Ticketmaster Mexico has provided refunds and additional compensation after more than 2,000 fans were denied entry to a Bad Bunny’s concert at Mexico City’s Azteca Stadium.
The company reported that problems occurred “due to failures in its ticket reading system” at the first of two dates at the venue by the Puerto Rican rapper. It also cited “an unprecedented number of fake tickets”, with upwards of 4.5 million people having registered for the 120,000 available tickets for the 10-11 December shows.
Ticketmaster has avoided being fined as it has refunded the full price of the ticket, plus 20% compensation, to those affected, with the total amounting to almost 18.2 million pesos (€914,000). So far, 2,155 customers have received reimbursement and compensation.
For the second concert, federal consumer protection office Profeco deployed a team of verifiers at the entrance of the venue in an effort to minimise the issues seen on night one.
“Unlike the first show, access flowed without major problems and 110 consumers turned to Profeco because they could not enter,” reads a press release from Mexico’s Federal Consumer Attorney’s office.
“Ticketmaster also referred to failures in the scanning equipment given the high concentration of mobile devices”
“For its part, the Ticketmaster company reported at the time that there were a large number of tickets that were not purchased through official channels and/or legitimate tickets printed several times; that is, simple photocopies of the same ticket with which it was intended to enter the event. Due to these events, the company reported that it filed two complaints with the competent authorities.
“Ticketmaster also referred to failures in the scanning equipment given the high concentration of mobile devices; the signal degraded intermittently, causing ticket reading to stall on devices while offline and to break out when handhelds were reconnected, resulting in valid tickets not being read correctly.”
The fallout from the incident was such that Mexico president Andrés Manuel López Obrador called on Bad Bunny to give a free concert in the capital’s central Zócalo plaza.
Last year saw Bad Bunny – real name Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio – usurp Ed Sheeran as the highest-grossing touring artist in a calendar year, generating $435,388,660 for 81 shows in 2022.
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