[UPDATE as of 1 December, 10.30pm SGT: A Ticketmaster representative has reached out with the following statement: “Data privacy is at the core of everything we do. A temporary issue on our website has been quickly identified and fixed. No sensitive information was shared.”]
(original article as follows)
As a big Japanese pop (J-pop) act, it’s only natural that news of Yoasobi‘s first-ever Asia tour has invited a lot of excitement and hype. The music duo, after all, are set to play sold-out shows in Seoul and Taipei, announced before the Southeast Asia leg, with Singapore coming in as their first stop for 2024.
Ahead of their concert on 11 January, tickets went on sale earlier today, 1 December, exclusively on Ticketmaster. While the official Anime Festival Asia Instagram page writes that it was sold out around 1pm SGT, tickets were labelled as ‘unavailable’ as quickly as five minutes after accessing the website.
And as usual, the scalpers are all out in full force, selling tickets of up to four times their original. For reference, here’s the list of prices for each category:
- Cat 1: S$238 (With the best view, priority in merchandise queue, and special concert merchandise, including a lanyard, VIP pass, and poster)
- Cat 2: S$198
- Cat 3: S$178
- Cat 4: S$128
A quick search on Carousell revealed multiple listings of jacked-up prices, some to the point of absurd levels. Take, for instance, one that demands S$500 for a Cat 4 ticket each:
Elsewhere, the asking prices for Cat 1 are more than twice the original, coming in at around S$600, with the lower-end ranging from S$400 to S$450. The highest, as of now, stands at S$1,300, more than a fourfold increase.
The bigger problem here, though, is how Ticketmaster handled the whole affair. For starters, there was no queue or pre-sales system, which is standard protocol for concerts held in Singapore, including for Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour and the Coldplay: Music of the Spheres World Tour.
It’s an expected process even within the J-culture scene, with the upcoming ONE OK ROCK concert on 18 December 2023 having used a queue system for ticketing. Oh, let’s not forget how this was an issue exclusive to Singapore — both the ticketing platforms for Indonesia and Malaysia had a proper system in place.
The situation is exacerbated by a string of usual server issues, such as lag, unresponsive webpages, random lines of HTML code, redirection to home page, and getting kicked out at the payment page before the time limit. Worse still, each user is limited to 10 tickets, inviting more scalpers and bot accounts than usual. Additionally, fans could only purchase tickets on the website and not at Singpost outlets, while call operators were reportedly not picking up calls.
It doesn’t help that the Yoasobi concert in Singapore will be held at a ballroom at Resorts World Sentosa, which only has a 3,600-seat capacity — a lot smaller than Singapore Indoor Stadium, Sports Hub, and the other usual haunts. Right from the get-go, there was already going to be a problem with demand, but instead of reducing the cap, it went up (for comparison, The Eras Tour restricted each user to four tickets, and Coldplay’s act, six).
Perhaps the most concerning problem is the PDPA (Personal Data Protection Act) breach that occurred during the verification process. Upon payment or check out, user accounts would show up as a different profile, allowing access to an account that belongs to someone else.
This major security breach saw an external party deleting a fan’s purchased tickets, as shared in the post below. It’s not an isolated issue either, with more users sharing their experiences on the r/Singapore page.
It’s a bad look on Ticketmaster, which has long held a monopoly on the ticketing industry, including in Singapore. While the company always had a bad reputation among concert-users (with valid reason), this privacy and security breach takes the cake. Affected users are encouraged to file a formal Personal Data Protection Complaint, especially if there are screenshots available as evidence.
Now that tickets sales are officially closed, the only thing fans can do is to wish for a second show, and hope that Ticketmaster does a better job then. Alternatively, there’s always the choice to fly out to Japan and catch Yoasobi on their home turf — if time and budget allows, that is.
Si Jia is a casual geek at heart – or as casual as someone with Sephiroth’s theme on her Spotify playlist can get. A fan of movies, games, and Japanese culture, Si Jia’s greatest weakness is the Steam Summer Sale. Or any Steam sale, really.
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