Country Star Eric Church Launches Fight Against Ticket Scalping Bots

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- Scalpers use bots to scoop up event tickets in just minutes and resell them, often at a much higher cost.

As CBS2's Alice Gainer reported, a country music star is fighting back to protect his fans.

Eric Church said he has had enough.

"It's my show," Church said. "Just like any product – I'm a product. I get to set the price."

The average ticket to see Church is $60. But scalpers were getting as much as $900.

"It crowds out Eric's normal fans," said Fielding Logan of QPrime, Church's management company.

So for this year, QPrime is using proprietary software to weed out potential scammers. It uses 10 different markers to identify them -- including purchase patterns like multiple buys on the same credit card or out-of-state ticket buys.

Church's tour has 63 dates – about 800,000 tickets. His management team canceled 33,000 ticket orders of suspected scalpers, which seemed to be pretty spot-on.

"We reinstated one order where we mistakenly caught up a real fan in our cancellations," Logan said. "It was two tickets."

Last year, President Barack Obama signed a law – the Better Online Ticket Sales Act of 2016, or BOTS Act – that is supposed to ban ticket bots.

Bots are also supposed to be stopped by Captcha boxes – in which you are asked to type in a succession of broken-up letters and numbers when trying to buy tickets – so that the system knows you are a human.

"The secondary sellers have computer wizards working on this stuff all day," said Jem Aswad, senior editor at Billboard Magazine.

Last year, Lin-Manuel Miranda called for tougher laws to stop the bots from killing Broadway, after tickets were reselling for tens of thousands of dollars for "Hamilton."

Other artists, such as Adele, have also made an effort to keep more affordable tickets in their fans' hands.

"It's harder to buy our ticket. We will make our life hell," Church said. "So if you're going to scalp, go to the next guy."

In New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed legislation that goes into effect at the end of the month, where those who use ticket bots face substantial fines and imprisonment.