Brokers and Digital Secondary Markets are Driving up Costs for Concert and Sports Tickets and Other Goods and Services, Digital Citizens Alliance Investigation Finds

The Responsible Markets Initiative Finds Evidence of Event Ticket Brokers Harvesting Tickets to Maximize Profits on Secondary Markets

An Emerging Trust Gap: Americans Trust Primary Markets over Secondary Markets by a 10:1 Margin

WASHINGTON, May 13, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Secondary markets can provide consumers with helpful options that were unavailable just decades ago, but they can also warp access and distort prices due to the manipulative actions by brokers and even the platforms themselves – especially in the out-of-control event ticket marketplace, according to a new investigation by the Digital Citizens Alliance.

In the report, When It Comes to Digital Markets Trust Can't Be Secondary, Digital Citizens found that access to popular sports and concerts events are increasingly controlled by brokers who gain control of tickets before much of the public gets the chance to buy them, forcing concert and sports fans to pay exorbitant prices and service fees. For example, one out of every six tickets for a highly anticipated May 16 Mets-Yankees showdown at Yankee Stadium was available on StubHub. In multiple cases, blocks of twenty tickets or more were being sold by the same seller.

The warping of digital secondary markets is not going unnoticed. Digital Citizens' research surveys found that only 1 in 3 Americans favorably view the actions of operators who purchase event tickets, monetize homes for short-term rentals, or acquire large blocks of domain names so they can resell them at a profit. And these actions can have a corrosive effect that creates a "Trust Gap": Americans are extremely skeptical of digital secondary markets, trusting primary sellers by a 10 to 1 margin.

"The relationship between the brokers who harvest event tickets to sell at a significant profit and the platforms that reap massive fees by helping them resell those tickets needs to be more closely reviewed," said Tom Galvin, executive director of the Digital Citizens Alliance. "Digital secondary markets aren't going anywhere, and can provide a useful service, but not when they are manipulated to the detriment of Americans who ultimately sense the system is rigged against them."

Digital Citizens embarked on its investigation as part of its Responsible Markets Initiative, launched in 2024 to put a spotlight on these markets, help consumers make smart decisions and provide information to policymakers grappling with how to ensure online trust and safety. Moving forward, Digital Citizens will also look at markets for consumer products such as luxury goods, drugs, and toys (including whether they make it easier to peddle counterfeits) as well as platforms that offer access (at a price) to everything from usernames and passwords for online services to restaurant reservations.

Policymakers are waking up to the fact that as digital secondary markets grow, they have an increasing impact on consumers' trust in overall markets. Perhaps that is why President Trump signed an executive order in March directing his administration take steps to "end price-gouging" by middlemen in the entertainment industry and the Federal Trade Commission is implementing rules on event ticket service fees.

"It's gratifying to see policymakers from President Trump to the FTC to state attorneys general take actions to protect consumers who shop in digital secondary markets," said Brian Cohen, a Digital Citizens Alliance Fellow. "They know that trust in these digital secondary markets – and not just in event tickets – is critical."

The When It Comes to Digital Markets Trust Can't Be Secondary report found that brokers use sophisticated techniques and relationships with promoters to snap up coveted tickets before fans can buy them. That in turn forces the fans who were beaten to the punch by brokers to shell out hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars in ticket costs and service fees to StubHub, Vivid Seats, SeatGeek, and other secondary platforms.

The report also examined the secondary markets for real estate – both physical and digital. It found that a likely factor driving the scarcity and exorbitant rise in home prices is the monetization of properties for vacation rentals placed on digital secondary markets such as Airbnb and long-term real estate portfolios by private investors. The report also detailed how long before institutional entities scooped up residential properties, technology investors saw gold by gaining control of a different type of real estate: domain names that are used as the addresses for websites and other forms of an online presence.

The Digital Citizens findings highlight the need for government and digital and secondary markets to find a balance that ensures we are not creating an unequal economic playing field. When 67 percent of Americans consider secondary market high service fees a form of price-gouging, there is a problem that needs to be addressed.

Digital Citizens recommends that both federal and state legislators and regulators conduct comprehensive research on how ticket brokers acquire tickets, whether these brokers collaborate with platforms on pricing, and whether the fees charged are exploitive and evaluate whether restrictive ticket broker laws in Europe are appropriate for the U.S. market. It also calls for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Numbers and Names, which oversees the domain industry, to study whether the actions of domain name investors create domain scarcity that harm small businesses and others.

About Digital Citizens Alliance 

The Digital Citizens Alliance is a nonprofit, 501(c)(6) organization that is a consumer-oriented coalition focused on educating the public and policymakers on the threats that consumers face on the Internet. Digital Citizens wants to create a dialogue on the importance for Internet stakeholders— individuals, government, and industry—to make the Web a safer place. Based in Washington, DC, the Digital Citizens Alliance counts among its supporters: private citizens, the health, pharmaceutical, and creative industries, as well as online safety experts and other communities focused on Internet safety. Visit us at www.digitalcitizensalliance.org.

Media Contact:
Adam Benson
email: [email protected]

SOURCE Digital Citizens Alliance