Ticketing Proxies: Better Think Twice!

In recent years, many proxy providers have stopped marketing what was previously a very lucrative type of proxies designed for use on event ticketing web sites. This trend is related to some enforcement actions that came out in the United States under the BOTs Act against people who were using proxies to, among other things, exceed posted ticket limits.

The BOTs Act

In 2016, Congress passed the Better Online Ticket Sales Act or “BOTs Act”. The Act stated:

Some wording like “circumvent a security measure, access control system, or other technological control or measure” was pretty vague and for several years, there were no enforcement actions or further guidance from the FTC, who was tasked, as part of the Act, with the enforcement of it.

But that changed in January of 2021.

Enforcement Actions for Ticketing Proxies

Five years after its initial passage, various enforcement actions were announced for the first time and the acting Chair of the FTC stated in her press release that she hoped more were to come. The original law left a lot of questions unanswered, however, in its enforcement actions, the FTC clarified, among other things, that the use of proxies for purchasing event tickets was akin to circumventing “security measures, access control systems, or other technological controls or measures…that were used by Ticketmaster to enforce posted event ticket purchase limits” and is thus, a violation of the Act.

More specifically, in one of the enforcement actions, the FTC stated:

In many instances, between January 1, 2017 and the present date, Defendants have taken steps to conceal their IP address when making ticket purchases. For example, at times, Defendants used rotating proxy services and IP address blocks. These services allowed Defendants to hide their actual IP address from Ticketmaster and instead use a proxy IP address or the IP address of a computer or network that belongs to someone else.

28. Between January 1, 2017 and the present date, Defendants have used over 19,000
    different IP addresses while making purchases on Ticketmaster’s websites.
29. Defendants hid their true IP addresses from Ticketmaster because they believed it
    would allow them to circumvent technological controls on Ticketmaster’s websites.
30. By hiding their true IP addresses from Ticketmaster, Defendants have
    circumvented security measures, access control systems, or other technological controls or measures on Ticketmaster’s websites that were used by Ticketmaster to enforce posted event ticket purchase limits, or to maintain the integrity of posted online ticket purchasing order rules.

Proxy Companies React

While this is not legal advice, it does not seem to us that these enforcement actions mean you can’t have a proxy running on your machine at all while you happen to purchase event tickets. People regularly use proxies and VPNs for all browsing activity.

But with the specific mentions of rotating proxy services and ticket limits in the enforcement actions, many proxies companies have simply, and wisely, stopped servicing this use case in the United States.

We believe the message from the FTC is clear and while admitting that we are not attorneys, we’ve come to the decision that we will not promote or partner with providers that offer these specialized ticketing proxies.

Other companies in the proxy space have taken the same stance and have gone so far as to state up front in their marketing materials that ticketing use cases are banned. This is good for the industry because it shows regulators we can be self policing. We know this means lost revenue for those companies and that lost revenue makes the proactive ban on this usage of proxies much more powerful.

And we want to be part of that solution, which is why we’ve made this decision. Companies that offer ticketing proxies may very well be only offering that service in countries where it is allowed. It is possibly they are acting legally and ethically and we’re not here to say any different. We will just choose to not partner with them.