New York Criminalizes Ticket Bots, Scalpers Can Now Get Jail Time

The use of “ticket bots,” automated software that allows scalpers to buy up huge blocks of tickets for concerts, theater performances, and other events ahead of average customers, will soon be a crime in New York. Earlier this week, Governor Andrew Cuomo signed a new law making the use of a ticket bots a class A misdemeanor that could result in substantial fines or even imprisonment.

“These unscrupulous speculators and their underhanded tactics have manipulated the marketplace and often leave New Yorkers and visitors alike with little choice but to buy tickets on the secondary market at an exorbitant mark-up,” Cuomo said in a statement. The law goes into in effect in February. The bill Cuomo signed was passed by the New York state legislature in June.

As The Journal News notes, ticket bots were already banned in the state, but the fines for using them were small.

Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda advocated for the increased penalties on ticket bots in a June op-ed for The New York Times. “You shouldn’t have to fight robots just to see something you love,” Miranda wrote.

A report issued in January by the New York attorney general found that from 2012 to 2014, three brokers alone bought more than 140,000 tickets to New York shows using bots.

About 12 states have laws banning ticket bots, according to the Council of State Governments. Legislation against bots has also been introduced in Congress. In August, Hamilton’s Miranda stood by Senator Chuck Schumer at a press conference calling on Congress to pass the Better On-line Ticket Sales Act of 2016, or the BOTS Act, which would aim to crack down on scalpers using ticket purchasing software.

Music fans’ frustration over bots crested earlier this year, when tickets for Adele and Bruce Springsteen tours sold out almost as soon as they went on sale, as Billboard reported. 

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