Over the past months, I have been reading about how many eager concertgoers fell prey to online scammers who claimed to have tickets for sale.

Tickets for popular acts like Jacky Cheung were snapped up within minutes when online ticket sales opened. 

Such situations can happen only with the use of bots employed by unscrupulous persons to profit from such ticket sales. 

At the same time that the tickets via the official channel are being snapped up, you will see many sellers listing the tickets for the same concerts on platforms like Carousell, Facebook and Viagogo, but at inflated prices.

Concertgoers unable to secure tickets are forced to buy “secondary” tickets from these non-official platforms and sometimes cannot differentiate between genuine sellers and scammers.

I wonder whether soliciting support from these online sales platforms alone will eradicate the issue. Have the authorities identified the root cause of why die-hard fans have to pay high prices just to secure a ticket to catch their idol on stage?

I have been buying concert tickets online for more than 25 years but recently, especially when most concert organisers are using Ticketmaster as their online sales channel, I have given up trying to get a ticket through this portal.

I have written to Ticketmaster a few times but my feedback, sent via its Facebook page and e-mail, went unanswered. I had suggested two-factor authentication via verification through e-mail, and identifying, blocking and challenging bots through Captcha to stamp out this practice of using bots.

If the Government wants to promote Singapore as a hub to host popular concerts to boost tourism and gain financial benefits, it has to stamp out such unscrupulous online purchase methods.

I never faced such issues when Sistic used to be the main channel for concert tickets for all those years, no matter how popular the concerts were. 

As long as you made an effort to queue online before ticket sales opened, you were likely to get a chance to buy a ticket, just maybe not in the category of your choice.

Irene Goh