The Sydney Opera House has said it took strong action to ensure the presale for Lizzo’s show was not subject to ticket bots, despite thousands of people waiting in the queue for tickets that sold out in a matter of minutes on Wednesday.
bruh the whole population of sydney is in the lizzo queue right now LMAO pic.twitter.com/wNugBxJrXQ
— queeny-nm 🏳️🌈🎄 (@queeanu) November 20, 2019
The presale for Lizzo’s January 2020 Truth Hurts tour event in Sydney began on Wednesday, ahead of general sale on Thursday, but very early on fans began reporting being as far back as 11,000th in the queue waiting for tickets. There are fewer than 6,000 seats in the venue.
The fact that literally everyone I know missed out on @lizzo tix for @SydOperaHouse makes me think this sh*t got scalped something fierce.
— David Molloy (@deadphoenix47) November 20, 2019
Second show pls Lizzo?
Some fans suggested that the Sydney Opera House ticket buying system had been hit by ticket bots used by scalpers to buy up the tickets to then on-sell via ticket resale sites such as Viagogo.
I just took a DNA test, turns out I'm probably not going to be able to see @lizzo at the Sydney Opera House due to the size of this queue 😭😭😭 pic.twitter.com/GfIn64G89b
— 𝐀𝐝𝐚𝐦 𝐑𝐢𝐝𝐚 (@AdamRida) November 20, 2019
Tickets for Lizzo’s Melbourne show have already begun appearing on Viagogo for as much as $19,000.
But the Opera House said it was monitoring fraudulent behaviour, and would not send out tickets until the day of the event.
“The Sydney Opera House takes ticket scalping seriously. Across all Sydney Opera House events we have system checks in place to monitor fraudulent behaviours, and tickets may be cancelled without notice if these checks detect any anomalies,” it said.
“As is standard practice, tickets for Lizzo’s Sydney Opera House show will only be dispatched on the day of the event – Monday 6 January, 2020 – to restrict unauthorised resales.”
Ticket-buying bots are illegal in NSW, but not across the rest of Australia.
Fines for people using ticket bots in NSW are as high as $110,000, and the law also requires people reselling tickets to keep prices within 10% of the original price.
No Lizzo tickets for Sydney were on Viagogo as of Wednesday afternoon, and tickets for other Sydney shows for bands like U2 seemed to be closer to face value than Lizzo’s Melbourne show.
The federal government said in a regulatory impact statement published in November last year that a nationwide ban on bots would give consumers fairer access to tickets but said more work was required to develop an enforcement and penalty regime for the ban.
Instead, the government opted to require ticket resellers to disclose the face value of the tickets, and that the websites selling those tickets are not the primary ticket sellers.
Restricting reselling to face value or a cap of 10% above ticket price, as in NSW, would cost the industry $20m over 10 years to implement, the federal government said.
At the last meeting of state and federal consumer law ministers in August, the federal government said it would provide a written update to the state and territory ministers on options to ban ticket-buying bots.
