Hong Kong's tickets sales of South Korea's popular boy band BTS has been temporarily suspended for several hours on Thursday due to suspected ticket-buying bots attack.
In the Facebook page of promoter Live Nation Hong Kong, fans of BTS complained they spent hours buying tickets as they went on sale at 10 am. Because they couldn't buy tickets, fans vented their frustrations at hackers who are likely using software called bots to flood the ticket buying system.
According to the statement posted by Live Nation HK on its Facebook page around 1 pm, they have detected "unauthorized acts" in the HK Ticketing website causing constant systematic errors. And although ticket sales resumed at 3 pm, many fans were still complaining they' were having trouble accessing HK Ticketing's website even after 3 pm.
BTS World Tour 'Love Yourself' Hong Kong is a four-night concert in the city, from March 20-24. Prices of tickets for reserved seating ranged from HK$588 to HK$1,788, while prices for freestanding ranged HK$1,388 and HK$1,888. For the VIP package, which includes admission to the soundcheck and priority entry, the price is HK$2,488.
Before official sales resumed at 3 pm on Thursday, hundreds of tickets for the March 20 concert were being offered to the reselling site Viagogo, according to the South China Morning Post. The ticket prices for reserved seating costs HK$2,245, while tickets for VIP package started at HK$11,249
The temporary suspension came one day after Live Nation announced no reserved or presale internal tickets were released for the BTS concert. The promoter warned there's no guarantee that tickets bought from and third-party websites and unauthorized resellers were genuine.
Last Friday, BTS performed at the Mnet Asian Music Awards (Mama) in Hong, but the boy band's upcoming shows on March will be their first full-scale concerts in the city since May 2017. They are considered to be one of the most popular boy bands worldwide, wherein they also became the first K-pop band to top the US album charts this year.
Due to K-pop's popularity in Hong Kong, complaints about scalping have increased. Last April, touts charge over HK$11,000 for K-pop boy band EXO concert tickets, but the official ticket prices of the show only ranged from HK$480 to HK$1,680.
Ticket-buying bots are becoming a problem in the event industry. Scalpers are using such software to obtain the best seats and then resell the tickets online with a much higher price than its original amount. The global online secondary ticketing market has also been one of the fastest-growing sectors in the entertainment industry. In 2017 alone, the market was estimated to be worth almost US$8.5 billion.
