Has Chappell Roan Solved K-Pop’s Ticket Scalper Problem?
American singer-songwriter Chappell Roan is battling scalpers for her fans, and her methods could potentially influence ticket sales for other artists.
Ticketmaster is currently under investigation in the United Kingdom for Oasis ticket sales. The company is also facing an antitrust lawsuit in the United States. Part of Ticketmaster’s woes stem from monopolizing the ticket market, but also from scalpers: buyers who resell tickets purchased at face value for much higher prices.
The live music industry in America is broken because Live Nation-Ticketmaster has an illegal monopoly. Our antitrust lawsuit seeks to break up Live Nation-Ticketmaster’s monopoly and restore competition for the benefit of fans and artists.
— Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division
Unfortunately, many K-Pop fans are familiar with Ticketmaster’s controversial practices, having encountered dynamic pricing–ticket prices changing based on demand–and competed with scalpers to see artists like BTS and BLACKPINK in concert. Many scalpers use bots to snap up as many tickets as possible, robbing fans of the chance to see their favorite artists in person.
Chappell Roan recently took matters into her own hands after realizing that scalpers had bought a significant number of tickets for her upcoming concert in Franklin, Tennessee, USA. In an Instagram video, Roan told fans that she and her team had canceled many scalpers’ tickets and planned to resell them to fans.
Scalpers and bots bought up all the tickets, so we went through and canceled all the scalper tickets we could.
So, from that we’re going to release a limited amount of tickets to you because I want to make sure that tickets go to people who actually want to come and are fans.
— Chappel Roan
Fans can now go to Chappell Roan’s Ticketmaster website to submit their requests for her show, which will take place on October 1 at the Firstbank Amphitheater. Limited-quantity tickets will be sold to the fans who request them.
Franklin ♡‧₊˚ We scrubbed and canceled scalper tickets for my show this week and are releasing a limited number of tickets to you. Go to https://t.co/AJkuCJDc5W to request tickets now!!! pic.twitter.com/IvTiRrHU5s
— Chappell Roan (@ChappellRoan) September 4, 2024
This is the best solution that makes sense to me and my team. I know it’s confusing and it’s so annoying, but I’m genuinely so pissed about the scalper situation and think that people actually deserve to get to my show. This is a larger issue, and we’re dealing with it.
— Chappell Roan
Though Roan’s solution doesn’t eliminate the scalpers, it does give her fans a second chance to buy previously sold tickets that would have only been available to them through scalpers’ sky-high resale prices. Given that scalpers are a persistent problem for all music fans, it’s possible that K-Pop artists could be among the artists who take similar anti-scalper action in the future.
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