A November 2022 ticketing debacle involving one of pop culture’s prominent names, Taylor Swift, highlighted the challenges fans face in purchasing tickets online. The fiasco, which fans described as “disastrous,” was characterized by a ticketing system that crashed multiple times, ultimately leading to the cancellation of the public on-sale date for Swift’s 2023 US tour.
The ticketing company blamed the crash on “historically unprecedented demand,” which saw the use of bots that overwhelmed the site’s capabilities.
But even though these events are linked to the stature of the artist in question, it generally underscores the problems fans face every day when purchasing tickets online.
Challenges of the Online Ticket Buying Process
It isn’t uncommon for tickets, especially during on-demand events and concerts, to sell out minutes or even seconds after they go on sale. Usually, the speed at which they sell out doesn’t match typical human beings; capabilities, and rightly so. This is because some buyers, known as scalpers, often use bots in the ticket-buying process to maximize their chances of success. The incentive for such users is to eventually resell the tickets at a marked-up price rather than attend the event.
The bots, which are essentially software, often deploy automatically in less than a second – usually a millisecond or less – after the tickets go live. And given that they’re designed to complete all the requisite transactions quickly, they often snap up as many available tickets as possible in seconds. Naturally, humans can’t match such buying speeds regardless of the level of attention or effort they dedicate to the buying process.
Of course, this can be frustrating to real fans of the artists as they lose out to people who don’t intend to attend the concert or event. Fortunately, you can beat the scalpers at their own game by using a combination of proxies and ticket-buying software. In fact, proxy servers offer additional advantages that we have detailed below.
What is a Proxy Server?
A proxy server is an intermediary or gateway that’s figuratively located midway between a user’s computer/browser and a web server. It intercepts every web request sent by the browser and every response from the web server. This way, the proxy acts as the first point of contact. In addition to routing the internet traffic through itself, the proxy also hides the computer’s real IP address. And so, it assigns the web requests a different identifier, effectively masking the source identity. These capabilities make proxies a crucial addition to the ticket-buying process. How so? Let’s dive in.
Firstly, proxies prevent web servers from accessing your online identity by hiding your actual IP address. It means that in the unfortunate scenario where the server blocks the assigned identifier, you’ll still be able to use your computer’s IP address to access the website. It’s recommended to use high-quality proxy servers, examples of which we have discussed below.
Secondly, proxies help bypass geo-blocking. This means you can use a proxy server to purchase tickets from other countries. In fact, you can use it to get more localized results – because they assign an IP address, which contains location markers such as city, state, and coordinates, so you can purchase tickets that are only sold to residents of a given town.
Best Proxy Servers in Ticket Buying Process
You can use the following types of proxies when purchasing tickets:
● Residential proxies: They assign residential IP addresses affiliated with internet service providers (ISPs). The use of residential proxies makes it appear as though the web requests are originating from real users’ computers, even when you are using a ticket-buying bot. This proxy type is fast and reliable, but it’s also expensive.
● Datacenter proxies: They assign datacenter IP addresses linked to powerful datacenter servers. They’re fast and cheap. However, web servers can easily detect them, meaning they aren’t as reliable as residential proxies.
Additional proxy functionalities:
● Private proxies: These proxies assign a unique IP address to every user. This promotes reliability as the identifiers aren’t shared among users.
● Rotating proxies: They periodically change the assigned IP address. They help mimic human browsing behavior by reducing the number of requests affiliated with a single IP address.
Best Practices when Using Proxies in the Ticket Buying Process
While proxies increase the chances of purchasing tickets, they don’t always guarantee success. It’s crucial to implement the following best practices to maximize the likelihood of a successful outcome:
● Use private rotating residential proxies;
● Ensure the proxy service provider has an extensive IP network pool to facilitate
unlimited IP rotation, thus preventing IP bans or CAPTCHAs. An extensive IP network that includes addresses from multiple locations enables geo-specific ticket purchases;
● Utilize residential proxies that support unlimited concurrent sessions to enable you to cover all bases when purchasing tickets.
Conclusion
The ticket-buying process can be frustrating, given the extensive use of bots by scalpers. Fortunately, you can also use proxy servers and ticket-buying bots to maximize your chances of success. We recommend the use of private rotating residential proxies.
