Travis Scott is set to kick off his Utopia-Circus Maximus Tour on October 11, with 40 arena dates scheduled. This is his first official tour since the Astroworld tragedy in 2021. However, reports say that ticket sales have been sluggish, indicating low demand for the show.
Jason Kebler of 404 Media reports that scalpers are having a hard time selling tickets for Travis Scott’s “Utopia – Circus Maximus” tour on secondary markets. Kebler provided a link to the StubHub page for Scott’s Raleigh show, where the cheapest tickets are currently $14, less than a quarter of their $61.50 face value on Ticketmaster.
Tickets initially sold out when they went on sale on August 31, but Scott has added additional dates. In the first round of sales, tickets were offered starting at $65 plus fees.
Due to decreased demand, tickets to the show are now available for as little as $10 at select locations. Scott will perform in New York at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center on December 18 and 19, with tickets starting at $59, which is very expensive for a concert in the Big Apple.
When Scott visits the Kaseya Center in Miami, Florida, tickets are available for just $34. In Tulsa, Oklahoma, StubHub sells tickets for $16.
Last month there was a rush to buy tickets for the concert “Utopia – The Great Circus”, which were sold out almost instantly. PFS Buyers Club, a website that typically buys rare U.S. Mint coins, has shifted its focus to purchasing tickets to popular concerts, Kebler said. It is quite possible that the PFS Buyers Club played a role in causing the initial buying frenzy.
“Ticket sellers are using the credit card points maximizing community to create a botnet for people to buy tickets, giving them another way to bypass Ticketmaster’s ticket purchasing restrictions and stockpile tickets to resell at high prices while casual fans remain in the dust,” Kebler shared. .
It turned out that resellers who invested money in the tour could now lose hundreds, if not thousands of dollars. One buyer told Koeber that he bought 123 tickets in several cities, spending a total of more than $36,000. PFS promised its members a $25 commission, but has since gone back on its word and said the website could suffer significant financial losses.
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Ticketmaster has been criticized for its lack of protection against predatory scalping and controversial practices, including fees for “dynamic ticketing.” The issue gained attention after Taylor Swift’s Eras tour crashed the site in November 2020, leading to multiple lawsuits from angry fans. The issue also prompted an ongoing Justice Department investigation into Ticketmaster’s 2010 merger with Live Nation.
What is scalping?
Ticket scalping, also known as ticket advertising or ticket flipping, is the practice of using automated software (bots) to purchase large quantities of event tickets from licensed sources for the purpose of reselling them at a higher price. This practice often targets popular sporting and music events.
Scalper bots account for 40% of online ticket purchases, buying tickets using automated software to resell them at a higher price, a study of 180 ticket sites by Imperva found.
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The tragedy of Astroworld in 2021
On November 5, 2021, Scott’s Astroworld music festival turned deadly in his hometown of Houston, Texas, killing eight people. A wave of crowd pushed the audience towards the stage, crushing and trampling fans.
Since the incident, Scott and promoter Live Nation Entertainment have faced multiple lawsuits and a criminal investigation.
On the night of the festival, members of the Houston Fire Department kept an 11-page log. USA TODAY exclusively revealed its contents on November 11. The magazine details how the festival began with crowds rushing over barricades and how it degenerated into chaos. It also documents the response of police, paramedics and other officials to the growing crisis.
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