THE PROBLEM
Scalping Bots are Destroying the Fan and Queue Experience
Bot Traffic
During popular drops, up to 90% of traffic comes from automated bots and scalpers
Risk of Fraud
Blocked from fair access at primary sale, consumers are forced into unregulated secondary markets where they encounter scams, fraudulent tickets, and predatory pricing
Reputation Damage
When consumers cannot get products or tickets fairly, they become disillusioned with the official seller
Unfair Prices
Bots drive up prices on secondary markets, making coveted items and tickets unaffordable for average fans
The "Fair" Pre-Queue
Why Randomization Fails Under Bot Attack
What is a Pre-Queue?
When you schedule a waiting room to begin at a specified date and time, you can choose to place all visitors who arrive early into a pre-queue. The pre-queue serves as a virtual holding area, offloading visitors from your website or app infrastructure to minimize strain on your system.
⏰ Before Sale
Early visitors see a page with a countdown timer and wait in the pre-queue holding area
🎲 At Sale Start
Visitors are randomized and assigned a position in the waiting room
➡️ After Sale Starts
Late arrivals get first-come, first-served positions in line
Queue Providers' Promise: "Pre-Queue Delivers Online Fairness"
"Our randomised pre-queue neutralises the bot advantage and gives every fan a fair shot. Early visitors are randomized once the sale begins. This is the fairest way of giving all visitors an equal chance."
The Mathematical Reality
🎲 The Queue Lottery
Imagine it is a lottery for random queue numbers (FIFO). 10,000 humans join in, but the scalping bots turned up in sheer numbers, i.e. 1,000,000.

When visitors in the pre-queue are randomized once the sale or registration begins, the pre-queue is drawing from a pool of more than 1,010,000 entries.
What are the odds a real fan gets a good random queue number?
Statistical Reality:

"Random" means every entry has a random chance—not every person.

• If scalping bots put in most of the entries, they'll get most of the good spots purely because they take up most of the draw.

• So when the bots flood the pre-queue, they will likely land more good queue positions than real fans.

Simple picture: Imagine a bag with 90 blue balls (bots) and 10 yellow balls (humans). You draw balls one by one to fill the first places in line. Because most balls are blue, most of the early draws will be blue. That's random—but it isn't equal outcomes for humans.

Bots win on volume, not luck.
DEBUNKED
Queue Providers' Promise: "Pre-Queue Delivers Online Fairness"
"Our randomised pre-queue neutralises the bot advantage and gives every fan a fair shot. Early visitors are randomized once the sale begins. This is the fairest way of giving all visitors an equal chance."
Random doesn't make outcomes equal for people—it makes them equal per entry. When automated traffic overwhelms the pool, results mirror that dominance: early positions skew to bots, while most real fans start deep in line.
The Critical Vulnerability
🚫
The Pre-Queue & Queue
Making it easy for anything or anyone to join at no cost
⚖️
Volume = Victory
Bots win through sheer numbers, not speed or timing
🎲
False Fairness
Randomizing a poisoned pool doesn't create fairness
The Solution: The ABILITY to VERIFY humanity BEFORE joining the queue. Only then can fairness exist.
Real Case Study: Coldplay India Concert

September 22, 2024: Coldplay's Music of the Spheres World Tour announced shows in Mumbai (Jan 18-19, 2025) at DY Patil Stadium. BookMyShow, India's leading ticketing platform, handled sales starting at 12:00 IST.

The Demand: 13 million queue entries attempted to purchase 178,000 tickets. The platform crashed moments after sales went live. Within 30 minutes, all tickets were sold out.

What Followed: A third show (January 21) was added due to overwhelming demand, but it sold out just as quickly with queue positions exceeding 1 million.

Real Case Study: Coldplay Mumbai
September 22, 2024 - BookMyShow Third Show Sale at 14:00 IST
13:30
PRE-QUEUE
Some early fans saw the updates and came to join the pre-queue
Dedicated fans joins in 1-30mins earlier than the 2pm start sale time. Sees the pre-queue holding page with countdown timer. Feels confident about securing tickets.
Joined in early, waiting patiently.
13:31-13:59
BOT SURGE
The Invisible Attack
While early fans wait on the holding page, bots send millions of automated requests to flood the pre-queue. Fans have no idea the pool is being poisoned. The pre-queue is now flooded with bots.
⚠️ Bots dominating the pre-queue pool
14:00
SALE STARTS
Early Entries Randomized
All early entries in the pre-queue are now randomized. The pool being randomized contains huge number of bots and giving them overwhelming statistical advantage for early positions.
🎲 Pre-queue randomization begins
14:00
SALE STARTS
The Shocking Reality

Early fans (joined 13:30): Get queue positions in the hundreds of thousands (e.g., #387,429) 😱

What happened? The pre-queue randomization drew from a pool poisoned by bots. Early fans got terrible positions despite waiting patiently for 30 minutes.

🚨 Early arrival didn't help
14:00
JOINING
Most of the Others Unlucky Fans
Most other fans didn't know about the 13:30 IST early entry window. They joined at exactly 14:00 IST (thinking they were on time) or seconds after the sale started. These late arrivals were placed behind all the randomized entries—both bots and early fans. Result: Queue positions in the hundreds of thousands or even crossing a million. No realistic chance of getting tickets.
💔 Lost in a 1M+ queue—real fans buried in bot flood
14:30
SOLD OUT
Complete Chaos & Criminal Investigation

Immediate Aftermath: All tickets sold out within 30 minutes. Most fans never stood a chance.

Resale Market Explosion: Within MINUTES, tickets appeared on Viagogo, StubHub at shocking markups—$30 tickets listed at $580 (19x), $150 tickets at $4,000 (27x), VIP lounges reaching $11,000 USD. Question: How did resellers get tickets when millions of real fans couldn't?

Police Investigation: Lawyer filed complaint with Mumbai's Economic Offences Wing alleging BookMyShow logged out legitimate buyers while bots took over. CEO summoned for questioning. Enforcement Directorate began probe into black market ticket sales.

Scam Victims: Fans lost $4,800 to fake ticket scams on Telegram. Some fans chose flying to Abu Dhabi over inflated resale prices—it was cheaper.

Conclusion: Fraud, scams, unfair prices, and most fans left disappointed.

💀 System failed real fans completely
The Root Cause: An Unsolvable Problem
Virtual queues excel at their primary purpose—protecting infrastructure from traffic overload and preventing website crashes during high-demand events. Queue providers have made genuine efforts to mitigate bot attacks through various technical measures. However, despite years of innovation and investment,they continue to fall short in stopping sophisticated bot operations and scalpers from dominating the queue.
We Have a Solution
We will be filing for patents before reaching out to the queue providers. A solution that can truly allow more fans to have an equal and fair chance to QUEUE to BUY.