Audience "overcome thousands of obstacles" to hunt for concert tickets
“The first time I hunted for concert tickets, I downloaded the Ticketbox app, clicked to buy at exactly 9am, followed the instructions, and paid via momo wallet. At 9am on November 7, I bought a ticket for Fanzone A (standing) for 2.5 million VND. When the organizers announced the official ticket opening, at 12pm on the same day, my friend and I bought 3 CAT 2 tickets (seated) for 700,000 VND” - audience member Thu Nga shared her “endless” joy when hunting for tickets for the concert “Anh trai say hi”.
At the same time, there were more than 60,000 people who were hunting for tickets to “Anh trai say hi” like Thu Nga but failed. On the show’s Fanpage as well as the ticketing platform Ticketbox, there were countless comments expressing the audience’s feelings of disappointment and sadness when they failed to hunt for tickets.
A week after the “Anh trai say hi” ticket storm, the ticket market is “crazy” with “Call Me by Fire”. The show’s location was announced in Hung Yen, quite far from the center of Hanoi, but it still did not reduce the enthusiasm of fans.
According to Ticketbox, there were 150,000 people waiting to buy at the same time, causing tickets for the "Call Me by Fire" concert to sell out in a record time of 40 minutes.
The uncompromising "ticket hunting" is not only for young people but also for middle-aged audiences.
For example, Ms. Nguyen Thuy (46 years old, Ba Dinh, Hanoi) asked her friends to buy tickets as soon as she heard that the concert would be held in Hanoi. “I asked to buy tickets because I wanted to go with my daughter and her two close friends. I found the show fascinating and the artists very creative,” she said.
The journey to hunt for concert tickets for the “talents” was indeed “thorny”, with the website crashing, when they could access it, the location was too far away to buy. Even those who thought they had successfully purchased tickets still had their tickets canceled.
Ticket seekers overwhelm ticket holders
Immediately after the organizers announced that the concert was sold out, ticket buying and selling activities took place bustlingly on groups with about 68,000 to 72,000 members. Under each post, there were hundreds of comments "need to buy tickets".
Due to the high demand, most sellers sell tickets for 500,000 VND to 1 million VND higher than the original price. Many sellers sell tickets for double the price, and some even sell tickets for many times higher. Tickets priced at 800,000 VND are being sold for up to 6 million VND on ticket transfer groups.
Audience member L.P posted tickets for sale for Ginger Jam and Nursery House. When the reporter asked to buy them, he was immediately quoted double the original price, 2.4 million VND/ticket and 1.6 million VND/ticket, respectively.
The usual form of transaction according to the instructions of the audience L.P: “The buyer checks the information on Facebook, if they trust it, then they will make a transaction. One is that the buyer transfers money, the seller delivers the ticket code, the seller is not responsible if the ticket is leaked or sold outside. Two is that the buyer transfers a 50% deposit, when the event takes place, they exchange the ticket, avoiding the situation of not trusting each other.”
However, buying tickets through the "black market" has many potential risks. If not careful, buyers can easily be fooled by tricks such as selling a QR code to many people, collecting deposits and then "blocking Facebook".
Audience member Quang Lam complained: “Buyers are afraid of being scammed, a QR code sent to dozens of people but they don’t know, they want to transact directly. Sellers don’t know who the real buyer is. It’s too difficult.”
“I was just scammed out of 4.3 million, as were many others. Everyone be careful these days, there are many scam accounts that prey on people who are greedy for cheap tickets” - audience member D.A.T wrote a post warning about scams.
An audience member who failed to buy tickets for “Call Me by Fire” made an interesting comparison: “Blackpink’s huge traffic didn’t collapse, but it collapsed our concert.” Indeed, the two concerts “Anh trai say hi” (December 7 at My Dinh National Stadium, Hanoi) and “Call Me by Fire” (December 14 at Vinhomes Ocean Park 3, Hung Yen) - two large-scale shows only 1 week apart, but both received the attention of a large audience, proving that the appeal of domestic idols is very large.
