Stopping Scalper Bots: How to Protect Fans, Customers, and Revenue

A surge in online shopping, growing interest in collectible items, and consistently high demand for event tickets and limited-release products have all contributed to increased online scarcity. Cybercriminals and amateur botters alike use scalping bots to quickly snatch up limited inventory—whether it’s tickets, sneakers, gaming consoles, or collectibles—before real human users can complete their purchases. These scalpers then resell the items at inflated profits on secondary markets.

Recently, the White House issued an Executive Order targeting ticket scalping, emphasizing stronger enforcement of competition laws and the Better Online Ticket Sales (BOTS) Act, improved price transparency, and increased scrutiny of the secondary ticket market.

How scalping hurts customers and businesses alike

It’s clear how scalping causes frustration for consumers—they often miss out on products or event tickets they desperately want, facing inflated prices on secondary markets or resorting to unreliable sellers. For genuine fans and customers, this often means missing out entirely or being forced to pay exorbitant amounts, negatively impacting their overall experience. But the harm doesn’t stop with disappointed customers. Scalping also significantly impacts your business operations, profitability, and brand reputation. Here’s how:

• Scalper bots prevent real human customers from buying the products or tickets they want, leaving them disappointed and empty-handed, creating negative brand experiences. This not only diminishes loyalty but can also trigger public backlash and negative press, especially in high-profile entertainment scenarios.
• Scalper bots don’t purchase companion items. You may sell out of PlayStation 5 consoles, but the video games remain unsold. Similarly, event scalpers purchase tickets without any additional merchandise or event add-ons, reducing your potential average order value.
• Scalper bots tax your bandwidth and consume web resources, increasing your infrastructure costs. They also create a misleading picture of demand, which can distort forecasting and inventory planning.
• Some scalper bots scrape inventory off systems even before they’re publicly listed, deterring legitimate customers from attempting checkout and creating a perception that items were never actually available.
• When scalping becomes widespread, businesses may face regulatory scrutiny, particularly in industries where new legislation and enforcement priorities—like the recent Executive Order—are in place.

How to Stop Scalper Bots from Ruining Your Sales

If you’re looking to protect your customers and your business from the growing threat of scalper bots, implementing strong defenses is essential. The following best practices can help you identify, block, and stay ahead of the bots attempting to compromise your ticket sales and limited-release drops:

• Deploy Real-Time Bot Detection: Utilize advanced solutions like HUMAN Transaction Abuse Defense that leverage behavioral analytics and machine learning to detect and block bots.
• Limit Purchase Quantities: Set reasonable purchase limits per transaction to discourage bulk buying.
• Monitor Traffic Patterns: Regularly monitor for unusual traffic spikes around ticket launches and proactively address bot-driven activity.
• Use Browser Validation and Device Fingerprinting: Confirm that users’ browsers are genuine and consistent across sessions by validating browser authenticity and using device fingerprinting techniques. 
• Restrict Known Proxy and Hosting Providers: Block IP ranges and proxies commonly associated with scalper bot operations, limiting their ability to access and exploit your inventory.
• Maintain Regulatory Compliance: Regularly audit systems and strategies to ensure alignment with the BOTS Act and the recent Executive Order.

Protecting Your Limited-Release Sales with HUMAN

HUMAN has a strong legacy of protecting customers from scalping bot attacks without adding friction to the buyer journey. In light of the recent Executive Order, which directs the FTC to rigorously enforce the BOTS Act, promote state-level enforcement, and improve transparency in the ticket purchasing process—including secondary markets—it’s more important than ever for ticketing and entertainment companies to adopt solutions that are effective against scalping bot attacks.

HUMAN Transaction Abuse Defense helps organizations protect their customers amid these evolving regulatory expectations. It is a behavior-based, machine-learning-driven bot management solution that protects websites, mobile applications, and APIs from automated threats—including those threats that violate the BOTS Act. Here’s how:

• Prevents automated bulk purchases of tickets by detecting and blocking malicious bots, helping ensure fans—not scalpers—get fair access to events.
• Improves purchasing transparency by providing visibility into bot activity and helping businesses understand traffic sources and patterns.
• Supports regulatory alignment by helping businesses demonstrate proactive measures to prevent unfair, deceptive, and anti-competitive conduct on their platforms.
• Minimizes user disruption through Human Challenge, a user-friendly alternative to CAPTCHAs that stops CAPTCHA-solving bots while keeping the fan experience intact.

Powered by the Human Defense Platform, Transaction Abuse Defense leverages behavioral analytics, predictive models, and threat intelligence from over 20 trillion digital interactions weekly. This makes it an ideal solution for companies aiming to protect online revenue, preserve brand trust, and stay ahead of compliance demands.

Case Study: Hibbett Sports Stops Sneaker Bots 

Hibbett Sports, a leading athletic-inspired fashion retailer, is known for offering high-demand items such as the latest collectible sneakers. The company was concerned about inventory hoarding and scalping attacks as they brought their business online, and needed a way to prevent bot-driven fraud without compromising its customer experience.

Hibbett Sports adopted Transaction Abuse Defense to get scalable bot protection, leveraging behavioral analytics, advanced machine learning techniques, and predictive models to block sneaker bots during limited-release sales. “We have built a very strong feedback loop with the HUMAN team that allows us to have a tailored proactive approach to protecting our website and our customers from a constantly changing threat landscape,” said Ryan Besterwitch, Senior Director of E-commerce.

Hibbett Sports leverages HUMAN to ensure successful launches of their limited-edition products to real customers and deserving fans. As Ryan put it, “HUMAN has enabled Hibbett to create a fair chance for our loyal customers to acquire limited hot sneakers.”

Case Study: Top Five Global Retailer Blocks Scalpers from Playstation Launch

Similarly, this top five global retailer and Fortune 50 company was under constant attack from malicious bot traffic and sophisticated operators of botnets. It experienced 20 million bot attempts within the first 30 minutes of a PlayStation 5 launch, a small fraction of what the site encounters on a regular basis.

It took less than a day for the first major attack to occur, carried out by generation-4 bots that mimicked human user behaviors. HUMAN identified the anomalous behaviors, mapped the attack and blocked the bots with over 99.996% accuracy. It’s no surprise that the brand considers HUMAN to be a core part of its security and e-commerce solution stack.

Say Goodbye to Scalper Bots

Bots are now easier to acquire than ever. Scalpers can choose from a variety of bots, which they can rent, buy, or simply pay a bot holder to snag coveted items. There’s a resale market for the bots themselves, with prices ranging from the hundreds to thousands for the most effective bots. Selling scalper bots is big business in its own right.

And nowadays, scalping isn’t just a cybercriminal’s game. Legitimate customers often have to buy their own bots just to get access to the items they crave (check out this WSJ article if you’re skeptical). Those using bots may be brand advocates and loyal customers, so a blanket solution won’t be effective for your business. Instead, a more nuanced response is required to accurately tackle those who are gaming the system on a grander scale.

Transaction Abuse Defense doesn’t only block scalper bots, but ensures that real humans have access to the limited-edition products they want. This shift in mindset allows us to prioritize human users, protecting your e-commerce revenue while preserving user experience and brand reputation.