What changed
The on-sale broke.
It used to be simple. You walked up to a window. A real person handed you a ticket and you went. No queue. No countdown. No catch. Face value, every seat, every time.
Now a fan logs on and lands at number 40,012 in line at 9:55 on a Tuesday. The seats they wanted are gone before they blink. What is left is six hundred dollars and climbing. Most fans close the laptop and don't go.
That broken loop is the System. It was built out of software, and it was built to beat you.