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Call for investigation into Adele ‘ticket bots’

Washington state senator Marko Liias suspects bots are to blame for large numbers of Adele tickets ending up on the secondary market

By Jon Chapple on 18 Jan 2016

Adele, the Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon

Adele performing 'Water Under the Bridge' on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, 23 November 2015


image © Facebook.com/Adele

A member of the Washington State Senate has called on the state’s attorney-general to investigate whether ticket bots are behind the large numbers of tickets to Adele’s 25 and 26 July concerts in Seattle which have appeared on the secondary market.

“The use of ticket bots is profiteering, plain and simple. It’s unfair, it’s exploitative, and it’s illegal,” Marko Liias said in a press release. “If bots have been used to purchase Adele tickets, this should be prosecuted.”

Liias suspects bots (as opposed to large numbers of humans) were used to buy tickets for the Adele shows in question “because of the wave of anecdotal evidence that sales locked up almost immediately after the tickets went on sale”, a representative of the senator tells IQ.

Liias suspects bots “because of the wave of anecdotal evidence that sales locked up almost immediately after the tickets went on sale”

“Efforts by Adele’s people to try to filter sales and prevent the use of bots may have further complicated things, so it’s probably going to take some time to sort it all out. What Senator Liias hopes to accomplish is to make sure the incident receives due diligence and, if bots were indeed used, that those behind them should be prosecuted. As the Senate has no legal investigative staff, Sen. Liias’s only means of enacting due investigation is through the attorney-general’s office.

Ticket bots have been illegal in Washington since April 2015.

“Attorney-General [Bob] Ferguson wisely recognised the need for this law, and now we can use it to protect Washingtonians’ ability to purchase tickets at a reasonable, legal price,” says Liias. “This will send a message, loud and clear, that ticket bots have no place in Washington state.”