Solving event ticketing problems
How do you keep touts and bots off your tickets?
A sold-out on-sale that reappears on a resale site the same afternoon costs you the fans and the goodwill, and you carry the complaints either way. Several controls work together against it: limits on how many one buyer can take, an identity check before the ticket is issued, returns that go back at face value, and a waiting list that gives disappointed fans somewhere to go that is not a resale site.
Cap what one buyer can take, make them prove who they are, hold returns at face value, and give the people who missed out a waiting list instead of a resale site.
- For
- Keeping your tickets with the fans who wanted them
- Takes
- 7 minutes
No single setting stops touting, so use the ones that stack. Cap how many tickets one basket can hold and how many one customer account can buy across every order, and buying fifty in one go stops being worth the trouble.
Ask high-demand buyers to prove who they are before the ticket is issued. The money is held rather than taken until they do, so a bulk buyer with no identity never gets the stock in the first place.
Then control what happens to a ticket a buyer cannot use. Returns come back to you and go out again at the price you set, and the people waiting are offered them in order, which is the part that keeps fans off a resale site altogether.
How Ticket Fairy helps
-
A cap on what one buyer can take
Cap the tickets one basket can hold and the tickets one customer account can buy across every order, for the whole event or for a single ticket type, so no one can take a block and resell it.
-
Proof of who is buying
Ask for an identity check before the ticket is issued, with the money held rather than taken until the buyer passes.
-
A returned ticket that stays at face value
A ticket that comes back is reoffered at the price you set. Where you run ticket categories, the category's resale type decides which ticket type it comes back as, so keep different entry times in separate categories.
-
Somewhere for the people who missed out
A waiting list offers returned tickets to fans in order, which is the reason most of them go looking on a resale site at all.
-
An on-sale only your fans reach
Run the sale by invitation, by presale code or behind a password, so the stock never sits on a public page for a bot to find.
-
A queue instead of a scramble
A waiting room in front of checkout releases buyers at a managed rate, which removes the advantage of hammering the page.
Set it up
Before you start
- You're an owner or an admin on the event.
- You know your ticket types and roughly how much demand to expect. The limits you set depend on both.
-
Cap what one buyer can take
Open your event, select Tickets, then Settings, and set the Maximum number of tickets per order and the Maximum ticket quantity per account.
Note: The per-account field appears once Set custom maximum quantity per account is on. Per order caps one basket, and per account caps one customer across every order they place, up to 20.
-
Set the anti-scalping rules
On the same page, open Anti-Scalping/Fraud Settings and select Settings. Turn on Names required to collect a name for every ticket, Name checks to have the door check those names, and ID required to ask attendees for ID at the door.
Note: Ticket resale and Add-on resale decide whether a buyer can pass a ticket or an add-on on through Ticket Fairy. Leave ticket resale on if you want returns to come back to you at your price rather than go to a resale site.
Tickets, Settings, Anti-Scalping/Fraud Settings. -
Ask the buyer to prove who they are
Ask Ticket Fairy support to switch the identity check on for the event, or for the ticket types under most pressure.
Note: Once it is on, buyers finish checkout and their card is held rather than charged until they pass. Orders waiting on a check collect on the Needs Verification tab under Orders, and the guide to clearing them is linked below.
Orders, Needs Verification. -
Send returns to the people waiting
Back on Tickets, then Settings, turn on Enable waiting list after ticket sell-out.
Note: Every ticket that comes back is then offered to the next person waiting for that ticket type, at the price you set. A fan who knows a real ticket may come back to them at the original price has no reason to pay a tout.
Tickets, Settings. -
Watch who is actually waiting
Open Performance and select Waiting List once a ticket type has sold out.
Note: The number of people waiting tells you how much demand you did not serve, and the list itself is who to offer the next release to.
Performance, Waiting List. -
Keep the stock away from a public page
Run the on-sale by invitation, presale code or password where demand is highest.
Note: A ticket a bot cannot reach is one it cannot buy, and each of these paths has a guide of its own.
Try these steps on your own event
Create a free account, build your event and follow the steps above in your own dashboard. It takes a few minutes and you do not need to book a sales call.
No setup fees. No required monthly ticketing fee. No credit card required.
Or have it done for you
Fai, the assistant inside your dashboard, reads how the controls are set, and can change the per-order and per-account limits, the anti-scalping settings and the waiting list for you. Anything that changes what buyers can do is put to you before it is saved.
In your dashboard, with Fai
For <EVENT NAME>, what are the limits per order and per account, and is ticket resale allowed?
From your own assistant, over MCP
Connect your assistant to our MCP server and ask it:
Keep --read-only in your MCP configuration. This task only reads data, so your assistant does not need tools that make changes.
Find my event <EVENT NAME> and show its ticket settings
Let Fai do it for you
Fai works inside your Ticket Fairy dashboard. Create your account, open Fai and paste the prompt above.
No setup fees. No required monthly ticketing fee. No credit card required.
Questions you might have
- Does a per-buyer limit really stop bulk buying?
- It raises the cost of it. The per-account cap holds across every order one customer places, so a tout has to find a new account and a new payment method for every few tickets, and the identity check adds an identity to that list.
- What happens to a ticket a buyer cannot use?
- With Ticket resale on, it comes back to you and is offered again at the price you set. With the waiting list on, the next person waiting for that ticket type is offered it rather than the open market, and the person who returned it receives the face value less any resale fee.
- Does the identity check slow my on-sale down?
- Buyers finish checkout as normal and the money is held rather than taken while the check runs. Ask for it on the ticket types under pressure rather than all of them.
- Can I stop resale on my event altogether?
- On Ticket Fairy, yes: turn Ticket resale off in the anti-scalping settings and no buyer can pass a ticket on through us. Leaving it on and holding the price at face value is the other way round the problem, because a buyer with no way to return a ticket they cannot use goes to a resale site. What a third-party site lists is outside any ticketing platform, which is why the waiting list matters as much as the limits.
- Which of these should a first-time festival turn on?
- The per-order and per-account limits and the waiting list, on every event. Ask for the identity check when a show sells out in minutes, and run the on-sale by invitation when you already have the list.
Still have a question?
Book a demo and we will answer it on a call, on your kind of event. Or create your account and see it for yourself.
No setup fees. No required monthly ticketing fee. No credit card required.
Related guides
Do this on your own event
Create your account, build your event and follow the steps in your own dashboard. You do not need to book a sales call.