Such speculation happens in a lot of resale marketplaces. Stubhub, for example, allows speculative selling (selling tickets you don't have). There are "broker

Such speculation happens in a lot of resale marketplaces. Stubhub, for example, allows speculative selling (selling tickets you don't have). There are "brokers" who see tickets listed elsewhere (like Ticketexchange), create mirror listings on Stubhub at a higher price, then buy the tickets from the other site if they get an order. That's why you can see +/-40% of listings vanish from a Stubhub event page at the 4-hour-before-start mark -- sellers generally have to pre-fill listings after that. If an order is placed and the tickets don't exist (or the seller can't get them at a price that allows profit after all and chooses to flake out), Stubhub can just refund the buyer and wash their hands of it. Easy peasy.