Ticket resellers face a reckoning thanks to Travis Scott's 'Utopia' tour
The dark side of scalping had consequences for members of a ticket buying club.
Travis Scott’s upcoming Utopia – Circus Maximus Tour has left ticket resellers in a place that is the opposite of a utopia. As the result of a miscalculation of the value of tickets to the upcoming tour, brokers who bought thousands of tickets now face thousands of dollars in credit card debt.
What initially attracted resellers to overbuy tickets to Travis Scott’s anticipated Utopia – Circus Maximus Tour, which kicks off on Oct. 11 and follows the July release of his fourth studio album “Utopia,” was a bet that was placed by credit card maxing site PFS Buyers Club, where members earn money from purchasing items that are hard to obtain. The site told members to buy a large amount of tickets with the promise of being reimbursed and receiving $25 commission for each purchased ticket, according to 404 Media.
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After Travis Scott added more shows to his tour for some cities, the demand for tickets in those cities decreased. You can now find those oversold tickets on StubHub for $10-$20, which is less than half the price of what they originally were sold for.
The situation highlights a growing issue of resellers purchasing a large number of tickets on Ticketmaster to concerts and events, often partnering with credit card “buyers clubs” to do so, resulting in fans being unable to buy tickets to their favorite shows.
Ticketmaster pledged to crack down on the issue earlier this year following the backlash the company faced in November after a large number of fans were unable to purchase presale tickets to Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour due to high demand. In February, the company pushed for Congress to expand the 2016 Better Online Ticket Sales Act, which is legislation that prevents bots from purchasing tickets in large quantities. Ticketmaster also urged Congress to make it illegal to sell tickets that sellers don’t own, and supported Live Nation’s (the company that owns Ticketmaster) proposal of the FAIR Ticketing Act, legislation that would allow artists to have the ability to set ticket resale rules.
The U.S. Department of Justice is also expected to file an antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation and Ticketmaster by the end of this year, following a U.S. Senate hearing in January that discussed Ticketmaster’s high fees, ticket-selling practices and the company’s dominance in the ticketing industry.
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