Is It Ethical to Resell Concert Tickets for Much More Than What You Paid?

When BTS member Suga booked a date in Singapore for a solo show last June, superfan Yna (not her real name) wasn’t too keen on watching. She would have preferred it if it was all the boys performing together. But after Suga’s solo album dropped, she fell in love with the music and she knew she’d regret it if she didn’t watch the concert. 

Unfortunately, tickets were all sold out by then. But thanks to fellow fans from multiple BTS fan groups on Facebook, she found a reselling site that was offering a ticket for P20,000 (plus P2,000 convenience fee) that was originally priced at P15,000. Despite not knowing much about the reselling platform, she bit the bullet and went ahead with the transaction.

“I don’t mind paying a bit more,” she tells Esquire Philippines. “The experience is priceless.”

For as long as tickets have been issued as proof of purchase to gain access to everything from transportation to sporting and entertainment events, the phenomenon known as scalping has existed as well. In fact, historians trace the word scalper, defined as someone who sells tickets with the intention to make a profit, to the late 19th century, when it was used to refer to people who sold theater tickets as well as railway tickets.

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These days, scalping seems to have become more rampant, particularly with the resurgence of live entertainment after the pandemic. But some would argue that ticket reselling platforms, like the one Yna found her Suga concert tickets on, provides a marketplace for ticket buyers and sellers, so it’s technically not scalping per se. Still, if you search hard enough, there are more shadowy and unscrupulous individuals lurking on various social media ready to prey on desperate and unsuspecting fans.

That’s especially true today, as some of the planet’s biggest music superstars have scheduled huge tours that are taking them to the world’s biggest venues so their fans can see them, well, up close and personal. (That many of the fans will only get to see a minuscule version of their idols from nosebleed seats, or even just through a video screen, is another story).

When a performer is popular enough, and demand is so great that thousands or even tens of thousands of fans will profess to do anything to get their hands on concert tickets, the result is a lopsided imbalance in favor of those precious few tickets, whose owners can then choose to sell for much, much more than they’re actually worth. Basic economics tells us that, as long as there’s ample demand and limited supply, the price will naturally go up. But in a case like concert tickets, where unlucky fans who were unable to score tickets in the general sale can still get to watch their show provided they’re willing to shell out much more, the question then becomes, is this practice ethical or not?

If you ask fans like Yna, it’s not really an issue, so long as the amount added to the final price is reasonable.

“For me, medyo pro ako diyan,” she says. “Alam naman natin yung law of supply and demand. So I’m okay with that. Shempre you’re also paying for the time and effort to secure those tickets. Ganun talaga, paunahan e. Sometimes you really have to have time to line up and wait (to buy the tickets).”

But other people seem to think that it’s morally wrong to profit off of concert tickets. The consensus seems to be that it’s a total ripoff to sell tickets to other fans for more than what you originally paid for them.

While ticket scalping isn’t exactly new, what’s happening with Taylor Swift and her Eras tour is unprecedented. One of the world’s biggest pop superstars announcing a career-spanning tour will of course attract her fans from all over, but even Ticketmaster, the ticket-selling platform responsible for getting those precious tickets in the hands of hungry fans, was unprepared. In November last year, Ticketmaster was on the receiving of intense backlash after it botched the sale of Swift concert tickets. More than 3.5 million people applied for presale codes with two million tickets being sold, the most it has ever sold in a single day, Ticketmaster said in a statement.

“Even when a high demand onsale goes flawlessly from a tech perspective, many fans are left empty handed,” Ticketmaster said. “For example: based on the volume of traffic to our site, Taylor would need to perform over 900 stadium shows (almost 20x the number of shows she is doing)…that’s a stadium show every single night for the next 2.5 years. While it’s impossible for everyone to get tickets to these shows, we know we can do more to improve the experience and that’s what we’re focused on.”

Despite this though, Ticketmaster was barraged by thousands of angry fans who said they couldn’t get into the system. Ticketmaster blamed a bot cyberattack, but lawmakers insisted it was the platform’s virtual monopoly of the live events industry that was the culprit.

Concert artists going back to live touring has led to the resurgence of an entire cottage industry of ticket resellers that thrive on the anguish and misery of ticket-less fans. In Singapore, which is Swift’s only stop in Southeast Asia, all six nights are already sold out, but resale sites are already offering tickets for up to three or four times more than their original price. A cursory search revealed tickets being sold for over P85,000, or over four times the price of the most expensive ticket at regular price.

But you know what? That P85,000 ticket had already been sold last time we checked. Which just goes to show that, when it comes to something Filipinos really, really want, money is not an issue.

As for Yna, besides being a BTS fan, she’s also a Swiftie, and she says she was able to score tickets to the pop star’s Singapore show through the Klook Packages. She placed two orders (two tickets per order) for a total of four tickets including accommodations in a five-star hotel. The tickets, which were originally priced at around P20,000 each, ended up costing around P38,000 each. But at least that factors in the cost of accommodations. The total damage that Yna is paying? P154,000.

I ask if she would even consider selling her tickets.

“Nope,” she says. “I have no plans of selling them.”