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Articles

RESALE & THE BIG, BAD BOTS

We promised our very best speaker line up for the fifth edition of the Forum… and we will deliver. Flying in from across the pond, we welcome the ‘Reformed King of the Bots’, Ken Lowson for an open and honest Q&A, followed be a panel discussion with FanFair Alliance including  Brian Message, founder of ATC Management (Nick Cave, PJ Harvey).

Under-regulated and industrial-scale online ticket touting remains a black mark on the UK’s live entertainment scene – ripping off fans and causing significant harm to British artists and music businesses.

Is legislation the most effective way to remove the worst excesses of the secondary market? We’ve seen new laws signed in the USA with pressure growing around the world for more transparency and fairness in the distribution and resale of tickets. Politicians and legislators are jumping to the public call for action but what will be the result? Time for a good debate…

We begin with a Q&A with Ken.

When you’ve invented Ticket Bots and purchased more than 1,500,000 tickets amassing more than $25 million in profits, you’ve learned a few things about the ticketing business!

Ken was the principle founder of the infamous Wiseguy Tickets. He cornered the majority of premium tickets for the hottest events and became the leading source for secondary markets. At his peak, Lowson was running an international network of 100,000 IP addresses using co-located servers.

Wiseguy had zero inventory risk, unlimited broker credit cards, and 1000+ individual primary seller accounts. Their Bot performance was measured in milliseconds ensuring the front of the online queues plus automated visual and audio CAPTCHA without using Optical Character Recognition. The Wiseguy operation became so powerful that for one US Football Rose Bowl game, it purchased 990 out of a 1000 seat allocation. Federally indicted in 2011, Ken pleaded guilty to a single count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

Ken has returned to the ticket world to share his inside knowledge and benefit Live Event Creators by eliminating unwanted reselling and recapturing Fan spending power. As the “Catch Me If You Can” guy of tickets, he can stop Bots, reduce fraud and boost PR.

At the 2017 Forum, Ken Lowson will share his unique take on 21st Century ticketing, take open questions on stage and showcase some of the new services he’s offering to improve in-house ticket revenues and fan loyalty.

Our session will then open up to a panel including Brian Message, founder of ATC Management who represents the FanFair Alliance – a pressure group made up of a wide cross-section of the music and creative community. Its supporters promote pro-consumer legislation, technologies and practices, and aim for more fans to buy and exchange tickets at face value prices. Will anything change?

You can find Ken’s company, TIXFAN at tixfan.com.

Meet Ken, Brian and 40+ world class speakers, join the Bot Debate and be part of Europe’s largest ticketing meeting in Dublin on 5-6 April.

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