The term “ticket scalping” conjures up images of seedy-looking characters hanging out near sports arenas in big cities offering tickets to supposedly sold-out games at inflated prices, trying to make quick cash deals away from the prying eyes of stadium security and police.
But ticket scalping today has moved upscale and gone high-tech. In recent months, the phenomenon has gotten out of hand in Vero, plaguing Riverside Theatre and other artistic venues around town.
The shifty characters lurking in the shadows outside the theater or arena have been replaced by IT professionals operating from far away who are well versed in the modern science of SEO – Search Engine Optimization – creating websites that look like the sites of artistic organizations and performance venues and manipulating search engines like Google so that their bogus sites pop up ahead of the legitimate ones…