In the wake of the Hannah Montana ticket fiasco, fingers have been pointed in various directions as people look for answers. But, one company has emerged as the villain, Pittsburgh-based RMG Technologies, whose software gives ticket brokers the ability to quickly navigate the Ticketmaster website and snatch up blocks of tickets as they go on sale.
And, therein lies the problem for some, the ability of brokers to buy lots of tickets at a clip, making it difficult, if not impossible in some cases, for the general public to get a crack at those same tickets. Numerous state politicians and attorneys general are considering legislative action in the wake of the Hannah Montana concert tour to ban the use of RMG’s software.
In an exclusive interview with TicketNews, C.J. Garibay, President of RMG Technologies, said that his company is being made a scapegoat for the practices of Ticketmaster and other companies, and that nothing RMG has done has violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).
“We expected Ticketmaster to adapt their software to lock us out any day after we rolled out our program. But few days turned into a few months, which turned into a years,” Garibay said. The two sides are locked in a legal battle, and in October, Ticketmaster won an injunction against RMG to prevent them from using and distributing their software.
Garibay is confident that RMG will be triumphant in court, if not in the mind of the public. “Once all of the facts are known, I have no doubt that we will win our lawsuit.” To him there was no question, to the best of Garibay’s knowledge, RMG has at no point broken any laws.
In the beginning, like a lot of other companies, RMG started on a whim. About six years ago, Garibay was turning in his rent to his landlord, and noticed that the landlord’s office was also being used to run a ticket brokerage. Sensing an opportunity, he developed software to enable ticket brokers to more easily navigate Ticketmaster’s website. This simple idea would lead to RMG growing, at its peak, to become a 12 person team generating more than $12 million in annual revenues.
Garibay created a unique web browser to circumvent the cookies on Ticketmaster’s website, cookies that prevented a broker from monitoring multiple events in multiple browsers. When Ticketmaster countered this solution with captchas which forced individuals browsing the website to enter in letters from an image to browse a page, RMG found a new solution.
Rather than create software “bots” which could enter the required captchas, RMG outsourced the captcha typing to workers in India. Thus, a single broker using RMG’s software could not purchase an infinite number of tickets, but could realistically “browse the website as fast as perhaps 15-20 users. This is fair because plenty of people ask their friends to log on to Ticketmaster to help them make sure they are able to buy tickets to an event.”
Garibay expected Ticketmaster to realize what RMG was doing and adapt their code to keep the company’s software from working, but they didn’t. RMG provided its services to brokers for $1,000 per month. They did not go into business as ticket brokers themselves, Garibay said, because RMG was a technology company, not a ticket brokerage. Its software is not the instant cash machine that Ticketmaster alleges.
In fact, Garibay feels that Ticketmaster is using them as a scapegoat to cover for their own activities in the secondary ticket market. Front row seats to the Hannah Montana concert went directly to Ticketmaster’s resale service, and as prices soared for Hannah Montana tickets, Ticketmaster actually put a halt to one of its own auctions.
While the current injunction blocks RMG only from working on Ticketmaster’s website, Garibay said the company is continuing to move forward; RMG is already developing software for the efficient navigation of other ticketing websites besides Ticketmaster.
When asked about the future of ticketing, Garibay sees the role of technology will continue to expand. “Technology will be the most important driving force in the ticket industry. Tickets on cell phones, more efficient ticket selling websites technology will continue to get better in the industry.”
The “fat, dumb, and lazy” companies of the world like Ticketmaster will be put under pressure to step up their efforts to create technological innovation, as RMG is developing its own ticketing software with which to beat Ticketmaster at its own game.
However, waiting for that to happen could be for quite some time. RMG has filed an appeal against Ticketmaster’s primary injunction, and the two sides will have their full trial in October. RMG is confident that it did not violate the DMCA, nor does it have an army of ticket grabbing bots, Garibay claimed. Lacking RMG’s solution, Garibay believes that his clients will still browse the website through more than one person; cheap outsourcing options remain in India and Mexico.
Last Updated on March 26, 2008 by By Brian Thompson
8 Comments
Comments are closed.
could not be put better… Its a matter of time before all small brokers go out of business.. the days are ticking away. street hustlers got the ripple effect first, the street used to be good. now no event is any good. you used to be able to go out an make something at any event big or small. now there now extra tickets or the fans selling them on the street see how much were selling the tix for / but thats what a site just asks..which has created a vicious circle for street guys.its not necessarily what the market bears.
either way the joint venture of tnow and TM is the beginning of the end. Eventually you will have to be real slick and or have a very strong team, and tons of capital in order to even stay in this business. Now when I say that I mean grow and not just get by. Most people on ticket network don’t even answer their phone when we try to reach them, and I know that to many of them tickets is just a part time gig. Which has killed the business too, soooo many people jumped into tickets in the past 4-5 years. I remember having to use a broker book and I would have to call all over the US just to get prices for one event.and calling street guys to fill orders. the good ole days when there were secrets…..
Ticketmaster has been INSIDE TRADING for years and years. Allegedly, their top executives including good old FRED ROSEN have been “Dealing” for years. If you can get their records, I wonder if it shows name changes from original credit card purchases. I suppose if one was to look into say, the SPRINGSTEEN tour in 1999-2000, they would find MANY name changes from the original credit card purchaser (which would have had to be authorized by someone is a management position). They are the Elliott Spitzer’s of the ticketing business. What’s the old saying: Those who live in Glass houses should not throw Stones.
Well Written. TicketMaster Sucks!!!
It’s going to be a matter of time a TM insider will blow the whistle!
Come clean with the ticket listing on the exchange ticketmaster!
The promotor and artist are probably involved in this also.
I’m counting the days until all this blows up on their face!!
The bot program is all over the place.
Ticketmaster systematically releases and a big percentage of the released tickets are bought from inside. Also the promoters like live nation and aeg setup the release times and inform people inside on the time and day.
I like the idea in florida to make ticketmaster inform the public of release times and dates
The truth is Ticketmaster takes the blame when it is the artists (via their manager or agent or whoever) who approve the deals that dictate what tickets are sold when/where. When front row tickets are auctioned on ticketmaster, that is because the artist approved it. The promoter does what the artist says is ok and everyone blames ticketmaster. It’s really a brilliant passing of blame. Artists simply won’t admit their part of the “insiders”
Ticketmaster has admitted it now on their website. If you search the ticketmater FAQ page about Platinum events they admit the tickets are coming from the promoters to be sold by them.
I make one very clear case in point for why Ticketmaster does not want bots on their site. When Garth Brooks had multiple concerts in Los Angeles recently, we were testing another software product not related to RMG Technologies. What it revealed was amazing. Not only did the Garth Brooks concert show “sold out” for 59 minutes of every hour, but Ticketmaster was systematically releasing small blocks of tickets once an hour every single day from the date of the onsale to the day of the concert. They lasted for all of 1 minute since they would only release 10-15 tickets per hour. This kept the general public thinking that the concert was sold out for every single night, it kept demand high, and it kept secondary market prices high as well. Since then we have watched them do this for other events like Hannah Montana. Keeping the public in the dark, while pointing the finger at brokers and scalpers. Ticketmaster knows that when secondary market prices continue to be high, that people will inevitably go to Ticketmaster which is the cheaper option. By controlling the rate of the tickets released, it creates a ticket buying frenzy. What they have done by purchasing TicketsNow should be illegal. They will simply take all the good seats and mark them up. If a concert isn’t selling particularly well, they will mark up tickets on TicketsNow and create the illusion of a demand and force people to buy from their site. Either way they win. They get service fees or they get the marked up price. If they can’t sell something at a marked up price they’ll keep it marked up and leak it back to their site. Thus creating a never-ending demand for any concert they want to create a demand for.. its not rocket science to anyone who owns a bot, or has seen one in action. All RMG needs to do is let some Senator run their software for a year and let him see how TM controls the markets on concerts. How they usually release the worst sections/rows first and if they dont sell those, how after about a few hours the concert will show as sold out and will then only give one option when attempting to buy. Its shady, its illegal, its only a matter of time before the rest of the ticket buying community catches on. Good luck RMG