The Great Ticket Crisis

One day in 2023, a security expert named Reg Walker was keeping watch over an invite-only chat room whose members employ high-tech methods of harvesting tickets for live events. On this occasion, an exclusive ticket drop for Beyoncé shows, managed by Ticketmaster, was the target. Walker, who joined the British army out of school, was trained from a young age in military intelligence. When he demobbed in the 1980s he took security jobs at music venues and comedy clubs, working against anybody who tried to procure tickets illegally, as well as anybody who tried to jack up ticket prices beyond their face value, ambling around outside venues, pointing out scalpers to police. Later he started a consultancy, Iridium, and his efforts moved online as the ticketing industry did the same. By 2023, Walker had infiltrated various ticket-procurement groups, including the one targeting Beyoncé shows. While he watched the ticket drop, structured to filter out swarms of resellers, there was a bonanza—a 27-minute buying spree by the group. “They could have carried on for longer,” Walker said afterward. “They just ran out of credit on their cards.”