/// EVENTS · AI FRAUD PREVENTIONTicket Bot Detection & Fraud Prevention
Layered defences that keep scalper bots, fake accounts and stolen cards out of your on-sales — virtual waiting rooms, verified fan sales, purchase limits and order review — so tickets reach real fans.
Message on WhatsApp
TRUSTED BY TEAMS
When a popular event sells out in minutes and reappears on resale sites at several times the price, bots are usually the reason. No system stops every one of them. What works is making scalping expensive and unprofitable.
Sodio builds ticket bot detection and fraud prevention in layers: a virtual waiting room that screens automated traffic, verified fan sales, limits that stop bulk buying, payment fraud checks, order review after the sale, and capped resale that takes the profit away.
/// IS IT WORTH BUILDING YET?
When Bot Protection Is Worth Building
Every ticketing platform has some protection. Building more is worth it when demand is high enough that scalpers target your sales.
Worth building when
- Your biggest events sell out in minutes
- Your tickets reappear on resale sites at inflated prices
- Chargebacks from stolen cards are rising
- You run your own ticketing platform
Not yet, when
- Tickets are still available on the day
- There is little resale demand
- Payment fraud is rare
- A marketplace’s protections already cover your sales
/// WHAT IT COVERS
What Ticket Bot Detection and Fraud Prevention Covers
Virtual waiting room
Bot screening
Verified fan sales
Purchase limits
Account protection
Basket hold limits
Payment fraud checks
Post-sale order review
Named tickets and rotating barcodes
Official resale with price caps
/// DEFENCES AT EVERY STAGE
A Defence at Every Stage of the Sale
Fans register interest
Identities verified; access codes or lottery places issued
The sale opens
Visitors screened in the waiting room; bots held back
Tickets are bought
Purchase limits, basket hold limits and payment checks applied
Orders are reviewed
Linked bulk orders found and cancelled; tickets released to real fans
Tickets reach buyers
Named tickets with rotating barcodes
Plans change; doors open
Capped official resale; tickets checked at the door
/// HOW BOTS ATTACK
How Bots Attack an On-Sale — and What Stops Each Attack
Ticket scalping is rarely one bot. It is several kinds of attack at once, and each needs its own defence.
///AI AGAINST TICKET FRAUD
Where AI Helps Stop Ticket Fraud
Bots change their tactics as soon as one is blocked. AI helps because it spots behaviour, not just known signatures.
Behaviour that is not human
Timing, movement and patterns that no real buyer produces, flagged in the queue and at checkout.
Orders that belong together
Purchases linked by card, address, device or account, revealing scalping rings that look like separate buyers.
Unusual surges
Sudden spikes in registrations or traffic from one network or region, caught before the sale opens.
Timing, movement and patterns that no real buyer produces, flagged in the queue and at checkout.
Purchases linked by card, address, device or account, revealing scalping rings that look like separate buyers.
Sudden spikes in registrations or traffic from one network or region, caught before the sale opens.
/// COMPARE
Built-In Protection, Specialist Vendor or a Custom Layered Defence
/// COST AND TIMELINE
What Drives the Cost and Timeline
A pilot that reviews a past sale for bot activity typically runs within 30 days. A production defence follows within 90, tested against realistic attack traffic well before the next big on-sale.
The cost moves with six things: peak traffic on release day; whether verified fan sales are included; payment fraud tools; official resale and named tickets; integration with your ticketing, CRM and entry systems; and the tools your team uses to review orders after a sale.
/// FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
Ticket scalping is buying tickets in bulk, usually for high-demand events, to resell them at a much higher price. Most large-scale scalping relies on bots — software that buys faster and in greater volume than any person can — leaving real fans to pay inflated prices on resale sites or miss out altogether.
Ticket scalping bots automate what a buyer would do: joining the queue, selecting seats and checking out, many times at once across many fake or stolen accounts. Some hold seats in baskets to block other buyers, some take over real fans' accounts, and some test stolen card numbers at checkout.
No, and anyone promising that is overselling. What a layered defence can do is make scalping expensive and unprofitable: bots are screened in the queue, limits stop bulk buying, suspicious orders are cancelled after the sale, and capped resale removes most of the profit. Each layer catches what the others miss.
A virtual waiting room is a queue that visitors join before they can reach a ticket sale. It admits people at a rate the ticketing system can handle, gives everyone a fair place, and is the first place bots are screened out. Without one, a big on-sale overwhelms the site and rewards whoever is fastest — usually bots.
In many places, yes. In the US, the BOTS Act makes it illegal to use software to get around ticket purchase limits or security measures, and the Federal Trade Commission enforces it. UK law also makes it an offence to use bots to buy more tickets than a sale allows. The law helps, but it does not replace good defences.
Not on their own. Modern bots can solve many CAPTCHAs, sometimes with help from human solving services. CAPTCHAs can still be one layer among several, but bot detection that looks at behaviour, devices and order patterns does far more.
/// RELATED SERVICES
Related Industries and Services
Routes where scope overlaps with ticket fraud and bot detection.
/// GET STARTED
Start With Your Last Sell-Out
Share the orders from your last high-demand sale. We will assess, free, how many of them show signs of bots, linked accounts or fraud — and which defences would have kept those tickets for real fans.