MEXICO CITY – Mexico’s consumer protection agency is investigating whether Ticketmaster is to blame for stranding more than a thousand Bad Bunny fans outside a concert last week.
President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador vowed to get money back to the ticket holders who were rejected at the doors of Mexico City’s Azteca Stadium last Friday. Their tickets had been cloned, he said.
“It moved us to see young people crying because people cloned their tickets, because others committed fraud against them,” said Amlo, as the Mexican President is known, at his daily press conference on Wednesday.
It was not Bad Bunny’s fault, he added. “It’s the fault of the ticket sellers.”
In a statement, Ticketmaster denied any wrongdoing and blamed the rejections on an “unprecedented number of counterfeit tickets” that caused confusion and “impeded the identification of legitimate tickets for some moments”.
The company, a subsidiary of Live Nation Entertainment, said that more than 4.5 million people sought tickets for only 120,000 seats over two days. It added that it was cooperating with the investigation and denied overselling tickets.
Mr Ricardo Sheffield, head of Mexico’s consumer protection agency, told Mexican news outlet Aristegui Noticias on Monday that Ticketmaster could be fined for the approximately 1,600 people affected. It would then be forced to pay those customers an extra 20 per cent of the value of each ticket beyond full reimbursement, he added.
In its statement, Ticketmaster said it would provide an additional 20 per cent refund to any customer who requested a refund as well.
Bad Bunny, the Puerto Rican reggaeton powerhouse, sold out venues across North America for his tours in 2022, grossing US$393.3 million (S$531 million) and selling more than 1.6 million tickets, according to end-of-year data from industry group Pollstar.
During the press conference on Wednesday, Amlo invited Bad Bunny to Mexico City to give a free concert in a public square to help make up the loss to fans, though he said the concert might not have the pizzazz of the stadium.
Amlo said: “We’ll take care of the stage and the lights, though it won’t be as spectacular as in the Azteca. I saw that he came out flying on a palm tree. We can’t do that here.”
In the United States, Ticketmaster faces a tsunami of criticism for problems in selling tickets to a 2023 Taylor Swift tour.
US Senator Amy Klobuchar has said a Senate anti-trust panel will hold a hearing on the lack of competition in the ticketing industry following the company’s Swift ticket sales debacle. BLOOMBERG, REUTERS
