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Ask HN: Stubhub buying their own tickets under fake names?
I just sold three tickets on Stubhub for a concert I won't be able to make this weekend.
When I went to transfer them on Ticketmaster I noticed that the domain the email address was at for all of them appeared to be the names of businesses, but none of them had websites or any presence in google when I searched for them.
Being the curious person I am, I then went and looked up the WHOIS for the domain. They all were registered in the last six months, supposedly by Stubhub itself (nobody actually verifies the accuracy of WHOIS data though, its all an honor system)
It seems to me like there is probably a hustle going on, where someone is buying tickets under fake names and flipping them. Is this something Stubhub is known to do (SeatGeek pretty openly does it with their return program). Or is lying on the whois part of a larger scheme someone runs?
P.S.
If anyone is curious, the email domains were crimsonhillpartners.com , oneclassic.org , and ambercovecapital.com
- wussboy 3y agocolor-geographicfeature-orgdesignation is their name generator, at least.
- kreeWall 3y agoThis ^^
- user070223 3y agohttps://namegrep.com/#%28%3Acolors%3A%7Ccrimson%7Camber%7Cemerald%29%28cove%7Csummit%7Chill%29%28partners%7Ccapital%7Cadvisors%29 https://namegrep.com/#%28%3Acolors%3A%7Ccrimson%7Camber%7Cem... None of the the domains listed in this thread appear to be taken (the site uses godaddy to verify, and is updated every 24h), but there are others in this scheme that may be related.
- Throwawayh89 3y agoHow'd you determine that?
- zerocrates 3y agoThe poster and some comments give examples of the domains: crimsonhillpartners, ambercovecapital, emeraldsummitadvisors.
- avree 3y agoOther examples of Stubhub e-mails include "fieldmilestone" and "rolodexinfo". I believe that Stubhub is using old domains, probably from some list that their registrar is providing them. Sometimes, there are blocks of patterns, such as the color/etc. one - but they're probably doing this to avoid getting spam-filtered by people's mail clients, not to try to hide from Ticketmaster or anything else, and I doubt the naming is something they are defining.
- zerocrates 3y agoAll the ones I've seen are quite recent, 2023 creation dates. Your "fieldmilestone" is one such. Obviously they're not literally all the color+feature+company pattern but I don't think they're just reusing old "real" domains either. As for not getting spam filtered, using a big pile of new domains with no web presence probably has the reverse effect so I don't think that's the intention here. Also I think as it's described, these emails aren't really sending messages to people, they're there to receive emails from Ticketmaster or similar entities when you go to transfer though them.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- vuln 3y agoWho has a domain tools enterprise account? Probably an interesting rabbit hole to go down. Looking at all the domains tied to SH.
- costco 3y agoThose domains are all registered through MarkMonitor (which stubhub.com also uses) which has a 5 figure annual minimum spend so it is almost certainly StubHub. I'm not sure why they would try to hide that they are buying tickets though.
- kevin_thibedeau 3y agoScalping their own product for higher profit will draw the ire of Congress.
- joker_minmax 3y agoI hope this blows up if that's what they're doing. A Russian nesting doll of scalping?
- shmatt 3y agoIf they are gambling that the ticket will be worth more in the future (if it was worth more today, it would have been bought by a real customer), they could make millions, or lose everything like Zillow. Guessing what a volatile item will be worth in a month isn't all fun and games
- londons_explore 3y agoThey kinda have control of the supply of goods too though - running the main resale marketplace. When there is an excess of tickets, they can make sure that their own stock sells before random fans tickets ('I'm sorry, nobody bought the ticket you listed for sale, and now the event is over').
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- bastard_op 3y agoHow is anything done by Ticketmaster and Stubhub not legitimized scalping at its worst and not already disbanded by congress? It's so rampant Ticketmaster doesn't even pretend anymore and just charges "market adjusted" prices to scalp directly themselves now to cut out most of the middle-man scalpers.
- cehrnrooth 3y agoThis is really interesting, because I had the same experience happen to me yesterday (the domain was emeraldsummitadvisors.com). I didn't find much discussion about it, but one theory I saw was that for high-value tickets Stubhub will act as an intermediary to verify the tickets or prevent the buyer and seller from knowing who the other person is (because the original buyer info is typically on a ticket or revealed during the transfer, and the new buyer info is given to the seller). I assume this is to cut down on scams and other issues related to claims of not receiving tickets.
- WirelessGigabit 3y agoIsn't there something that you buy the tickets on LiveNation and then via the website sell them on StubHub. Like they know that the tickets are real...
- JohnFen 3y ago> I assume this is to cut down on scams and other issues related to claims of not receiving tickets. If that's the case, why are they using cutouts for it? I'd think that if their purpose was legitimate, they wouldn't feel the need to disguise their identity.
- jaywalk 3y agoRight. Just use verifiedbuyer@stubhub.com or something like that. There is obviously some deception going on here, whether it's StubHub or someone else.
- cehrnrooth 3y agoIt could be about optics. They might prefer people direct their anger at a random non-existent stranger for paying above face value than have them direct their anger at Stubhub. That said, shifting blame for high prices isn't a new problem, so it's surprising the domains were all registered in the last 6 months. Maybe it's a bigger project around market making and price optimization. I priced mine around 70% of the price of similar available tickets (since mine hadn't sold in the 3 weeks I had them listed) and they sold later that day.
- sleepytimetea 3y agoI am wondering what is the business case for StubHub to do this ? Flipping for a profit ? Making StubHub look successful and be more active than it really is ?
- lumost 3y agoIn theory someone like stub hub could operate as a super scalper by buying all tickets and creating scarcity. Alternately, they are simply trying to create liquidity in the ticket market by buying tickets today to resell tomorrow.
- zeroCalories 3y agoThey could be engaging in a form of market making, where they buy tickets that are near certain to be sold so that sellers feel good about listing on their site. I don't know about their customers' behavior, but I imagine many buyers buy at the last moment, and sellers feel anxious wondering if they will be able to sell, making them look for other platforms.
- lq9AJ8yrfs 3y agoThis. Plus different sellers have different motivations and different pricing strategies. Stubhub based on their volume has a sense of where the market is, and if they see a seller underpricing versus what Stubhub thinks the ticket will sell for, they may swoop in and try to capture some of the upside. There's no such thing as a ticker feed for the resale markets -- the market is characterized by "imperfect information". Artists and venues making it hard to buy and sell basically widens the spread for the secondaries to play with.
- hotpotamus 3y agoI never thought about it, but I suppose a concert ticket is similar to a futures contract. I'm sure some fintech whiz-kids figured that out years ago and have been at work figuring out how to make money on yet another market.
- MisterBastahrd 3y agoYou buy up all available inventory and raise the prices, same thing that real estate companies were doing during the pandemic. Every home in my neighborhood that went up for sale from 2020 to late 2022 was snatched up in less than a week by a corporation.
- 4d4m 3y agoMarket making on behalf of artists and content rights holders :)
- nimbius 3y agoStubhub: Hello my name is Mr. Snrub and I come from some place far away. Yes, that will do...
- goshx 3y agoAdd onescentvision.com to the list
- nubinetwork 3y agoThis has been going on for years, if the government doesn't want to do anything about it, I don't see what else you can do other than stop buying tickets.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- oldtownroad 3y agoMy theory is it’s a janky workaround for a system that requires “an account” to buy tickets and so this was the solution they came up with internally to support third-party integrations and possibly affiliate programs. The amount of weird-ass Rube Goldberg systems in the real world is staggering, I’ve worked on systems where this sort of bananas solution could end up being used.
- nanidin 3y agoStubhub gets a cut every time the tickets change hands. It's in their interest to buy the tickets off people and then resell them themselves, since they will get two cuts in that case. Couple that with the fact that they're in a unique position to measure demand and model future pricing, they can effectively double dip with little risk. Further, the shell companies could be something Stubhub is doing to derisk the arbitrage portion of the transaction to isolate losses associated with inability to sell the tickets for a profit to the shell company rather than to Stubhub. Stubhub was supposed to IPO in 2022, but it doesn't look like they did. This kind of 'gaming the numbers to pump valuation' doesn't seem implausible for a company that is trying to IPO.
- hnboredhn 3y agoThat double dipping doesnt make sense unless they are doing something more complex - like limit supply or time swings in the market. Let's say there cut is 2%. If I sell a ticket for $50 list price to StubHub and then they sell it for $50 list price then they got 1 dollar from me and one dollar from the eventual buyer. That's $2 total. If I sell a ticket to someone else on Stubhub for $50 then they also get $1 from me and $1 from the seller. The "double dipping" doesnt work out even before you factor in the overhead. This is not to say they aren't manipulating market. Maybe they think they can make more money because humans are risk adverse and sell tickets for less than they should to optimize EV, or somethikng.
- nanidin 3y agoI considered that, but consider that shell companies are buying and reselling the tickets - then the main Stubhub entity collects all of the fees from each transaction. Now they get to show higher revenue for the Stubhub entity. Stubhub is trying to IPO and this feels like a way to boost numbers in order to boost valuation.
- londons_explore 3y agoThe SEC would catch you for that. There are all kinds of tricks like that for inflating revenue they have outlawed. Thats why for example, if you work for Walmart you aren't allowed to buy walmart food for the team party and expense it. Expensing it is fine, but inflating the revenue figures by buying your own product is not.
- filmgirlcw 3y agoI've bought my fair share of tickets off of StubHub but I've only sold there once and I don't remember the transfer process because it was 4 years ago. My initial take would be that they would do this either: a) to act as an intermediary (themselves) that you transfer to and then they transfer to the buyer's Ticketmaster account, so that you don't get someone's PII b) they buy a few near face value to have when inevitably, fake tickets are sold and they have to replace them ASAP (which has happened to me before -- as in, I was at the venue and couldn't scan one of my tickets and then went in and called StubHub and they called me back and got a backup ticket for my friend) But my gut tells me it is probably the first? This would also cut down on customers telling them they didn't get a ticket transfer (if they really did) and also ensuring that sellers actually transfer tickets. An easier method of all of this would be to have a way to work directly with Ticketmaster or AXS or whoever to act as an escrow agent for ticket sales, but considering AXS and Ticketmaster have their own resale services, I'm sure they make that as difficult as possible. I have to think that the biggest ongoing costs to an operation like StubHub or Seatgeek or Vivid or any of the other marketplaces are fraud and customer service related to lost ticket transfers. So anything you could do to mitigate both of those (which acting as an intermediary would help with both) would be worth it. Siderant: The thing that kills me about the resale/scalper nonsense is that in response, some venues are now doing anything they can to limit resales at all -- requiring you to pick up tickets from will call and show ID and credit card used to pay. So then you have to hope that whoever sold their extras on Craigslist or FB actually shows up at the venue so you can get your GA seat you paid way too much for, or else you're SOL. And like, look, I get it, you want to cut down on scalping. But things come up and people can't always attend shows. Or some of us will literally pay stupid prices to see someone live -- but when the venues put in onerous terms and check ID at the pickup window, that's just stupid.
- sokoloff 3y agoFor most of those (valid) concerns, having stubhub openly act as the intermediary would probably be better as far as I can tell. If I’m selling my ticket on stubhub and I get a request to transfer the ticket to some stubhub.com email address, I feel more secure that it’s legit than a scammer.
- pearlsteinj 3y agoI was curious the last time I sold tickets so actually called them asked about this. The emails are aliases to verify the tickets are valid, then they are forwarded to the buyer. Usually the format is <email prefix of buyer>@<stubhub controlled domain> and the tickets are forwarded pretty quickly. This way stubhub can actually validate you sent over a PDF + the contents of those PDFs or images if the buyer disputes delivery.
- floomk 3y agobut why would they use shady looking domain names for this?
- pearlsteinj 3y agoTotally just guessing: Maybe to reduce inbound spam that's forwarded to the buyers? If it was one central email address, spammers could just send a ton of images/PDFs to all known prefixes of that central domain, but needing to guess the prefix + right domain adds a layer of indirection? They may not do much validation on the forwarded tickets, just store it for disputes
- iudqnolq 3y agoWouldn't it be much cheaper and effective to add a random secret to the bit before the at rather than after?
- oldtownroad 3y agoI’d guess so that ticketmaster etc. can’t identify which tickets are being sold via StubHub. If the domains were identifiable, ticketmaster could block the transfers.
- mskec 3y agoBut if StubHub (MarkMonitor Inc.) is visible in WHOIS, then ticketmaster could do a `whois emeraldsummitadvisors.com` and block still block it?
- ChrisArchitect 3y agoAsk HN:
- flyer_go 3y agoIn a similar vein, I was using DraftKings to play draft fantasy football I think two years ago. Spent $20 but split the bets between ten games and chose the players I would play against. For all ten games, I lost but the other players all used the same team. Makes you think.
- cypherpunks01 3y agoIn the past for some time, Stubhub used a single Gmail box for routing certain transfers. I'd receive instructions to transfer to: Buyer: Firstname Lastname Email: mobiletransfertickets+12341234@gmail.com With a different +number for different transactions, this happened numerous times in 2022 across multiple shows, so I think it was Stubhub, not an outside party. At other times, it'd have me transfer directly to the buyer's email address. They probably moved away from the single Gmail address for some reason, over to their own domain names they control? I don't think it necessarily implies they are buying your tickets, just that they are routing the transfers through them possibly for verification.
- londons_explore 3y agoWouldn't be surprised if there wasn't a team of people all logged into that gmail address manually verifying and forwarding tickets. After all, processing PDF's and images of tickets forwarded from customers automatically and reliably is probably very hard.
- ohyes 3y agoSounds like ticket price arbitrage. Pick up undervalued tickets, resell them at a higher than listed price. Stubhub has all the correct stuff to do this, high speed api access, data about historical ticket prices. They could even list their estimated price first and find the buyer before purchasing at the lower price. If that doesn’t happen quickly then list the original price. It’s basically an unregulated ticket stock market.
- hnburnsy 3y agoThis, I wouldnt be suprised if Stubhub had already resold the tickets at the same time they purchased from the original buyer.
- buildsjets 3y agoYou can add traveltouchdiscover.com and widefree.org to the list.
- burnte 3y agoProbably, yeah.