There is no doubt that 2017 is a big year for Harry Styles. From his debut film Dunkirk coming out, to the beginning of his solo career, he’ll definitely be busy over the next several months.
With that new music, obviously, comes a tour. Since the announcement of these concerts at the end of April, fans have been eager to grab tickets to see him live. To ensure they would be the first to get them before scalpers and bots came along, Ticketmaster attempted to set up a plan to help these fans.
Fans could register for an account on Ticketmaster’s website. While not a 100% guarantee for everyone, many lucky fans would be emailed a code that could qualify them to purchase tickets. Again, tickets could not be promised with the code, but it at least gave them a start.
Next up, was the ticket purchasing. The code could be used to purchase a maximum of 4 tickets. It also would be used as proof that the person waiting in line at the venue was the one who purchased the tickets. This was intended to prevent scalping.
Once tickets went live on the site Friday morning, however, everything went downhill — fast.
Within just a few minutes, Harry’s tickets were completely sold out. Some fans were lucky enough to receive a code and purchase tickets. However, this was only a select few people. Despite strict rules preventing scalpers and bots from buying tickets, neither of these groups were able to be stopped. Not too long after tickets sold out on Ticketmaster, they were already being put up on StubHub.
The tickets from Ticketmaster initially cost less than $100. However, as you can see, scalpers were able to take them, and resell them for hundreds, even thousands of dollars.
This has been a stressful week for fans, and it’s a terrible thing that many of them have to deal with this disappointment. Ticket scalping is an incredibly selfish, greedy act. It’s awful that there are people collecting tickets, and reselling them at outrageous prices. Fortunately, it takes 7 days for tickets to be delivered. There is a possibility that scalpers’ purchases may be disqualified, and sent back to Ticketmaster. In the meantime, PLEASE be careful when buying from StubHub or other third-party sellers. Since tickets cannot be resold, you may be turned away at the door.
While neither Harry nor Ticketmaster have issued a formal statement regarding these problems, I’m sure they had good intentions with their plan. However, it’s definitely hard to tell who’s a real fan, who’s a scalper, and what is a robot. Hopefully next time, they’ll have come up with a better way to do this.
