Concert-goers were sent into a frenzy a couple of days ago when Ed Sheeran was reported to be involved in an accident that could put a halt to his world tour, and imminently his pit-stop in Singapore.
An Instagram post by the singer himself confirmed that Singapore is still part of the plan, but it wasn’t long until the surface of yet another heart-stirring news.
Bruno Mars’ fans were left high and dry when tickets of his ‘24k Magic World Tour’ tickets were sold out three and a half hours after its release, even after the addition of another show.
A quick search on Carousell yields a long list of sellers with ticket prices that have been hiked up:
Another concert season marks yet another opportunity for ticket scalpers, or rather a more flattering terminology – ‘ticket brokers’ to get to work. To all the true fans out there, trust me when I say that there’s a bigger evil than these small time players when it comes to ticket scalping.
Playing A Different Game
In Singapore, the bulk of these cases are usually a few individuals asking for ridiculous prices on Carousell. For overseas concerts, however, it seems like there’s a whole business model taking advantage of fans’ yearning hearts.
If reselling 10 Coldplay tickets was enough to get you riled up, you may want to prepare yourself for the next one.
“I’ve been in this game since it was invented,” revealed an unnamed ticket broker during an interview with Billboard.
The exorbitant amount of money ticket brokers have paid to buy first-hand tickets, only to resell at a later time, has resulted in an unexpected perk.
“You know how many airline miles guys like me have? I haven’t paid for a plane ticket since they came out with frequent-flier miles for using the credit card.”
According to the interview, the broker said that this business has since flourished into a platform where bots and hackers are enlisted to snag transaction-worthy tickets.
You can almost never beat a computer system that is programmed to do its owner’s bidding at the click of a button. And in this case, it’s an instantaneous process that warrants hundreds of tickets – or even thousands – as the hacker desires.
There are people who are capable of freezing the inventory on the ticket selection screens, purchase what they want and leave the rest to the general public. Most of the time we wouldn’t even realize it – we’d probably assume that it was yet another traffic control issue the website had trouble with.
It’s safe to say that computer geniuses are involved in this line of work. According to the ticket broker, there are even people who hire programmers in India to create such a programme.
What You Can Do
Despite tickets indicating that it is ‘non-transferrable’ or not allowed to be ‘resold’, these individuals have found a way to bend the rules. And it’s not illegal to do so.
Not all resellers of tickets are to be blamed for – at times the original buyer has no choice but to sell the ticket away due to unforeseen circumstances.
In cases like this, Glastonbury, a renowned festival in the UK, seems to have a fool-proof ticketing method that could discourage ticket scalping. Each ticket is photo ID tagged, and in the event that the original purchaser of the ticket is unable to make it for the festival, the ticketing company offers refunds. The ticket would then be put up for sales again.
This way concert-goers can look forward to a proper avenue to purchase tickets at a desirable price when they miss out on the original sales, and those who are unable to make the concert now have a warranted refund for the tickets, a win-win for both parties.
Given that SISTIC or any other major ticketing companies’ have non-refundable policies for tickets, it makes sense as to why these resales happen. There may be downsides to Glastonbury’s method of ticketing – such as long queues for those who are waiting for refunded tickets.
But when it comes to tackling ticket scalping, Singapore could adopt a method like this as a step towards a greater good.
