In a new report, State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman calls the ticket industry a "fixed game" that is stacked against everyday buyers. NY1's Michael Herzenberg filed the following report.

Bruce Springsteen's concert at Madison Square Garden Wednesday night was one of the hottest tickets in town. Most fans who tried to buy one when they went on sale were left dancing in the dark.

An investigation by State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman found that large numbers of tickets for top concerts and sporting events are swept up before the average fan has a chance to buy them.

"That's what we call a rigged system," Scheniderman said.

Schneiderman says ticket brokers use illegal software called ticket bots to outwit the security systems of Ticketmaster and other vendors. The bots can buy as many as 1,000 tickets a minute. That's what Schneiderman says happened for a U2 concert at MSG little more than a year ago.

"Reforms are needed to keep pace with technologies in this rapidly evolving industry," Scheniderman said.

According to Schneiderman, the brokers then resell the tickets on platforms like StubHub at prices inflated an average of almost 50 percent. At times, it can be as much as a thousand percent above face value.  

He found that a Barbra Streisand ticket went from $1,600 to $5,300. A Rangers Game went from $800 to $3,600.

Ticket buyers don't like it.

Herzenberg: How does that make you feel?
Ticket buyer: Angry as somebody who likes to go to those shows.

Ticket bots aren't the only problem. Schneiderman says more than half the tickets for top events typically are not made available to the general public. Large blocks are reserved for industry insiders and presales to credit cardholders with major banks

For a recent Katy Perry concert at Barclays Center, only 12 percent of the tickets were available to the general public.

Schneiderman wants the industry to be more transparent, telling fans how many tickets are actually available when they go on sale. The attorney general also wants the legislature to impose a cap the markup resellers can charge and is suggesting criminal penalties for brokers who use ticket bots.