Taylor Swift isn’t the only artist with greater demand than Ticketmaster can handle. The government of Mexico said it would fine Ticketmaster for its alleged mismanagement of ticket sales to Bad Bunny’s recent concerts in Mexico City, where hundreds of people were denied entry due to having “counterfeit” tickets.
Bad Bunny’s Mexico City concerts on December 9th and 10th were the last two dates in his “El Ultimo Tour Del Mundo” tour, and around 80,000 people were in attendance. Many more people found themselves stuck outside the venue after being sold an “unprecedented number” of fake tickets to the shows.
“This caused an unusual overcrowding and the intermittent operation of our system, which generated confusion and complicated entrance to the stadium, with the unfortunate consequence that some legitimate tickets were denied entry,” Ticketmaster Mexico said in a statement.
Despite this explanation, Mexico’s Office of the Federal Prosecutor for the Consumer (PROFECO) has launched an investigation to understand why fans were able to purchase “fake” tickets from Ticketmaster’s official website. “Ticketmaster said they were falsified; but they issued all of them,” Ricardo Sheffield, head of the consumer protection agency, said. According to Sheffield, PROFECO will require Ticketmaster to completely reimburse the fans who were denied entry to the concerts, plus provide a 20% compensation. The company itself will also face a fine for overselling tickets that could total up to 10 percent of its 2021 earnings.
Earlier this month, a group of Taylor Swift fans sued Ticketmaster for its handling of the artist’s “The Eras Tour” sale, where a crashed pre-sale prevented fans from securing tickets to her 2023 concerts. The lawsuit accuses the company of fraud, price fixing, and antitrust violations. A U.S. Senate antitrust panel will investigate the incident as well.
See where Bad Bunny’s El Verano Sin Ti appears on our list of the Top 50 Albums of 2022.