Once in awhile everyone makes mistakes: Ticketmaster Hobbled by Scalpers as Springsteen Goes on Sale

Ticketmaster Hobbled by Scalpers as Springsteen Goes on Sale

Ticketmaster, the world’s biggest online ticket service, said scalpers overwhelmed its computer systems as the company began taking orders for Bruce Springsteen concerts.

Traffic at the website was 2.5 times the highest level of the past year, Los Angeles-based Ticketmaster, part of Live Nation Entertainment Inc. (LYV), said today in an e-mail.

“Early indications suggest that much of this traffic came from highly suspicious sources, implying that scalpers were using sophisticated computer programs to assault our systems and secure tickets with the sole intention of selling them in the resale market,” the company said.

Tickets to some of the music industry’s biggest touring acts including Springsteen and Van Halen went on sale this morning. Greater federal oversight of the ticketing industry is warranted, U.S. Representative Bill Pascrell Jr., a Democrat from New Jersey, said in a statement today after Ticketmaster’s Springsteen ticket trouble.

Live Nation gained 0.1 percent to $10.40 at the close in New York. The stock slid 27 percent in 2011.

Ticketmaster said it is working with law enforcement agencies to prosecute scalpers. In June, a federal court in Newark, New Jersey, convicted three men who operated Wiseguy Tickets of conspiring to evade computer security. The company made more than $25 million from 2002 to 2009 by reselling tickets to sporting events and concerts, including Springsteen shows.

Wiseguy used programmers in Bulgaria to sidestep Ticketmaster’s computer defenses and overload the system, according to the defendants’ statements to the court.

To contact the reporter on this story: Andy Fixmer in Los Angeles at afixmer@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Anthony Palazzo at apalazzo@bloomberg.net

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