The best way to buy tickets to popular events is through the event venue. However, these tickets often sell out in a matter of days, and sometimes in a matter of minutes. Many of these tickets are resold through large-scale online distributors. These legitimate sellers are indistinguishable from shadier enterprises, whose tickets often turn out to be fakes.
With many tickets, the only way you can tell for sure whether a ticket is authentic is when you turn up at the venue and the bar code doesn't work. If regular tickets don't have special security devices, they look just the same as fake tickets.
Security devices on tickets include bar codes, textured areas, borders made up of words, logos, holograms, and UV markings. Most legitimate tickets are also printed out on card stock, a heavier paper than standard copy paper. The specifics vary from vendor to vendor.
Bar codes can be verified by major ticket vendors. A blurred bar code is a certain sign of a forged ticket.
Many tickets have textured areas which feel different than other parts of the ticket. Computer printers cannot reproduce this difference in texture. If the ticket feels like standard copy paper without any raised ink or textured differences, it may be a fake ticket.
Ticketmaster tickets have a border made by repeating the word 'Ticketmaster.' If this border is missing or has no words, it is not a Ticketmaster ticket.
The backs of many tickets have advertisements or other promotional information. All Ticketmaster tickets feature such promotional information. A Ticketmaster ticket which is blank on the back is fake.
Sports tickets often feature a hologram sticker. Fakes usually lack a hologram, but not always.
Black light may reveal hidden markings on tickets. Tickets that have such markings are probably authentic, but not all authentic tickets have UV inscriptions.
Poorly printed fake tickets may smudge when you rub them. This is because most computer printers use a different printing technique than commercial printers.
You can protect yourself against buying fake tickets. If you can't buy the ticket directly through the venue, buy it through a reputable ticket vendor or reseller. If you do buy a ticket through a second-hand forum such as Craigslist, always insist on seeing the original ticket receipt, along with the matching credit card and photo identification. Be particularly wary of any ticket that feels as though it was printed out on standard copy paper. Even this won't protect you 100%, but it will make it much less likely that you will get burned.