TICKETsage Shuts Out Scalpers in Three Markets Using Anti-Scalping Technology

PRLog (Press Release) - Feb 08, 2009 -
Fayetteville, AR

TICKETsage, Inc. today announced that it has successfully used its patent-pending anti-scalping product, TicketVERIFY™, for three of the company's venues in Lubbock TX, Tulsa OK and Johnson City TN. The product is designed to improve venue security to effectively shut out ticket scalpers attempting to acquire and resell tickets.

Launched two years ago, TicketVERIFY works with all major ticketing systems to quickly detect tickets that are resold or transferred outside authorized channels.

Since trial implementation began at three of TICKETsage's venues last fall, the new product has prevented 325 individual scalpers or brokers from acquiring or reselling a total of 3,238 tickets with a total face value of almost $128,000, according to company claims.

Developed to tighten security loopholes in unauthorized resale channels, the TicketVERIFY product uses a combination of patent-pending software, processes and hardware to detect all resold or transferred tickets with no false positives.

"While the rest of the industry threw up their hands and gave up the fight, we saw the need to protect our clients' interests back in 2002," said Stephen Cassar, President / CEO of the Fayetteville, Arkansas company. "It took a significant investment of time and money to perfect the technology and successfully trial it, but we now have a proven product that truly works." Cassar added.

"A lot has changed in the past two years since we launched (TicketVERIFY). It seems everyone is reselling everyone else's tickets and it is a full time job just to keep up. Today, our largest competitor is scalping tickets to our events, something we did not anticipate back in 2002. Our venue clients and promoters are fed up and have told us they've had enough." Cassar explained.

Cassar added, "Today you have scalpers advertising and selling tickets that are not even in their possession! And you have others that simply do chargebacks if the tickets they tried to scalp did not sell. Once upon a time you could have made the argument that a sold ticket is a sold ticket, but it has now gotten to the point where the costs of speculation have shifted onto the promoter and venue. In our opinion, this is unacceptable, and we are proud to offer a set of tools that works across all channels to put an end to it."

Until now, venues and ticketing companies wishing to control the unauthorized resale of tickets were forced to cancel tickets en masse, or resort to legal action. TicketVERIFY integrates into any ticketing system, not just the company's own, and solves that problem at the point of admission, thus shifting control of ticket inventory back to the venue and effectively shutting down unauthorized secondary market resellers, scalpers and brokers.

Ticketing companies can use the technology in line with their existing technology to ensure that ticket transfers occur on a platform that is within their control. Concert promoters and teams can better regulate pricing and fan access to the best available seats.

TicketVERIFY is transparent to legitimate ticket purchasers. But speculators selling tickets through unauthorized channels would essentially be selling a worthless piece of paper if the targeted venues were protected by TicketVERIFY.

Launched in January of 2007 and in production since September 2008, TicketVERIFY is the perfect combination of innovative design, speed and ease of use. Flexible enough to handle complex group ticket sales and authorized mass transfers, yet fast enough to identify the unauthorized resale of tickets in a large event environment, TicketVERIFY can operate in three modes: bypass mode, which allows the product to operate like a traditional access control product; observation mode, which allows the product to simply collect data for later analysis ( perhaps to determine if implementation of the product would be of benefit to the venue); and full scan mode, whereby all tickets presented for admission are checked for duplicates, forgery, and unauthorized resale or transfer.

Pioneers of real-time choose-your-own-seat technology, and the first to market with a 64-bit ticketing architecture, TICKETsage is looking to license the anti-scalping product to ticketing companies, event producers and venues wishing to tighten security and eliminate scalping. We will license the technology to any company that can benefit from it and wishes to regain control of their inventory," said Cassar.

For more information, visit www.ticketsage.com.

About TICKETsage
TICKETsage was founded in 1999 to address the limitations of legacy ticketing systems. With the introduction of a new class of Distributed Ticketing technology, the fledgling company raised the bar for next-generation system architecture.

The company pioneered the process of real-time seat selection from full inventory on the Web. Other innovations have included real-time print-at-home technology for Web sales that never need to be turned off, and a true 64-bit Architecture.

Celebrating 10 years, TICKETsage is the leading custom ticketing solution provider with over 300 clients worldwide and in 40 states. In its seventh release, the TICKETsage UNITY Distributed Ticketing Platform is the solution of choice for those looking for a fully customized application that will scale to meet the demands of large ticket onsales while offering patrons the ability to choose their own seats in real time.