Hackers are stealing tickets from Ticketmaster customers’ accounts. For many, the platform is their only option.
Live Nation, the parent company of Ticketmaster, has been in hot water with concertgoers recently.
In September, Vashti-Jasmine McKenzie noticed an event had mysteriously vanished from her Google Calendar. It was a reminder for an Usher concert in Dallas on October 5, synced with her Ticketmaster account.
McKenzie opened her email to a shock: The night before, a stranger had broken into her account, accessed McKenzie’s two tickets, which she had paid $550 for, and transferred them out of her account.
“If this happened in real life, if somebody stuck me up, it would be like they were robbing me,” said McKenzie, a 42-year-old conference manager.
McKenzie, a music fan who said she spent an estimated $10,000 on shows in 2024, ultimately got her tickets back and went to the show but remains critical of Ticketmaster.
McKenzie isn’t the only concertgoer who’s suddenly been left ticketless. Similar incidents have been reported in Los Angeles, Nashville, and Charlotte, North Carolina. The playbook is typically the same: Ticketmaster customers purchase tickets to see their favorite artists, only to later receive an email saying their tickets were transferred out of their online wallets by an unknown hacker — and quickly claimed.
These kinds of scams are just the latest in a series of headaches for the ticketing giant. Following a data breach earlier this year and pointed criticisms from major stars like Taylor Swift, the Justice Department (DOJ) announced in May that it filed an antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation, Ticketmaster’s parent company, alleging that the company’s “conduct is anti-competitive and illegal.” Live Nation, worth about $28 billion as of November 8, has a tight grip on the live-entertainment industry. The DOJ said in its complaint that “through Ticketmaster, Live Nation controls roughly 80% or more of major concert venues’ primary ticketing for concerts and a growing share of ticket resales in the secondary market.”
In response, Live Nation said the DOJ’s lawsuit would fail to address fans’ issues with ticket prices and their ability to purchase them.
Still, experiencing the ticket-transfer scam firsthand has led McKenzie and at least one other customer to fear their purchases aren’t secure.
In October, Mika City, a 28-year-old data analyst from Grand Prairie, Texas, spent $400 on two tickets to the rapper Don Toliver’s show in Houston. Two days after she purchased them, she received a 6:08 a.m. email from Ticketmaster saying that 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 that 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 am still scared right now that it’ll happen again,” City told B-17.
Even though Ticketmaster reinstated McKenzie’s and City’s tickets in time for their concerts, after B-17 reached out for comment, the company refunded both of them for the original cost of their tickets. It did not respond to B-17’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 prior to concerts, following online ticket thefts specifically targeting the Eras Tour. In some cases, Ticketmaster has also required two-factor authentication for ticketholders to make transfers. The Live Nation executive recommended Ticketmaster account holders have a unique password not used for any other platforms.
Getting tickets back can be a harrowing experience
After she realized the Usher tickets had been transferred out of her account, McKenzie said she called Ticketmaster and reported the incident to its fraud department but didn’t immediately hear back.
Two days after her call, the tickets reappeared in her account — with the same seats and at no extra charge. But it was enough to scare McKenzie about what would’ve happened if she hadn’t caught the calendar switch-up.
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 an entrance gate only to find they were gone, she said.
City got her tickets back one day after they were transferred out of her account, a week before the concert. She said she called repeatedly to get through to Ticketmaster’s fraud department, which told her that her case would be treated as high priority because of how soon her event was.
For good measure, she also filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau about her tickets being stolen, 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 B-17. The company responded through the BBB a day after City had already recovered her tickets, saying that it would escalate her case.
She figured she would have to rebuy tickets, she added, so was surprised and pleased when Ticketmaster reinstated the tickets.
“I was so shocked, because everybody else that I’ve seen has said it’s taken forever, or they never got them back,” City said.
Ticketmaster’s recent troubles
In May, Live Nation said it was investigating a data breach that affected some users who had bought 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 wasn’t a part of the data breach and that customers’ accounts were safe.
Fans and artists alike have complained about how hard it is to buy tickets in the first place.
In November 2022, Taylor Swift publicly addressed Ticketmaster after it announced that it was canceling the general sale for her Eras Tour after it exhausted its inventory during the presale.
“It’s truly amazing that 2.4 million people got tickets, but it really pisses me off that a lot of them feel like they went through several bear attacks to get them,” Swift wrote in a statement posted to Instagram.
People protesting outside the US Capitol the morning of a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing about the merger of Ticketmaster and Live Nation in 2023.
Last month, Oasis fans in the United Kingdom were up in arms with Ticketmaster after noticing a surge in ticket prices for the long-awaited reunion tour due to the company’s model of adjusting prices based on demand. 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 B-17that even after getting her tickets back, 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.
