# Ticket fraud peaks in festival season: how to protect your audience — MijnEvent

  [Home](https://mijnevent.app/en) / [Blog for event organizers](https://mijnevent.app/en/blog) / Ticket fraud peaks in festival season: how to protect your audience   ticket fraud safety visitors ticketing resale 

# Ticket fraud peaks in festival season: how to protect your audience

 As festival season kicks off, fake sellers work overtime. What ticket fraud has to do with your event — and what you as an organiser can do to keep your audience out of harm's way.

 [Jasper Koers](https://mijnevent.app/en/author/jasper-koers) · 6 March 2026 · 6 min read 

  ![](https://regify-mijnevent.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/blog/covers/ticket-fraud-protecting-your-audience.webp)  Photo: [🐣 Luca Iaconelli 🦊](https://unsplash.com/@luxdamore?utm_source=MijnEvent&utm_medium=referral) / [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/?utm_source=MijnEvent&utm_medium=referral)     In short

- Dutch police receive around 50,000 online fraud reports a year, of which roughly ten percent involve ticket fraud, and only about one in five victims files a report.
- Fraud around your event is still your concern: buyers of fake tickets remember the festival's name, not the scammer's, and are turned away at your gate.
- The strongest protection is to point your audience to one official sales channel and offer safe resale inside your own platform rather than banning resale.
- Every MijnEvent ticket carries a unique token that is valid only once; a resold ticket gets a fresh token and the old one is invalidated, so a copied PDF is worthless.

  Festival season has started, and with it the high season for scammers. The moment an event sells out, "spare tickets" suddenly appear on classified sites and in social media groups. Sometimes real, often fake. To an organiser it can feel like someone else's problem — the fraud happens outside your ticket shop, after all. But it's *your* audience that gets burned, and it's *your* event that deals with disappointed people at the gate. Time to look at it plainly.

# How big is the problem, really?

The numbers are sobering. Dutch police receive around 50,000 reports of online fraud each year, and roughly ten percent of those involve ticket fraud — figures shared by [the police](https://www.politie.nl/nieuws/2026/januari/15/politie-waarschuwt-met-nepwebsite-voor-ticketfraude.html) during an awareness campaign earlier this year. And that's just the visible part: it's estimated that only one in five victims files a report, because the amounts are often small enough that people assume it isn't worth it.

How stubborn the problem is became clear from the campaign itself. The police set up a fake webshop, *TicketBewust.nl* ("TicketAware"), and advertised it on Marktplaats — the Dutch equivalent of Craigslist. Between late October 2025 and mid-January 2026, more than 300,000 people saw that ad, and despite the built-in hints that it was a fake shop, [Hart van Nederland](https://www.hartvannederland.nl/advies-en-tips/waarschuwen/artikelen/politie-fraude-tickets-waarschuwing-nepsite-concerten-voetbalwestrijden) reported that 3,432 people still tried to actually place an order. That eagerness to get into a sold-out event is exactly what scammers count on.

That this is no abstract threat is shown by a case from Utrecht. A 42-year-old man is suspected of fraud involving festival, concert and sports tickets. There are [at least 153 reports against him according to Dutch broadcaster NOS](https://nos.nl/artikel/2590342-utrechter-verdacht-van-belazeren-honderden-mensen-met-concertkaartjes), with damages of over 14,000 euros — and police suspect the real number of victims is far higher. He worked with dozens of bank accounts, phone numbers and aliases, and had been active since 2021. One person, hundreds of victims.

# How scammers operate

The pattern is almost always the same. An event sells out, demand spikes, and "last tickets" appear on social media and resale sites. You pay up front by bank transfer or a payment-request link, and then one of two things happens: you never receive a ticket, or you get a PDF that looks genuine but simply won't scan at the gate — because it's a copy they sold to ten people at once.

That last one is the nastiest. The buyer thinks they hold a valid ticket, your QR system knows better, and the difference only surfaces at the worst possible moment: at the entrance, with a long queue behind them.

# Why this is your concern

You could shrug it off — the transaction didn't go through you, so technically you owe nothing. But reputation doesn't work that way. Someone who bought a fake ticket for *your* festival mostly remembers the name of the festival, not the name of the scammer. And the visitor turned away at the gate tells that story to everyone.

What's more, this is exactly the gap that opens up when you don't offer a safe, official resale channel. A visitor who can no longer attend wants to offload their ticket; someone else wants one more. If you provide nowhere to do that, they'll find each other on classified sites — and that's where the scammers are waiting. The best protection, then, isn't to "ban resale" but to pull resale into a safe channel that *you* control. We wrote about that earlier in [Reselling tickets safely — how it works at MijnEvent](/en/blog/ticket-resale-for-visitors).

# What you as an organiser can concretely do

You have more influence than you might think. A few things that genuinely make a difference:

## Point your audience to one official channel, relentlessly

The golden rule given by both the police and Dutch consumer programme [MAX Meldpunt](https://www.maxmeldpunt.nl/oplichting/op-zoek-naar-tickets-voor-theater-festival-of-een-concert-zo-controleert-u-of-de-kaarten-echt-zijn/) is simple: only buy through the event's official channel. So make that channel crystal clear. One recognisable sales URL, prominent in all your communication, so nobody has to guess which link is the real one. Your own recognisable subdomain helps enormously here — see [Setting up your own subdomain and branding](/en/blog/subdomain-and-branding) if you haven't sorted that yet.

## Communicate about fraud actively

Put out one level-headed message in your newsletter and on your socials: "Tickets are sold exclusively through *this* link. See them offered elsewhere? High chance of fraud." It takes five minutes and prevents a lot of misery.

## Offer safe resale within your own platform

If visitors can resell their ticket safely through your shop — with a fresh, verified QR token for the buyer and an automatic refund for the seller — the reason to go to a classified site disappears. At MijnEvent, a resold ticket always gets a fresh token; the old one is invalidated. A copied PDF becomes worthless.

## Let your QR validation do the heavy lifting

Real protection lives in the technology at the gate. Every MijnEvent ticket carries a unique token that's valid only once. Offer it twice, and the system raises the alarm. So a victim holding a fake ticket still doesn't get in — unpleasant for them, but it protects the integrity of your event and everyone who did pay honestly. How that works in practice is covered in [Check-in and QR scanning for inspectors](/en/blog/check-in-and-qr-scanning).

# No panic, but stay alert

Ticket fraud is a stubborn problem, but no reason for doom-mongering. Most of it plays out on the very channels where you want to keep your audience away from anyway. By offering one clear official point of sale, communicating honestly about the risks, and keeping resale inside your own safe environment, you remove the breeding ground for most fraud. The rest your system catches at the gate.

Building your ticket sales on a platform with its own recognisable sales address, safe resale and watertight QR validation? [Register your organisation](/registreer) or take a calm look at the [pricing](/en/pricing) first — fixed cost per ticket, no surprises.

   Frequently asked questions

## Frequently asked questions

## Is ticket fraud around my event really my problem as an organiser?

  Yes. Even though the fraudulent transaction happens outside your ticket shop, victims mostly remember your event's name, and it is your gate that turns disappointed people away. That reputational damage lands on you.

## How does MijnEvent stop a copied ticket from being used twice?

  Every MijnEvent ticket carries a unique token that is valid only once. If it is offered a second time, the system raises the alarm, so a copied PDF simply won't scan at the gate.

## What can I do to protect my audience from ticket fraud?

  Point your audience relentlessly to one official sales channel, communicate openly about fraud in your newsletter and socials, and offer safe resale within your own platform so visitors don't turn to classified sites where scammers wait.

  [    Back to blog ](https://mijnevent.app/en/blog) 

  MijnEvent

## Read more

 [ ![](https://regify-mijnevent.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/blog/covers/betaalkosten-bij-ticketverkoop-de-tweede-rekening.webp) pricing 

 MijnEvent · 3 August 2026 · 8 min read

## The second bill: what payment processing really adds to your ticket sales

When comparing ticketing platforms, organisers look at the platform fee. But there is a second bill: the cost of the payment itself. What it is, how it adds up, and why it scales with orders rather than tickets.

 ](https://mijnevent.app/en/blog/payment-costs-ticket-sales-the-second-bill) [ ![](https://regify-mijnevent.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/blog/covers/meertalige-ticketverkoop-bezoekers-kiezen-hun-taal.webp) dashboard 

 Jasper Koers · 30 July 2026 · 4 min read

## Multilingual ticket sales: your visitors now pick their own language

Tell your dashboard which languages your visitors speak and the entire sales side follows: ticket pages, e-mails, storefronts and FAQs. Visitors get the right language automatically and can switch with one click.

 ](https://mijnevent.app/en/blog/multilingual-ticket-sales-visitors-choose-their-language) [ ![](https://regify-mijnevent.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/blog/covers/automatic-membership-renewal-dutch-law.webp) memberships 

 Jasper Koers · 27 July 2026 · 6 min read

## Automatic membership renewal: collecting fees within Dutch renewal law

Automatic renewal saves your club a pile of chasing work, but the law has rules about cancelling. Here is how renewal works in MijnEvent, and how to keep it clean.

 ](https://mijnevent.app/en/blog/automatic-membership-renewal-dutch-law) 

   MijnEvent

## Ready to get started?

Create a free account and sell your first tickets today.

 [Start free](https://mijnevent.app/registreer) [Pricing](https://mijnevent.app/en/pricing)