New York's Attorney General has announced the findings of an investigation into consumer abuses in the live entertainment ticket industry.
The multi-year probe found that more half of all tickets to many popular concerts go to event "insiders" and pre-sale customers, with illegal software "bots" auto-buying thousands of tickets within seconds of their release to the public.
The investigation found that venues and ticket sellers like Ticketmaster regularly tacked on fees that added more than 21% to the face price of tickets, while third-party brokers resell tickets on sites like StubHub and TicketsNow at average margins of 49 percent above face-valuet.
AG Eric Schneiderman called for reform. He says this investigation is just the beginning - and he announced settlements with two ticket brokers that were illegally operating without a ticket reseller license.
