While ticket scalping instinctively feels unfair, there are significant downsides to legislating against it, experts say.
SINGAPORE: When Ms Kaethe Fok learnt that the K-pop girl group Mamamoo was coming to town, she decided to buy concert tickets for the first time in her life last November.
But she found herself consistently fielding offers above her budget, one going as high as S$800. This angered her, she told CNA. While scalping instinctively feels unfair, there are significant downsides to legislating against it, experts told CNA. But information disclosures and new sales methods are areas for Singapore to look into, they suggested.RESALE ECONOMICS 101
But the continued appearance of resale tickets on platforms like Carousell and Viagogo suggests that these rules are not being heeded. Scalping is therefore a secondary market activity that gets the “right price” by reselling tickets at a higher price than the primary market, he said. 5. Register and create an account with the authorised ticket sellers ahead of time. On the day, make sure you're logged in and keep your payment method handy.
Singapore has resisted such moves. In 2019, the Ministry of Trade and Industry said that the profit margin resellers can command is freely determined between willing buyers and sellers. “In particular, it is difficult to say whether the Government should limit profit margins for ticket resales in particular, as opposed to other goods and services,” said Mr Khelvin Xu, partner at Rajah & Tann.
“I tend to disagree that there should be legislation against ticket scalping for the reasons above,” he added.BANNING BOTS They may work around purchase limits by creating fake accounts, forging responses to CAPTCHA tests designed to detect non-human users, and forging or spoofing the fingerprint of the Internet browser or device being used in order to appear human, he said.
He pointed out that the US has only had one high-profile enforcement action under the BOTS Act. In 2021, three ticket broker companies and their owners had to pay civil penalties of US$31.6 million for illegally purchasing tens of thousands of tickets and reselling them at substantial markups.MAKING RESALE PLATFORMS SAFER
The tickets that she received from Viagogo were also issued under the name of an unknown individual, “Michael Michael”, rather than her own. “It can also potentially be a breach if resellers fail to disclose material information to the consumer, for example, that the tickets are resale tickets, to mislead consumers into believing that they are purchasing from the primary ticket provider,” added the corporate lawyer.
“This approach would aim to take away the marketplace for the resale of illegally scalped tickets, which may be a more appropriate middle ground between banning ticket resales altogether versus having no restrictions whatsoever,” he said. Ticketmaster, the ticketing agent for Blackpink’s shows in Singapore, allowed members of the band’s official fan club to access ticket pre-sales three days before general sales opened.
Official transfer of the ticket could then be implemented for a fee by a ticketing services provider, he said.
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