Manually tracking ticket prices is immensely time-consuming and inefficient, and not necessarily a good use of time for those industries that rely on shaping their business plans around fluctuating prices. Depending on outdated processes can even cause businesses to miss out on useful information for their strategizing.
Web scraping can automate the collection of data, allowing businesses to track ticket prices and stay up to date with deals.
What is ticket price scraping?
Ticket price scraping is a practice in which automated tools gather real-time ticket pricing from a large number of websites. Whether for concerts, sports, or other events, where tickets are sold online it is possible to extract the information via web scraping.
This information can be immensely valuable for businesses when making decisions regarding pricing strategies. It can give an indication of market trends and consumer demand, providing a competitive advantage in industries where prices are regularly changed. Web scraping automates the process. For more information about the basics of web scraping check out our What is Web Scraping article.
Ticket price scraping automates the extraction of data from these and other platforms, offering businesses real-time insights that can improve pricing strategies and competitive analysis.
Datamam, the global specialist data extraction company, works closely with customers to get exactly the data they need through developing and implementing bespoke web scraping solutions.
Datamam’s CEO and Founder, Sandro Shubladze, says: “Ticket price scraping offers a competitive advantage by providing real-time insights into price fluctuations and availability across major ticketing platforms.”
Is ticket price scraping legal?
While ticket price scraping is legal, some websites have strict terms of service against any kind of web scraping. Violation of these terms could cause legal action, suspension of an account, or permanent blocking of access to data on the website.
Ticket sites Ticketmaster and StubHub in particular have stern policies against web scraping, so avoiding these when planning a web scraping project is recommended.
Another consideration is the anti-scalping law, which aims to prevent tickets being resold unfairly. This could include restricting the number of tickets one is allowed to buy, and restricting automated tools being used for reselling.
Data protection laws also play a critical role when scraping ticket prices. Regulations like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe or the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) in the US aim to protect consumers’ personal information, and heavy fines have been levied for non-compliance.
Also, anti-bot laws such as the BOTS Act in the US restrict the use of bots to bypass security with the intent of buying up bulk quantities of available tickets.
Sandro says: “While ticket price scraping can provide valuable insights, it’s essential to navigate the legal landscape carefully.”
“Violating terms of service or anti-scalping laws can lead to serious financial and reputational consequences.”
What are the benefits of ticket price scraping?
Automating the extraction of real-time data from ticket-selling platforms allows businesses to save time and resources, and make more informed decisions.
For event organizers or ticket resellers, managing ticket availability is crucial to optimize sales. Through ticket price scraping companies can track inventory across multiple events in real time, allowing them to dynamically adjust pricing depending on supply and demand.
Ticket price scraping can be an effective tool in marketing. Access to data across different platforms can provide companies with an overview of fluctuating prices and availability, which marketers can use to design campaigns. For example, if the prices of tickets for a particular event begin falling, businesses may develop online marketing campaigns to draw the attention of last-minute shoppers.
Ticket price scraping can also help prevent fraud by helping businesses track suspicious resale activities. One indication of fraud is very low resale prices. Scraping secondary marketplaces like StubHub offers an opportunity for companies to uncover fraudulent listings and help their customers protect themselves from dubious sellers.
The primary benefit of ticket price scraping, however, is the real-time monitoring of prices. Businesses can change prices in response to the fluctuations of the market, competitors, or supply and demand. Meanwhile, consumers can scout for last-minute deals on tickets. For more information, take a look at our guide to Web Scraping for Price Comparison.
Sandro says: “By automating data collection, companies can make faster, smarter decisions while staying ahead of market trends.”
“It can have benefits for businesses and consumers alike, giving them more access to ticket price trends so that they can get or provide the best deals.”
How to scrape ticket prices
1. Set up and planning
It is necessary to clearly define your goals for your scraping project upfront. Decide which ticket platforms you are looking to scrape and understand what data you want to gather, whether it is prices, availability, or some date or another of an event.
2. Choose the right tools
Python is a recommended language to use for web scraping ticket information. For more on how to use Python for web scraping check out our article.
Python libraries BeautifulSoup, Requests, Selenium and Pandas are ideal for both beginners and advanced users. BeautifulSoup can easily parse HTML, Requests handles HTTP requests (GET, POST, etc.). Selenium handles dynamic content on a website, as well as pagination, Pandas handles storing data in various formats.
You will also require a ChromeDriver if you are utilizing Selenium to manage websites that feature dynamic content.
3. Extract the data
Once you have selected the tools of your choice, it is time to extract the information and start extracting the required info about ticket prices, ticket availability, and event details. Follow website terms and only capture the necessary data.
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
from selenium import webdriver
driver = webdriver.Chrome()
driver.get(f'{event_url}&page={page}')
soup = BeautifulSoup(driver.page_source, "html.parser")4. Parse the data
After that, raw data extraction is followed by parsing and organizational work into a usable format. Tools like BeautifulSoup can extract specific elements from an HTML format and transform them into structured data, such as tables or CSV.
ticket_list = []
for ticket in soup.find_all('div', {'class': 'ticket_data'}):
ticket_dict = {
'ticket_id': ticket.find('div', {'class': 'ticket_id'}).find('a').text,
'ticket_price': ticket.find('div', {'class': 'ticket_price'}).find('span').text,
'ticket_fee': ticket.find('div', {'class': 'ticket_fee'}).find('span').text,
'ticket_total_price': ticket.find('div', {'class': 'ticket_total_price'}).find('span').text,
'ticket_section': ticket.find('div', {'class': 'ticket_section'}).find('span').text,
'ticket_row': ticket.find('div', {'class': 'ticket_row'}).find('span').text,
}
ticket_list.append(ticket_dict)5. Pagination
Most of the ticketing sites display their offer prices across multiple pages. You will have to handle pagination via Selenium to scrape all available data by coding your scraper to navigate from page to page.
6. Store and use
Finally, store your data securely for future use, in a database or in a CSV format. This data can be analyzed to track changes in price, trends in availability, and insights from event scheduling.
import pandas as pd
df = pd.DataFrame(ticket_list)
df.to_csv('tickets.csv', index=False, encoding='utf-8')You can also explore our real estate data scraping article to see how structured data can uncover market trends and pricing insights in another industry.
Sandro says: “Tools like BeautifulSoup and Selenium streamline the extraction and analysis of this data, ensuring you stay ahead in the fast-paced world of ticket prices.”
“Employing the right tools, in addition to the appropriate planning makes ticket price scraping a highly efficient process-one that can provide valuable insights for businesses and consumers alike.”
What are the challenges of ticket price scraping?
Understanding the challenges with ticket price scraping is important to ensure a successful and ethically and legally compliant scraping project.
Anti-scalping laws
One major consideration for scraping ticket prices is anti-scalping laws which prevent massive sales and resale of tickets at inflated prices. In regions such as the United States, laws related to the Better Online Ticket Sales (BOTS) Act touch on bots applied in scraping and the buying of tickets.
Some ticket websites prohibit scraping
Some sites, like Ticketmaster, have strict terms of service that forbid outright scraping. Scraping these sites will get you restricted on their platform, blocked, or sued.
Dynamic content and rapid changes
Prices change very frequently, and most ticketing websites use dynamic content to keep up with the changes. Scrapers need to be able to handle dynamic elements such as JavaScript or interactive pricing modules, increasing the complexity of the process and necessitating constant updates.
Regional issues
Ticket prices can vary in availability across different regional restrictions. Some events are only available within a specific country and projects can vary greatly in price depending on location.
Scraping ticket prices across regions forces scrapers to consider localized content and work around any potential geographic barriers, such as IP restrictions.
Scalability
Finally, scalability can be tricky. When the volume of data grows across different websites and regions, large-scale processing and storage systems become necessary. Businesses looking to scrape ticket prices for large events hosted on many varied platforms require a lot of maintenance to keep up.
Sandro says: “Ticket price scraping presents unique challenges, from complying with anti-scalping laws to managing dynamic content and regional restrictions. With the right approach, these challenges can be managed effectively, allowing businesses to unlock valuable real-time pricing insights.”
“While ticket price scraping can provide valuable insights, it’s essential to navigate the legal landscape carefully. Violating terms of service or anti-scalping laws can lead to serious consequences.”
From increasing your project’s effectiveness to helping with compliance with the legal regulations, the team of experts at Datamam can ensure that your scraping tools have the power to scale up, and to handle dynamic content and regional restrictions.
We take care of everything, from infrastructure to data processing, so you can focus on making informed decisions with the data that we help you collect. For more information on how we can assist with your web scraping needs, contact us.
