Securing concert tickets has its challenges but Chappell Roan is ensuring her fans are not left behind because of resellers and bots.
The pop star, who is currently touring across the U.S. and Europe, told her fans that her team had canceled tickets for a future show in Franklin, Tenn., due to many ticket resellers and bots buying tickets. This has made it difficult for Roan's actual fans to obtain reasonably priced tickets to her show. But Roan and her team said they have decided to allow "people who actually want to come" to have a chance to purchase the recovered tickets on a special Ticketmaster page.
Roan said in an Instagram story, “My show at FirstBank Amphitheatre on Oct. 1 sold out really quickly and we figured out why: scalpers and bots just bought up all the tickets."
She continued, "So we went through and canceled all the scalper tickets we could. So from that we’re going to release a limited number of tickets to you, because I want to make sure that tickets go to people who actually want to come and, like, our fans.”
The site that will allow fans a chance at Roan tickets for the Oct. 1 show is Chappellroan.request.ticketmaster.com. However, this is not to be confused with the standard Ticketmaster page, which still says the show is sold out, Variety reported.
Roan explained that fans need to pick their preferred tickets and put in a payment method. She did not specify how many tickets will be available for fans. The reissued tickets are sure to sell out as the star is in demand because she is only performing in four other cities across the U.S. this fall. Roan even canceled tour dates in Europe to perform at the MTV VMAs, leading to countless disappointed European fans, Billboard reported.
“I know it sounds so weird but this is the only way we’re figuring out how to deal with it. You will only be charged if your request is fulfilled, so you’ll only get charged if you actually get tickets," she said. "This is the best solution that makes sense to me and my team. I know it’s confusing and it’s so annoying, but I genuinely am so pissed about the scalper situation and think that people actually deserve tickets to my show."
“This is a larger issue,” she concluded. "We’re dealing with it. But thank you for understanding, and I can’t wait to see people who deserve to be here. It means everything to me. So, mwah — thank you so much."
Concert tickets have increasingly become more challenging to acquire with recent incidents like the Oasis reunion tour and Taylor Swift's Eras Tour Ticketmaster meltdowns that have spurred American and British governments to take legal action against the ticket-selling platform. Artists have also taken matters into their own hands.
In 2017, country singer Eric Church took a similar stance to Roan's anti-scalper approach. Church had canceled more than 25,000 tickets for his tour. He stated he was putting them on sale again so that they would hopefully get to his fans, Variety reported.
At the time, Church said that the resellers "buy thousands of tickets across the U.S., not just mine, and they end up making a fortune. They use fake credit cards, fake IDs. All of this is fraud."
