Many artists, venues, and ticketing companies prohibit transferring to resale sites but allow "fan to fan" transfers. You transfer the ticket to Stubhub via a reasonable but generic sounding email, then they transfer it to the final buyer later.

The domains help Stubhub obscure that they are involved

The particular concert this was for (Illenium at Merriweather Pavilion on 7/15) had resale disabled on Ticketmaster itself per an agreement with the artist.

MarkMonitor would be pretty on-the-nose for something that is effectively a scam.

Scalping their own product for higher profit will draw the ire of Congress.

I hope this blows up if that's what they're doing. A Russian nesting doll of scalping?

If they are gambling that the ticket will be worth more in the future (if it was worth more today, it would have been bought by a real customer), they could make millions, or lose everything like Zillow. Guessing what a volatile item will be worth in a month isn't all fun and games

They kinda have control of the supply of goods too though - running the main resale marketplace.

When there is an excess of tickets, they can make sure that their own stock sells before random fans tickets ('I'm sorry, nobody bought the ticket you listed for sale, and now the event is over').

How is anything done by Ticketmaster and Stubhub not legitimized scalping at its worst and not already disbanded by congress? It's so rampant Ticketmaster doesn't even pretend anymore and just charges "market adjusted" prices to scalp directly themselves now to cut out most of the middle-man scalpers.

Because the artists are all in favour of it. Ticketmaster et al are in the business of reputation laundering. If the artists sold tickets directly at market clearing prices then fans would be livid at the level of greed on display.

By using Ticketmaster as an intermediary, artists are able to put artificial below-market prices on the tickets but then sell them at inflated prices, while deflecting fans' anger to the middle man. Ticketmaster, in turn, pays the artists a kickback and everybody wins (except the fans).

And if they did really want to hide it, why not do a better job?

If you don't want to lie on the Whois, use a shell company or something.

its a double edged sword. the more deliberate actions you take, the easier it is for a lawyer to show that it was willful deception.

Huh? So doing a crappy obvious job at deception means lawyers will go easier on you?

If I sell lifted PS5s in a dark alley with a cheesy Ronald Reagan mask on, does the law say "hey, he didn't try that hard to deceive anyone."

Well it's sure harder to plead for leniency if you took active measures to conceal your illegal activity.

it's not really deception to register and use whatever domains you'd like.

> doing a crappy obvious job at deception means lawyers will go easier on you?

The judge may go easier on you if there was no deception. The lawyer is just showing the judge whatever they can. Poster you replied to got it right.