Sistic, better up your game.
Whenever there is a major act slated to perform in Singapore, ticket resellers who are looking for a lucrative business opportunity never fail to be thrown into the spotlight.
This scalping problem has been around for ages, but the public hadn’t been as privy to it since it was on a much smaller scale and the profits weren’t as ludicrous.
The issue, however, has been resurfaced recently when the tickets to Ed Sheeran’s November concert in Singapore were sold for as much as $13,000 on Carousell. Besides the fact that it was more than 50 times the original price, these offers also sparked outrage among groups of people who were trying desperately trying to get their hands on these tickets.
Since there is currently no law against the resale of concert tickets, ticket agencies are stepping in to curb this perennial problem.
Live Nation Lushington, which organised Coldplay’s concert earlier this year, tried to curb the scalping problem by voiding a numerous tickets found on the resale market.
Sictic Leading The Raid
Sistic has also been working closely with venues and promoters to identify scalpers and unauthorised reselling. Ulawful resales would usually lead to the seizure or cancellation of the tickets without any refund.
While Sistic has been successful in getting many of these resale offers taken down, Singaporeans who have had first-hand experiences being caught up in the ‘ticketing wars’ are calling for laws to be put in place.
Why Haven’t We Caught Up?
After all, it is time for us to catch up with countries like Australia and London, who already have amendments in place to prevent such practices from occurring. Ticket scalping is an offence for specified venues in Australia and there is a cap for the resale price to be no more than 10% above the original.
But of course, an extreme move like what London has in place – banning the resale of tickets online – would be a bummer seeing as to how some ticket resellers could have legitimate reasons for doing so.
Perhaps a fine would work just as well – seeing as how most Singaporeans have proven that they are quite the law-abiding citizen.
Heads up though, the upcoming Harry Styles concert in November uses non-transferable tickets with the name of the purchaser printed on them – courtesy of the concert promoter. It’ll be a nice break from hearing about those insanely marked up tickets.
