How to Verify Your Ticketmaster Account and Tickets

Ticketmaster verification can mean three things: confirming your account with codes sent by text and email, checking that tickets are real, or Verified Fan, the registration Ticketmaster uses for high-demand sales. This guide covers all three.

It also explains which phone numbers Ticketmaster accepts, and why yours has to be one you keep: Ticketmaster texts it whenever it needs to confirm it’s you.

How Ticketmaster account verification works

Every new account verifies both an email address and a phone number: “You must verify an email and phone before your account is fully created.” Ticketmaster says the aim is to “fight against malicious technology”. Each code is unique: it “changes each time you verify a new email address or phone number and when you request a new code.”

Verification doesn’t stop at sign-up. Ticketmaster texts the same number again later:

You can’t switch two-factor authentication off: “this is a security feature to protect your account.”

Which phone numbers Ticketmaster accepts

Ticketmaster asks for “a number that receives texts or SMS messaging”. A landline works too: Ticketmaster calls it with the code instead. Some numbers are refused outright: “Additional methods like payphones, pagers, Google Voice or Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) are not accepted or supported.” Its UK help center puts it plainly: “Only mobile carrier or landline phone numbers are accepted.” Ticketmaster also notes that “SMS service is not currently available in every country.”

A non-VoIP number from PVADeals is a real mobile number from a carrier, so Ticketmaster sees an ordinary mobile line. See how to check if a number is VoIP.

Use a number you’ll keep

Your tickets live in your account, and Ticketmaster texts your number for two-factor codes, password resets and transfers. A 20-minute number is the wrong tool: once it expires, the next code goes nowhere. If you lose access, Ticketmaster’s answer is: “If you don’t have access to the current phone number in your profile, please contact Fan Support.” Asking to remove a number can also trigger a security check through Persona.

Pick one of these instead:

• A long-term number (3, 7, 14 or 30 days) with auto-renew on, so it stays yours for as long as you use the account.
• An All services plan, one number for the full term.
• Your own number, if you’d rather not manage a rental.

How to verify Ticketmaster with a PVADeals number

1. Create a free PVADeals account and add credits: crypto from $3, or a card through Stripe from $5.
2. Choose Ticketmaster and your country: the United States or the United Kingdom.
3. Pick a long-term rental and turn on auto-renew, or rent an All services number.
4. In Ticketmaster, select Sign In/Register, enter your details, then select Add my phone and enter the number with its country code (+1 or +44).
5. Copy the code from your PVADeals dashboard, where it appears as soon as it arrives, and select Confirm code. PVADeals numbers receive SMS only, which is what Ticketmaster sends to mobile numbers.
6. Verify your email with the code Ticketmaster sends to your inbox.

How to verify Ticketmaster tickets are real

Ticketmaster says: “The only way to know your tickets are authentic is to buy directly from Ticketmaster or the venue box office. These tickets will always be 100% authentic.” It adds: “We can’t verify tickets bought from a third-party.”

What to check:

• The tickets are in your account, under My Tickets.
• Transfers come with a new barcode. When you accept a Ticket Transfer, “the recipient is issued a new barcode that only they can use”, and the sender’s copy stops working. Ticketmaster suggests you “know and trust the person transferring tickets to you.”
• Resale on Ticketmaster is reissued. Listings carry a Verified Resale label, and when a ticket sells, Ticketmaster says “we void the old one and reissue an entirely new ticket”.
• Moving barcodes refresh. A mobile barcode with a moving line “automatically refreshes every 15 seconds for fraud and counterfeit protection”, and “Screenshots won’t get you in.”
• Some barcodes appear late. For some events you get the barcode “typically within three days before your event”.

What Ticketmaster Verified Fan is

Verified Fan is a registration Ticketmaster uses for high-demand sales. In Ticketmaster’s words, it “requires registration to help filter out buyers looking to resell tickets”. Here’s how Ticketmaster describes the process:

1. Register on the artist’s sign-up page with your Ticketmaster account, your email and your phone number.
2. Ticketmaster vets the request, confirming it belongs to an individual and not a bot.
3. A lottery-style process decides who gets an access code and who goes on the waitlist. Codes arrive by text, and a code “is unique to your account, and will not work if anyone else enters it”.

Neither registering nor getting a code guarantees tickets: they sell first-come, first-served. The six-digit code you receive when you register only verifies your phone number; it “cannot be used to purchase tickets.” Waitlisted fans can get a code by text “at any time after the sale begins”, so keep the number on your account until the sale is over.

Ticketmaster’s Verified Fan FAQ link now opens its help page on artist presales. Signing up there lets you join the sale, but it “doesn’t guarantee that you’ll get tickets.” And “Some fans may be asked to complete a quick selfie or, in rare cases, share a form of ID.”

The rules are strict: “Multiple Ticketmaster accounts may not be used to circumvent or exceed published ticket limits.” If you try, Ticketmaster may “cancel your orders and tickets”. PVADeals numbers aren’t a way around ticket limits, bot checks or ID checks. They’re for keeping your personal number off your own account.

If the Ticketmaster code doesn’t arrive

• Give it a few minutes. Ticketmaster says “it can take a few minutes for the text with your one-time code to arrive”.
• Request a new code from the verification screen, and enter the newest one. A two-factor code expires after 20 minutes.
• “Not accepted or supported” error? Ticketmaster says the number may not be a mobile carrier or landline number.
• No SMS at all? If an eligible PVADeals number receives no SMS during the rental, its cost comes back to your balance automatically as store credit.

Keep your personal number off your ticket account

A long-term non-VoIP number from PVADeals receives Ticketmaster’s codes without your personal mobile. See our US and UK phone numbers, the prices below, or read about VoIP vs non-VoIP numbers.