Ticketmaster is in hot water again following its botched sale of Taylor Swift tickets last month, which generated lawsuits and widespread outrage. This past weekend, many hundreds of concertgoers with legitimate tickets were turned away from a Bad Bunny concert in Mexico City, leading to widespread confusion at the venue and delaying the show by an hour.
Ticketmaster later issued a statement claiming an “unprecedented” number of people were sold fake tickets to the show, leading to “unusual overcrowding,” “confusion” among personnel, and the “intermittent operation” of its systems. As a result, hundreds of people with genuine tickets were denied entry. Ticketmaster has denied that it oversold tickets to the show.
Social media images of the concert show large swaths of empty seats in the Estadio Azteca for what was reported to be a sold-out show. Mexico’s Federal Attorney’s Office for Consumers (PROFECO) reported that it had already received 1,600 complaints from angry ticketholders and that it had determined that many of the tickets that Ticketmaster had claimed were false, in fact, legitimate. PROFECO has announced that Ticketmaster will be required to reimburse fans for the price of tickets they were prohibited from using, plus an additional 20% of the ticket price, and may also be forced to pay a fine of up to 10% of its 2021 earnings.
Mexico’s quick action is in sharp contrast to the sluggish investigations of U.S. lawmakers and regulators under similar circumstances.
In his daily news conference, Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, called on Bad Bunny to play a free concert in Mexico City’s Zócalo plaza. Bad Bunny has not offered any social media comment on this request or the ticketing issues at his show.
