The ticketing industry is expanding rapidly, with the market size expected to reach $706.14BN by 2035.
Within this broader ecosystem, the secondary resale market already accounts for roughly 25–30% of ticket volume in major concert tours, making it a significant part of how fans access live events.
Despite this scale, the resale experience is still shaped by a friction-and-uncertainty trust gap that often occurs before their second customer journey even begins.
Speaking with CX Today, Jordon McClendon, Director of Product Experience at Event Tickets Center, explains how customers often experience stress and uncertainty when buying tickets in the secondary marketplace, with negative stories shaping perceptions more strongly than successful transactions.
“We do know that it can be frustrating, just shopping for tickets, even in the primary space and waiting in queues,” he explained.
“People hear the horror stories, even though 99% of things are great. Those stories are what stick with people.”
Designing for Low Trust Entry Points
The secondary ticket marketplace operates in an environment where customers often arrive with low trust and high anxiety.
Many users have already experienced frustration in primary ticketing systems, such as long queues, sold-out events, or unexpected pricing structures, meaning that moving into resale channels intensifies customer expectations by higher prices and less predictable fulfilment timelines.
As a result, this creates a baseline assumption that something could go wrong, even before a purchase is made.
“When they come to the secondary market, there’s already assumptions that exist about ‘when will I get my tickets?’,” McClendon continued.
“People not knowing when they’re going to get their ticket, that’s the biggest point of uncertainty, and that’s where the biggest frustration comes from.”
As a result, designing a customer journey for this context requires treating uncertainty as the central problem to solve, where customers are not only evaluating price and availability but also assessing legitimacy, delivery timing, and the risk of non-fulfillment.
In secondary ticket markets, supply does not come from a single controlled source, as each seller likely has different rules, systems, and levels of reliability for how and when they transfer tickets, creating fragmentation with no single, consistent process governing the whole marketplace.
This can change the journey from customer to customer, meaning two buyers purchasing the same event may receive tickets at different times, through different transfer methods, and with varying levels of communication and certainty depending on the seller involved, potentially damaging customer trust even if it was outside a ticket platform’s control.
“At the end of the day, we are the face of whoever bought that ticket,” he said.
“It depends on the broker, and in some cases the tickets come sooner, in others they don’t.
“They assume naturally that we own the ticket and we’re the reason it fell through.”
Why Failures Matter More Than Success
Rebuilding trust after a negative experience in the secondary ticket marketplace can be challenging because customer perceptions are often shaped by rare failures rather than consistent success.
Even when most transactions are completed successfully, negative experiences tend to disproportionate weight because those are the cases that define risk in the customer’s mind.
“Even though 99.25% of delivery is successful, that 0.75% matters just as much,” McClendon explained.
This difficulty in rebuilding trust is also exacerbated by the secondary market’s existing reputation, with an awareness assumption that resale platforms are often viewed with suspicion, meaning customers often approach the experience with heightened sensitivity to anything that goes wrong.
As a result, instances where that 0.75% occurs reinforces this broader narrative, making it harder for platforms to reset expectations or rebuild confidence.
“We’re all fully aware that the secondary market does have a bad reputation,” he acknowledged.
“That’s what sticks with people, even if most experiences are fine.”
This imbalance between high success rates and highly visible failures means that trust recovery in the secondary marketplace requires more than reliable delivery; it depends on how consistently platforms can acknowledge issues, respond to them, and actively counteract the broader perception that the secondary market is inherently risky.
The Role of Empathetic, Personalized Support
Despite seeing friction before a customer journey has even begun, secondary marketplaces can help reduce this by combining clear communication, thoughtful product design, and supportive technology to address uncertainty across the customer journey.
“A big focus for us right now is trying to educate as much as we can through the journey,” McClendon explained.
“We almost overcommunicate, sending emails when they get their ticket, when it’s transferred.”
This type of structured communication helps to reduce anxiety by making timelines and processes more visible, directly addressing one of the main sources of customer frustration.
Beyond communication design, effective issue resolution depends on empathetic customer-facing teams who focus on listening and understanding rather than simply processing cases.
“It’s really kind of listening to what happened, understanding the problem, and then being able to address it from there,” he said.
This customer-first strategy helps to support more meaningful resolutions, where teams aim to restore confidence through lending an ear and taking action, such as issuing refunds or replacing tickets where possible.
As a result, efforts to counter negative perceptions are ongoing for these customer-facing teams, as customer frustration can come from various places.
“I want them to feel like they can trust us, have a good experience, and be able to go to these events… and not be stressed out until they can trust us and go have a great time.”
“That’s where I’ve seen our success, if you have a bad experience, we were there to support you through that experience.”
Secondary ticket marketplaces are also now using AI as a support layer to improve how customer experiences are understood and managed.
One of the main applications is analyzing large volumes of customer feedback to identify recurring issues and areas of confusion, enhancing customer-facing teams to further empathize with each customer on a personal level.
“We’ve leaned into using AI to analyze feedback and ask better questions,” explained McClendon.
This strategy shifts the focus from reacting to individual complaints to identifying patterns across the entire customer journey, which can then inform improvements in communication, product design, and operational clarity.
At the same time, AI is positioned in the secondary marketplace as an augmentation tool rather than a replacement for human interaction, where maintaining trust and emotional reassurance during high-stakes moments such as ticket purchase and delivery is still vital to the customer journey.
“We’re not trying to replace the human touchpoint. It’s about enhancing customer experience,” he said.
“A human touch is important so customers feel trust and can actually enjoy the event.”
With clear communication, empathetic support, and targeted use of technology can help bridge the trust gap between operational realities and customer expectations, reinforcing understanding at each stage of the journey can shift the experience from one defined by uncertainty to one that feels guided, supported, and ultimately reliable.
