Rhino Entertainment Original
Text|Fat Department Editor|Park Fang
"Why can't I grab Jay Chou's ticket?" In the past half month, many fans have been frequently hit. Starting from February 27, Jay Chou's "Carnival" concert officially opened ticket pre-sales, and the four stations that went on sale successively were all seconds. Even if you are ready to fly and be slaughtered by high-priced hotels, a small ticket can only let Jay fans be here, and Jay Chou is in the venue.
They are not incomprehensible. Jay Chou's tickets are notoriously difficult to buy, not to mention in the face of the "retaliatory" of the market heating up, the number of people who want to watch Damai broke 10 million at the end of February, and 20,000-70,000 tickets per game cannot be digested at all, and it is normal that they cannot be bought.
But the market is full of high-priced tickets, which is unbearable.
Not only the ticket price took off, the original price of 500 yuan of grandstand tickets is generally more than 2,000 yuan, and the original price of 2,000 yuan of infield front area tickets have been sold for more than 10,000 yuan; Moreover, the variety of gameplay such as booking tickets, high-priced song seats, and surrogate robbery also makes the audience feel overwhelmed. Click on a second-hand platform, and there are hundreds of ticket sales information in Taiyuan Station.
Not only Jay Chou, but also Xue Zhiqian, Mao Buyi, Zhang Jie, Li Ronghao and other artists on sale have all had a flood of scalping tickets on tour; At the 2-minute sold out concert of Xue Zhiqian Quzhou Station, the original price of 1,717 yuan tickets was sold for about 2,500 yuan on a second-hand platform, an increase of more than 50%.
At a time when the audience demand gap is huge, sky-high scalper tickets, a variety of new gameplay, and scammers such as fake scalpers are constantly causing negative emotions among the audience and bringing public worry: Will this round of heating up of the performance market return to the era of rampant scalpers? What are the countermeasures to this round of hunger and thirst in the cattle market?
The performance market meets living water
And chaos comes after water
The performance market is getting better and better, there's no doubt about it.
Not to mention the national box office revenue of 378 million yuan during the Spring Festival, usually the offline performance market will usher in the off-season in February and March, but this year there has been an "anti-season boom", and the incomplete statistics of the number of performances in the national Livehouse in the first four months have reached 1,000; From February 16, the cultural and tourism department also announced the resumption of acceptance and approval of commercial performances related to Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, which means that there will be more large-scale commercial performances.
And this wave of industry living water brings not only audience carnival, but also a series of chaos.
The high price of scalpers for concerts is a typical phenomenon, and it is more rampant than in the past. Fans who have found nothing have repeatedly found that scalpers have complete ticket codes and outrageous prices.
Netizens posted pictures of scalpers
Compared with the simple separation of the front and back areas in the performance venue, the service of scalpers tickets is much more subdivided, and there are media reports that they will sell the opportunity to take photos with Jay Chou at the concert scene separately, as well as the song position of Jay Chou's concert, the price of the song ticket is specifically about 210,000 yuan, which guarantees that it can be selected by Jay Chou, otherwise the principal will be returned and another 20,000 yuan will be lost.
According to the communication situation of Rhino Jun on a second-hand platform, the price of Jay Chou's concert will generally be increased by 3-4 times; Mao Buyi, Xue Zhiqian, Hua Chenyu, etc. can also reach 50%-150%; SNH48 "Suzhou B50 Golden Melody Award" ticket price of 780 yuan once speculated from 2020 yuan.
But even for this price, it is still uncertain that you will get a ticket. A large number of scalpers are infested, and fake scalpers are sniffing the wind.
The most outrageous is the spread of fake performance information, and the fake news that Jacky Cheung held the "Year of Friendly Voice" concert caused the singer to personally clarify; There are also victims interviewed, saying that fake scalpers made a lower markup as a gimmick, attracting fans to buy tickets and saying that the last round of ticket issuance failed, the money will be returned a few days later and asked to repay, the victim called the police and found that the other party gave a virtual account.
In addition to the chaos brought by high-priced tickets, a series of new gameplay with a variety of tricks is also popular.
For example, booking tickets, many netizens found that the official tickets have not yet been issued, and even the singers have not even determined the specific concert time, scalpers have begun to sell reservation tickets, such as the "Carnival" Taiyuan Station pre-sale on February 27 was suddenly canceled, and at the same time, netizens posted scalpers' ticket price orders; The reservation ticket price for Jay Chou's concert is generally 500 yuan for the outside and 1000 yuan for the infield, and if you are sure, you will have to make up the original price.
Image from the web
Another example is agency auction, compared with scalpers high-priced tickets, agency auction business has become more popular in recent years, on the one hand, the ticket directly corresponds to the consumer's own purchase information, and you can pick up tickets by yourself on platforms such as barley with limited-time QR codes, which is more assured; On the other hand, the price of 200-800 per proxy auction is obviously much more cost-effective than high-priced tickets.
However, the growth of this scalper segment also makes it more difficult for audiences to grab tickets, there are professional agents who will sell courses and software online, high earnings have attracted many individual players, and professional players, known as "99% to grab Jay Chou", will also recruit a large number of "sought-after" to increase the probability.
Chaos in the market living water environment is actually normal. However, the scalper ecology facing the performance market has almost created a vicious environment where normal audiences have no tickets available, and it is difficult to estimate how much of a blow this will have on the market that has just warmed up. This intense hunger and rampancy has actually planted the root cause in the previous three years, and higher intensity of remediation is also imperative.
Take what to drive you away, my scalper?
The phenomenon of high-priced scalper tickets can be traced back to 2021. The high risk faced by the entire performance market and the huge pressure of early losses have caused the price of performances to rise in 2021; And the enthusiasm of mass consumption has made scalpers find it profitable, and some media reported that in mid-2022, a rapper performance at a livehouse in Guangzhou, VIP scalper tickets have been speculated to 5,000 yuan.
With the gradual liberalization of control, the overall performance ticket price this year should be considered to have declined, and the pre-sale ticket price of the Xi'an Strawberry Music Festival has dropped to 380 yuan, which has the attitude of normalizing the operation market. But the market's feverish consumer enthusiasm makes scalpers unwilling to let go of this feast.
The high risk of the performance market in the past three years has also caused losses in the scalper market. As an important position for scalpers in the new century, the ticket market also had various black swan events such as sudden cancellation of performances during this period; The traffic resources accumulated in previous years, such as meetings, agency shooting, and participation in program recording, have also been greatly affected by regulatory events such as the suspension of the draft and the Qinglang operation.
At present, scalpers have been widely sold in more entertainment sectors, such as tide games, virtual idols and other fields, and will also catch up with the trend to join the hype of Ling Na Belle and Bing Dun Dun. Previously, there were JK circles deep play to denounce scalpers for destroying the market, many skirts that were not out of print were maliciously inflated by scalpers, and stores took the opportunity to engage in hunger marketing, and the cycle of buying a skirt was even extended to half a year.
Back to the performance market, the resurgence of scalpers, the business logic is actually consistent with the JK circle. Some industry insiders revealed to Rhino Jun that many concerts, meet-and-greets and other organizers and scalpers will also cooperate privately, such as concerts with good box office can increase the price to scalpers to expand revenue, and if they encounter colder performances, scalpers also need to accept low-priced purchases to transfer risks for the organizers.
According to reports, the performer usually needs to leave work tickets and free tickets for the artist team and resource replacement, and will also reserve a certain amount of anti-increase tickets, which accounts for up to 40% of the tickets, which gives the performer a more flexible operating space. The Guangzhou station of the 2019 Rocket Girl Flight Concert also broke the news that the organizers were suspected of negotiating privately with scalpers before it was held.
In this round of rampant ticket rush by scalpers, it is impossible to confirm whether the organizer has taken advantage of this to obtain greater profits. But if there is, for the entire performance industry, this is tantamount to drinking and quenching thirst.
For a long time, scalpers have been acting as middlemen to inflate product prices and disrupt the normal sales of products, which can be said to be a serious harm to consumers. According to the Public Security Administration Punishment Law, if a scalper obtains a performance ticket through a "doorway", he can sit and sell the theatrical performance ticket, and can be detained for up to 15 days. However, the difficulty of rectification and the many implementation problems have always been pain points in law enforcement.
In the past, a lot of supervision came from within the industry, such as Deyun Society, which promoted the use of ID cards to enter the museum very early, basically making scalpers disappear from small theaters, but many performers could not be as determined as the independently operated Deyun Society. Another example is that Damai launched a ticket QR code time limit, trying not to leave loopholes for scalpers, but there are still loopholes.
Artists will not want scalpers to get their hands on it, and recently the lead singer of the Mayuan Poets Band Bitter Fruit came forward to voice "Don't buy premium tickets, we are worth 150, more than one piece is a loss"; The escape plan also cooperated with Xiudong platform to screen out 92 tickets bound to the same virtual number in its new tour ticket inspection. But the influence of artists in this regard is limited after all.
Strengthening policy construction and administrative supervision is the key, and the Ministry of Culture and Tourism issued the "Performance Ticketing System Service and Technical Specifications", which is undoubtedly a great help to standardize ticketing activities in the performance market. Last year, Ren Ming, a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and former president of Beijing Renyi, wrote an article to rectify scalpers, calling for improving relevant legislation and combining it with strengthening industry supervision.
For the newly heated performance market, if scalpers cannot be effectively restricted, consumers whose per capita disposable income is still fluctuating are likely to usher in a tightening after retaliatory performances. The performers and scalpers are always hostile, the scalpers are just rogues, but the performers need to develop the market, and when the sun is not rising, they must not walk with the devil.