In recent years, Malaysia has been seen as one of the growing concert destinations in the Southeast Asian region, with names such as Taylor Swift, Coldplay, and next year, My Chemical Romance coming to the country to perform.
One of the biggest issues that has emerged is regarding ticket scams, or scalpers who often buy concert tickets in bulk, and then resell them at higher prices. To date, many concertgoers have been forced to pay high prices, or have been outright cheated, making life difficult for everyone involved in making these concerts a success.
Datuk Fahmi Fadzil, Malaysia’s Communications Minister, recently said that his deputy, Teo Nie Ching, has been in discussions with a number of parties, including local ticketing companies and the Malaysian Association of Arts, Live Events, Concerts and Festivals (ALIFE) to crack down on ticket scams, especially for events held in local venues.
He said that the catalyst for this effort was the Coldplay concert ticket sales in 2023 which showed that many local fans of the band were unable to buy concert tickets because all the concert tickets had been snatched up by ticket thieves and resold at higher prices.
This ticket thief issue is also not new, but recently, with high-profile concerts that have been and will be held in Malaysia, the "business" of reselling concert tickets has become increasingly lucrative and burdens fans of artists who just want to enjoy the concert without having to pay too much money for it.
According to him, among the measures that will be introduced to combat ticket thief cases is by verifying identity at the entrance to the event or concert with the details of the purchase made. In other countries such as Japan and Singapore, the same method is used in certain locations to ensure that tickets purchased are not from ticket thieves.
This matter is still in the discussion phase, and it is not yet known when it will be tabled in Parliament. It is hoped that it will allow fans of local artists to buy tickets without having to compete with ticket thieves.