2023-08-03 17:38:44
Tickets snapped up in a few minutes, which then reappear at exorbitant prices. The last episode in chronological order was the Coldplay concert, scheduled for next year in Rome, which was ‘sold out’ within half an hour. But the tickets have not disappeared, despite the official sites reporting a sad ‘sold out’ in large letters. There are still more, more or less available on other web addresses at even fivefold prices. “The phenomenon is called ‘secondary ticketing’ and has effectively replaced – with the advent of the web – what for years was only called scalping”, explains to time.news Roberto Giuli, Police Commissioner and Head of the Operations Section of the Police Service Postal. “It is a well-known and legally regulated phenomenon – continues Giuli – it is an offense for which a rather important sanction is envisaged which is then imposed by Agcom (the Communications Guarantee Authority), responsible for contrasting “from the point of view of sanctions, of this phenomenon. From the beginning of the year to today, we have received about a hundred reports of the most varied”.
The platforms that deal with ‘Secondary Ticketing’ are now well known, as is the process used by them for the sale. “These organizations employ very advanced and sophisticated technologies and the more the authorities try to make it difficult to purchase large quantities of tickets, the more they resort to tricks. Many, for example, use boot – network systems that automatically and using special software – they manage to bypass the systems activated to curb this type of sale”. Among the many scalping sites there is one very well known, already fined several times by Agcom and which however continues in this type of activity. “The problem here becomes complex for two reasons – continues Giuli – first of all it is a company incorporated under Swiss law, with servers located abroad, therefore the only concrete solution would be to obscure the site if it does not remove the illicit content. A fine can be provided for, but it is not said that the recipient will pay it. In addition, the Italian legal system allows for the possibility of recourse and very often the situation evolves with a dispute that concerns very particular assessments in the event of active or passive hosting, i.e. the fact that the site hosting that type of offer is aware that it is illegal or not”.
The whole system causes damage to the State, which suffers several million euros of evasion, but also the buyers, not only because they are forced to buy tickets with an increase of up to 500%, but also because these tickets often do not arrive at their destination , are false, they promise a place in the grandstand and then you find yourself on the grass instead. “The State Police, whenever there is a phenomenon of a certain significance, carries out a monitoring activity and then proceeds with the activation of investigations. It is a practice that we always adopt – concludes Giuli – and we would like to point out that the citizens, for questions relating to possible scams on the web, can contact the postal police, reporting the matter to commissariato.dgs.it.”.
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