- Hackers are breaking into the accounts of some Ticketmaster users and transferring tickets to themselves.
- Two concertgoers said it was a shock, but they got their tickets in time to attend their shows.
- After BI reached out to Ticketmaster for comment, it refunded the two concertgoers for their tickets.
In September, Vashti-Jasmine McKenzie noticed that an event had mysteriously disappeared from her Google Calendar. It was a reminder of an Usher concert in Dallas on Oct. 5, synced to her Ticketmaster account.
McKenzie opened her email to a shock: The night before, a stranger had logged into her account, accessed McKenzie’s two tickets, for which she had paid $550, and transferred them from her account.
“If this happened in real life, if someone stopped me, it would be like being mugged,” said McKenzie, a 42-year-old conference manager.
McKenzie, a music fan who said she spent about $10,000 on shows in 2024, ultimately got her tickets and went to the show, but remains critical of Ticketmaster.
McKenzie isn’t the only concertgoer who suddenly found himself without a ticket. Similar incidents have been reported in Los Angeles, Nashville and Charlotte, North Carolina. The playbook is usually the same: Ticketmaster customers buy tickets to see their favorite artists, only to later receive an email saying their tickets were transferred from their online wallets by an unknown hacker – and were quickly claimed.
These types of scams are just the latest in a series of headaches for the ticketing giant. After a data breach earlier this year and criticism from major stars like Taylor Swift, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced in May that it filed an antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation, the parent company of Ticketmaster, alleging that “ the company’s conduct is anticompetitive and illegal.” Live Nation, worth about $28 billion as of Nov. 8, has a tight grip on the live entertainment industry. The DOJ said in its complaint that “through Ticketmaster, Live Nation controls approximately 80% or more of major concert venue ticket sales and a growing portion of ticket resales in the secondary market.”
In response, Live Nation said the DOJ lawsuit would fail to address fans’ issues with ticket prices and their ability to purchase them.
However, experiencing the ticket transfer scam firsthand has McKenzie and at least one other customer fearing their purchases are not safe.
In October, Mika City, a 28-year-old data analyst from Grand Prairie, Texas, spent $400 on two tickets to rapper Don Toliver’s show in Houston. Two days after purchasing them, she received an email at 6:08 a.m. from Ticketmaster saying her tickets were being transferred to someone named “Floyd George.”
Just 39 seconds later, she received another email: “Floyd George” had accepted the ticket transfer and the tickets had been removed from her account.
All of this happened before City had even woken up – and despite the fact that she thought she had secured her account in June by changing her password.
City was also able to recover her stolen tickets through Ticketmaster and attend the show, but she added that the experience was stressful.
“I’m still scared now that it will happen again,” City told BI.
Although Ticketmaster reinstated McKenzie and City’s tickets in time for their concerts, after Business Insider reached out for comment, the company refunded both the original cost of their tickets. He did not respond to BI’s other questions about account hacks and customer security.
A Live Nation executive told CBS News, however, that the company limited transfers for Taylor Swift tickets to 72 hours before concerts, following online ticket thefts that specifically targeted the Eras tour. In some cases, Ticketmaster has also required two-factor authentication for ticket holders to make transfers. The Live Nation executive recommended that Ticketmaster account holders have a unique password that is not used for any other platform.
Returning tickets can be a harrowing experience
After realizing Usher’s tickets had been transferred from her account, McKenzie said she called Ticketmaster and reported the incident to its fraud department, but didn’t hear back right away.
Two days after her call, the tickets reappeared in her account – with the same seats and no extra charge. But it was enough to scare McKenzie about what would have happened if she hadn’t caught the calendar change.
At the Usher concert, McKenzie added, she saw two women learn in real time that they were victims of a similar scam. They opened the Ticketmaster wallet on their phones at a gate to find they were gone, she said.
City got her tickets back the day after they were transferred from her account, a week before the concert. She said she called repeatedly to get through to Ticketmaster’s fraud department, who told her her case would be treated as a high priority because of how fast her event was.
For good measure, she also filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau about the theft of her tickets, as well as a dispute with her bank. The BBB forwarded the complaint to Ticketmaster, according to screenshots of the online exchange City shared with BI. The company responded through the BBB a day after City already was took her tickets, saying it would escalate her case.
She realized she would have to repurchase the tickets, she added, so she was surprised and pleased when Ticketmaster reinstated the tickets.
“I was so shocked because everyone else I’ve seen has said it was taken forever, or they never got it back,” City said.
Recent issues of Ticketmaster
In May, Live Nation said it was investigating a data breach that affected some users who had purchased tickets in North America. The leaked information may have included customers’ emails, phone numbers, encrypted credit cards and other personal information, Ticketmaster said in a statement.
The company said at the time that password information was not part of the data breach and that customer accounts were secure.
Fans and artists alike have complained about how difficult it is to purchase tickets in the first place.
In November 2022, Taylor Swift publicly addressed Ticketmaster after announcing that she was canceling the general sale for her Eras tour after she had exhausted her inventory during the presale.
“It’s really amazing that 2.4 million people got tickets, but it really pisses me off that so many of them feel like they went through several bear attacks to get them,” Swift wrote in a statement posted on Instagram.
People protest outside the US Capitol on the morning of a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the 2023 merger of Ticketmaster and Live Nation. Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Last month, Oasis fans in the UK were up in arms with Ticketmaster after they noticed a rise in ticket prices for the highly anticipated reunion tour due to the company’s model of adjusting prices based on demand. The outrage was so pronounced that a government antitrust regulator in the UK is looking into the company’s practices.
For now, many fans are stuck using Ticketmaster to see their favorite performers even if some worry about the security of their purchases.
City told BI that even after returning the tickets, she was still worried they would disappear from her account, even after changing her password again to protect them.
“If I didn’t have to buy from Ticketmaster, I wouldn’t,” she said.