduct that disrupts fair ticket purchasing for resale, while Chinese regulators have repeatedly warned third-party platforms against using automated ticket-grabbing software.

On Feb. 12, Beijing market regulators met with 12 companies, including JD.com, Didi and Tencent, over train ticket sales that had drawn “strong public criticism.” In an April 10 announcement, regulators said seven third-party platforms, including Ctrip, Alibaba‘s Fliggy and Meituan, were summoned for regulatory talks.

In the first three months of 2026, China’s railway system handled over 1.13 billion trips, according to the National Railway Administration.

Passengers are passing through the gate at Fuyang West Railway Station in Fuyang, China, on April 29, 2024.

Nurphoto | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Laws aren’t enough

Ticket scalping is an inevitable “function of supply and demand,” said Marc Hershberg, director of business and legal affairs at Music Theatre International.

While banning bots may help to some extent, Sng said that policies alone may not be effective.

“Knowing humans, they will always find a different way [around the rules],” he added.

For companies defending against bots, there is more to consider than just “a single signal,” said David Irecki, chief technology officer at data software company Boomi.

Detecting bots requires analyzing patterns in user data, including transaction and payment signals, purchase speed, buying patterns and credit card activity, rather than relying on just a single indicator.

To combat bots, Ticketmaster, the primary ticketing platform for many concerts, blocks automated software, identifies and shuts down fake accounts and cancels orders that violate its policies.

“Brute force bot attacks… only represent one part of the…