PETALING JAYA: Coldplay tickets purchased from scalpers will be cancelled if the sale is found to have breached terms and conditions, said Live Nation Malaysia, the organisers of the concert in Kuala Lumpur.
This follows complaints on social media over tickets being hoarded by scalpers who were allegedly reselling them for exorbitant prices.
Live Nation Malaysia managing director Para Rajagopal said tickets for the Nov 22 concert cannot be resold, and this has been clearly stated in the terms.
However, he said no tickets have been cancelled so far, adding that organisers will only do so if they have enough proof.
“It takes a while to investigate so we don’t want to jump to any conclusions,” he said, adding that they did not want to victimise the innocent by cancelling tickets without evidence.
He acknowledged that not all tickets sold could be tracked.
However, he said they could still keep tabs on social media posts about resellers and act on them.
Para said that based on the organiser’s investigations, no buyers had bought more tickets than they were permitted to.
This was in response to claims on social media that a scalper had managed to secure 400 tickets.
However, he said scalpers were not only scalping consumers but also organisers, as they were able to sell tickets at a much higher rate.
Para pointed out that there were no laws in place to regulate the long-standing problem.
“It took a show like Coldplay to open everybody’s eyes to what’s going on in our industry,” he said.
Para said this was an opportunity for authorities to regulate the sale of music tickets to protect the industry, fans and promoters.
Meanwhile, there have been petitions online for a second concert in Kuala Lumpur to be added after the Grammy Award-winning British band announced a second show in Koahsiung, Taiwan, due to overwhelming demand.
Para said, “Anything is a possibility.
“Discussions are going on for a lot of things. We cannot officially communicate anything,” he said.
However, he asked fans to stay tuned to the organiser’s channels.
Apart from scalpers, many disgruntled fans also took to social media to voice their discontent over the long lines and not being able to get tickets.
Para pointed out that there were 700,000 people trying to get tickets.
“It is very different from buying a flight ticket or booking a hotel. The amount of pressure being put on an entire digital infrastructure is very different.
“Overall, I think we had no control over who got the ticket at what time. We allowed everyone into the system, but of course we had a limited number of tickets to sell,” he added.
Live Nation Malaysia managing director Anita Baskaran also rubbished claims that the ticketing system crashed during the sale.
“If the system had crashed, we would not have been able to sell out in a matter of hours,” she said.
She said the Coldplay concert saw an “unprecedented” volume of fans waiting to get their hands on the tickets for the A-list band’s maiden show in Kuala Lumpur.
“We have never seen this kind of number for any of the shows that we have done or promoted,” she said.
She added that 400,000 were in line for the pre-sale queue for CIMB cardholders, while some 600,000 were in line on the day of the general sale.
However, she admitted that the system did lag, and there were verifications that had to be done on the back end, which slowed the process.
“The issue with a lot of these ticketing systems nowadays is that there is a lot of backend checking that we have to do. There are bots; there are people who use fake credit cards to attempt to buy the tickets,” she said.
The Domestic Trade and Cost of Living Ministry had also advised buyers to get tickets from legitimate sales channels.
In a statement on May 20, the ministry said buyers had the right to get their tickets according to their own affordability and at a reasonable price offered by the sellers.
It added that buyers should lodge an official complaint if elements of fraud in the purchase of tickets are detected.
