IMO, Comic Con has done a pretty fine job at eliminating scalpers. They do this in a few ways:
- Random selection over an hour at ticket sale time that is unique per device, with some 'are you human' checks along the way to make it more difficult to bot.
- Requiring physical delivery of the badge with a maximum number per address, or government issued ID to pick it up in person.
- Random ID checks during the con.
- The first round of sales goes exclusively to people who had a badge before. I.e. you need a code from the back of the badge. So even if you bought it from a scalper, you would now have the code for next year's presale.
None of these are perfect, but it's still the best ticketing process I've seen in recent years.
Once a venue/promoter/whatever has your money they do not want to give it back. They're not concerned with the secondary market so long as tickets sell. A venue is in the venue business, not the convention of concert business.
> So even if you bought it from a scalper, you would now have the code for next year's presale.
i would imagine a scalper would record the code from the badge as well, before giving it to you. So this means they're going to be able to buy just as well, and may be invalidate the code before you get to use it!
Both the scalper and the buyer might be attempting to use the same code in the presale in that case. I'm not sure how they handle that but I imagine that invalidates it for both parties.
- Random selection over an hour at ticket sale time that is unique per device, with some 'are you human' checks along the way to make it more difficult to bot.
- Requiring physical delivery of the badge with a maximum number per address, or government issued ID to pick it up in person.
- Random ID checks during the con.
- The first round of sales goes exclusively to people who had a badge before. I.e. you need a code from the back of the badge. So even if you bought it from a scalper, you would now have the code for next year's presale.
None of these are perfect, but it's still the best ticketing process I've seen in recent years.