The end of the Eras: Three lessons from Taylor mania in Singapore

Source: The Straits Times
Author: John Lui

SINGAPORE - In Singapore, people never expected that an American blonde in a sequinned dress would annoy their neighbours - it is usually the visit of a controversial political leader that triggers unhappiness in the region.

Now that pop star Taylor Swift and her six-night exclusive The Eras Tour in Singapore has come and gone, in the spirit of constant improvement, let's take stock of the wins and losses, and what can be done better the next time a stadium act rolls into town.

Scamming - the selling of fake or non-existent tickets - is easier to fight compared with scalping, so let's start there.

One idea is to let resellers operate under supervision.

Reseller stands could be set up outside the National Stadium, opened days before the start of the shows.

Supervised reselling will protect two kinds of fans: The panicky ticketless ones who might fall prey to cheats, and sellers who for genuine reasons cannot attend the show. Ticket validating machines can be placed near the booth to see if the resold tickets are genuine.

E-commerce scams, mostly involving the Swift concerts, have claimed over a thousand victims, according to the police.

Singapore set up licensed moneylenders to give borrowers an alternative to loan sharks. Monitored reselling follows the same idea.

House flippers, ticket scalpers, those who hoard Swatch and Barbie collectibles - what they do is technically not a crime, but they deserve every ounce of public disdain they get.

This has been suggested before, but one way to fight those who use automation to buy tickets in bulk is to use automation against them. Some might already be in use, such as captchas ("select all the fire hydrants in the picture") and the blocking of IP addresses with suspicious activity.

Others have suggested using phone-based innovations such as secure ticketing apps tied to user identity and other kinds of authentication to make profiteering tricky enough that it would not be worth the effort.

But even if someone comes up with foolproof anti-scalping technology, whether it is adopted depends on the goodwill of major ticket sales companies such as Ticketmaster. The companies have to sink money into a fan-protection mechanism from which they will see no profit.

Carousell, to its credit, did the right thing by blocking ticket listings in Singapore and five countries in the region in February, before the Swift frenzy made fans do regrettable things on its site. Goodness knows how much grief the suspension prevented.