Bad Bunny Asked to Perform Free Concert in Mexico After Ticketmaster Bungles Sales
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Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has asked popular reggaeton singer Bad Bunny, whose legal name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, to perform a free concert in Mexico City after hundreds of fans reportedly purchased fake tickets on Ticketmaster.
Fans were told their tickets were not legitimate when they tried to attend his concert last week and were denied entry at the concert gates of the Aztec Stadium.
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Following his performance, Bad Bunny tweeted, “WOW!!! WHAT A NIGHT!!! THANK YOU MEXICO!!! THANK YOU AMERICA FOR THE BEST EXPERIENCE OF MY LIFE!!!! I TAKE THIS TOUR IN MY HEART FOREVER!! LONG LIVE LATIN AMERICA!!! LONG LIVE MUSIC IN SPANISH!!!”
Obrador pleaded with the Puerto Rican rapper to perform another show in a press statement, adding that while he could not offer any money, he could pay for the performance space and lighting at Zócalo, Mexico City’s central plaza.
“It made us emotional to see sad young people who could not enter because their tickets were duplicated, because they were defrauded, some crying, because they saved for a long time to buy their tickets,” Obrador said in Spanish during a news conference Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Ticketmaster said in a statement via Twitter on Monday that its system was overwhelmed when a surge of fake tickets were uploaded to the site, and the Aztec Stadium’s security guards reportedly couldn’t discern real tickets from fake ones, causing some people holding legitimate tickets to be turned away, according to the WSJ.
An investigation by Mexico’s Federal Consumer Attorney’s Office is working to determine what happened and Ticketmaster has said it is collaborating with the attorney’s office, adding that the fake tickets were “purchased outside our official channels.”
Ticketmaster did not immediately respond to Gizmodo’s request for comment.
Bad Bunny was streamed more than 18.5 billion times on Spotify this year, making him the most-streamed artist for the third year in a row.
The company said the sales for Bad Bunny’s concert were the highest in demand in Mexico’s history and “more than 4.5 million people” registered for one of the 120,000 seats that were available.
Ticketmaster wrote, “This situation, apart from confusing people working the entrances, temporarily overwhelmed the ticket reading system which unfortunately stopped the system from also recognizing legitimate tickets. It is important to underline that there was no quota or overselling of tickets.”
Mexico’s Office of the Federal Prosecutor for the Consumer said those who purchased legitimate tickets would be refunded, and Ticketmaster said it “will soon announce new measures of the latest technological generation that will considerably close the spaces for the sale of false and duplicate tickets.”
Ticketmaster has been under fire plenty, recently. The way it handled, or rather, mishandled presale tickets for Taylor Swift’s widely popular, The Eras Tour even has the Department of Justice and U.S. lawmakers looking into Ticketmaster’s monopoly on live events.
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