From concerts to train rides, bots are winning the ticket wars — but they're onl

Purchasing concert tickets has long been a high-stakes affair, with popular events often selling out within minutes.

Increasingly, however, fans are competing against automated ticket-buying programs, commonly referred to as bots, that can snap up seats in seconds before reselling them at higher prices.

This has distorted access not only to concert tickets but also to everyday services such as train ticket reservations.

Purchasing a ticket has always been "very luck-based," said Bryce Sng, a 23-year-old concert enthusiast. The added competition of bots "feels very unfair," he added. Half the joy when fighting for tickets is the stress, Sng said, using a bot feels like "it takes away from that experience."

It's a sentiment shared by nearly 65% of respondents in a December 2025 survey by the Consumers' Association of Singapore, who said ticket scalping prevented genuine fans from attending events. The survey's focus group participants also cited bots that snapped up tickets within seconds before reselling them at higher prices.

Governments, including South Korea and China, have responded by tightening rules against automated ticket-buying.

South Korea expanded its anti-scalping

Fuente original: CNBC Top News (https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/27/ticket-bots-concert-scalpers-ticketmaster-china-korea.html)