Ed Sheeran concert touts will have their tickets invalidated

Ed Sheeran's concert will be held on Nov 14 at the Axiata Arena in Kuala Lumpur.

PETALING JAYA: Bad news to scalpers planning to make a quick buck off British singer Ed Sheeran's concert in Malaysia on Nov 14 – your tickets may be invalidated.

This means that those who bought tickets from illegal resellers may also face problems attending the event.

Event organisers PR Worldwide director Anita Baskaran explained that tickets of genuine buyers will not be affected, and only those proven to have been re-sold will be cancelled.

"We have investigated every transaction and found some suspicious ones. These suspicious transactions will go into a blacklist. If we find that those tickets have been put up for resale, then the barcode will be disabled," she told The Star Online on Wednesday.

"However, we will investigate thoroughly before we make a decision to disable or enable a barcode," she said.

According to Anita, a few confirmed re-sellers have been identified.

This is done to prevent individuals from reselling the tickets at atrocious prices and to discourage the public from buying tickets from scalpers as these may be invalidated.

A notice to this effect has been placed on the MyTicket.Asia website, the concert's sole authorised ticketing agent.

The notice stated that it had encountered several instances where certain buyers purchased more than four tickets by doing multiple transactions with the same credit card.

"These kinds of buyers are trying to re-sell these tickets on other platforms.

"Please be advised that this is against all terms of conditions of this event, and we will void those tickets for access and make sure that those tickets will be re-allocated to the true fans and supporters of Ed Sheeran," it said.

MyTicket stressed that they do not support any sub-selling of tickets in order to gain high margin profits and that it aimed to provide fair opportunities for all ticket buyers.

"We would like to remind you that the resale of ticket(s) at any price is strictly prohibited. Unlawful resale (or attempted unlawful resale) of a ticket will lead to seizure and cancellation of that ticket without refund or any compensation. Barcodes from such tickets will be disabled and you will be refused entry," it said.

Tickets for the concert were snapped up within 30 minutes of going on sale on Monday. Shortly after, many tickets were listed for sale on unauthorised re-selling websites at inflated prices.

A search on a popular online marketplace on Wednesday showed that tickets were being resold between RM700 to RM4,999.50 each.

The original ticket prices are RM198, RM298, RM358 and RM458.

The concert will be held on Nov 14 at Axiata Arena, Bukit Jalil in Kuala Lumpur.