• Hackers break into the accounts of some Ticketmaster users and transfer tickets to each other.
• Two audience members said it was shocking, but they collected their tickets to attend their shows.
• After BI requested comment from Ticketmaster, it refunded both concertgoers the price of their tickets.

In September, Vashti-Jasmine McKenzie noticed that an event had mysteriously disappeared from her Google Calendar. It was an encore for a Usher concert in Dallas on October 5, synced to his Ticketmaster account.

McKenzie opened her email in shock: the night before, a stranger had broken into her account, accessed McKenzie’s two tickets, for which she had paid $550, and transferred them out of her account.

“If this happened in real life, if someone set me up, it would be like they were stealing from me,” said McKenzie, a 42-year-old conference manager.

McKenzie, a music fan who said she spent about $10,000 on shows in 2024, eventually got her tickets and went to the show, but remains critical of Ticketmaster.

McKenzie isn’t the only spectator to suddenly find himself without a ticket. Similar incidents have been reported in Los Angeles, NashvilleAnd Charlotte, North Carolina. The principle is generally the same: Ticketmaster customers buy tickets to see their favorite artists, only to receive an email saying their tickets have been transferred from their online wallet by an unknown hacker – and promptly claimed.

These types of scams are just the latest in a series of headaches for the ticketing giant. Following a data breach earlier this year and harsh criticism from big stars like Taylor Swift, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced in May that it had filed an antitrust complaint. lawsuit against Live Nation, Parent company of Ticketmasteralleging that the company’s “conduct is anti-competitive and illegal.” Live Nation, worth about $28 billion as of November 8, tightly controls the live entertainment industry. The DOJ said in its complaint that “through Ticketmaster, Live Nation controls approximately 80% or more of major concert venue primary ticketing and an increasing share of secondary market ticket resales.”

In response, Live Nation said the DOJ lawsuit would fail to resolve fans’ concerns over ticket prices and their ability to purchase them.

Yet first-hand experience of the ticket transfer scam led McKenzie and at least one other customer to worry that their purchases were not secure.

In October, Mika City, a 28-year-old data analyst from Grand Prairie, Texas, spent $400 on two tickets to rapper Don Toliver’s show in Houston. Two days after purchasing them, she received an email at 6:08 a.m. from Ticketmaster informing her that her tickets were being transferred to someone named “Floyd George.”

Just 39 seconds later, she received another email: “Floyd George” had accepted the transfer of the tickets and the tickets had been removed from his account.

All of this happened before City even woke up – and despite the fact that she thought she had secured her account in June by changing her password.

City was also able to collect her stolen tickets through Ticketmaster and attend the show, but she said the experience was stressful.

“I’m still scared right now that this will happen again,” City told BI.

Although Ticketmaster reinstated McKenzie and City’s tickets in time for their concerts, after Business Insider requested comment, the company refunded them both for the original cost of their tickets. He did not respond to BI’s other questions about account takeovers and customer security.

A Live Nation executive told CBS Newshowever, that the company limited transfers for Taylor Swift tickets to 72 hours before concerts, following online ticket thefts specifically targeting the Eras Tour. In some cases, Ticketmaster has also required two-factor authentication for ticket holders to make transfers. The head of Live Nation recommended that Ticketmaster account holders have a unique password that is not used for any other platform.

Collecting tickets can be a painful experience

After realizing the Usher tickets had been transferred out of her account, McKenzie said she called Ticketmaster and reported the incident to its fraud department, but did not immediately receive a response.

Two days after his call, the tickets reappeared in his account – with the same seats and at no additional cost. But it was enough to scare McKenzie about what would have happened if she hadn’t noticed the calendar change.

At the Usher concert, McKenzie added, she saw two women learn in real time that they were victims of a similar scam. They opened the Ticketmaster wallet on their phone at a front door only to find they were gone, she said.

City got his tickets back a day after they were transferred out of his account, a week before the concert. She said she called several times to reach Ticketmaster’s fraud department, who told her her case would be prioritized because of the speed of her event.

For good measure, she also filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau about her tickets being stolen, as well as a dispute with her bank. The BBB forwarded the complaint to Ticketmaster, according to screenshots of the City online exchange shared with BI. The company responded via the BBB a day after City had already got his tickets back, saying it would make his case worse.

She thought she would have to repurchase the tickets, she added, and so was surprised and happy when Ticketmaster reinstated the tickets.

“I was so shocked, because everyone I saw said it took forever, or they never got them back,” City said.

Recent Ticketmaster issues

In May, Live Nation said it was investigating a data breach affecting some users who purchased tickets in North America. The information leaked could include customers’ emails, phone numbers, encrypted credit cards and other personal information, Ticketmaster said in a statement.

The company said at the time that password information was not part of the data breach and that customer accounts were safe.

Fans and artists complain about the difficulty of purchasing tickets.

In November 2022, Taylor Swift spoke publicly to Ticketmaster after announcing that it was canceling the general sale of its Eras Tour after having exhausted its inventory during the pre-sale.

“It’s truly amazing that 2.4 million people got tickets, but it really annoys me that many of them feel like they suffered multiple bear attacks to get them,” wrote Swift in a statement posted on Instagram.

Last month, Oasis fans in the UK rise up against Ticketmaster after noticing a rise in ticket prices for the long-awaited reunion tour due to the company’s demand-based pricing model. The outrage was so pronounced that a British government antitrust regulator is looking into the company’s practices.

For now, many fans are stuck on Ticketmaster to see their favorite artists even as some worry about the security of their purchases.

City told BI that even after getting her tickets back, she was still worried they would disappear from her account, even after changing her password again to keep them safe.

“If I didn’t have to buy from Ticketmaster, I wouldn’t,” she said.