Members of an organized “Buyer’s Club” are buying Olivia Rodrigo and Taylor Swift Eras Tour concert tickets for ticket resellers only to maximize their credit card points, 404 Media has learned. The practice shows how ticket resellers leverage the credit card point maximizing community to create a human ticket-buying botnet allowing them yet another way to bypass Ticketmaster’s ticket-buying limits and hoard tickets to resell at high prices while regular fans get left in the dust.
I originally learned about this practice from a credit card “churner” who looks for ways to maximize credit card points and had read my earlier article about how ticket brokers got Olivia Rodrigo tickets: “I am in the credit card churning community, and one of the things we do is take advantage of ‘manufactured spend’ opportunities,” which are opportunities to spending money on credit cards to earn points, without any risk, they said. “One of the methods of manufactured spend called ‘buyers groups’ and the basic setup is that you buy stuff the group requests (think iPhones, PS5s, laptops) on credit cards (and earn points for those purchases) and then dropship or reship to the group who (hopefully) pay you back and then resell the products.”