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Ask HN: Stubhub buying their own tickets under fake names?

by Throwawayh89 on 7/12/23, 3:05 PM with 84 comments

• by pearlsteinj on 7/12/23, 6:05 PM

  I 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.

• by cehrnrooth on 7/12/23, 4:41 PM

  This 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.

• by oldtownroad on 7/12/23, 5:42 PM

  My 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.

• by costco on 7/12/23, 4:36 PM

  Those 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.

• by nanidin on 7/12/23, 5:52 PM

  Stubhub 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.

• by sleepytimetea on 7/12/23, 4:41 PM

  I 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 ?

• by filmgirlcw on 7/12/23, 5:59 PM

  I'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.

• by wussboy on 7/12/23, 4:38 PM

  color-geographicfeature-orgdesignation is their name generator, at least.

• by ohyes on 7/12/23, 7:10 PM

  Sounds 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.

• by cypherpunks01 on 7/12/23, 6:47 PM

  In 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.

• by nimbius on 7/12/23, 5:08 PM

  Stubhub: Hello my name is Mr. Snrub and I come from some place far away. Yes, that will do...

• by nubinetwork on 7/12/23, 5:28 PM

  This 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.

• by goshx on 7/12/23, 5:16 PM

  Add onescentvision.com to the list

• by vuln on 7/12/23, 4:34 PM

  Who has a domain tools enterprise account? Probably an interesting rabbit hole to go down. Looking at all the domains tied to SH.

• by flyer_go on 7/12/23, 6:47 PM

  In 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.

• by buildsjets on 7/12/23, 8:14 PM

  You can add traveltouchdiscover.com and widefree.org to the list.

• by 4d4m on 7/12/23, 4:58 PM

  Market making on behalf of artists and content rights holders :)

• by burnte on 7/12/23, 10:12 PM

  Probably, yeah.

• by ChrisArchitect on 7/12/23, 6:16 PM

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