Taylor Swift fans are being warned to be watch for ticket scalpers attempting to rip off Swifties by selling tickets at inflated prices.
Victorian inspectors have busted scammers trying to illegally sell more than 1000 seats to Swift’s February concerts at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG).
Some tickets that originally sold for $370 were being listed for prices as high as $2000.
In Victoria, selling tickets to major events for more than 10 per cent over the face value is illegal.
Fines as high as $576,930 apply for companies that breach the law and individuals can be fined up to $962.
Swift is set to perform three shows at the MCG on February 16, 17 and 18.
Frontier Touring announces new tickets to Swift’s five Australian shows will be released at 10am on Friday, with a ticket resale market launching in two weeks
More tickets to Taylor Swift’s Melbourne and Sydney shows are going on sale on Friday, with Ticketek also announcing a date for the highly anticipated resale of tickets.
Swift’s Eras tour broke Australian records earlier this year in June, when more than four million people tried to snap up about 450,000 tickets for the five concerts, to take place in Melbourne on 16 and 17 February, and Sydney on 23-25 February 2024.
The new tickets for the Sydney shows will go on sale at 10am AEDT on Friday 10 November, with the new tickets at the Melbourne shows going on sale at 4pm AEDT that same day.
Frontier Touring also announced that additional tickets including seats with a partially obstructed view, will be released on Friday with prices starting from $79.90.
Fans who have already applied for accessible tickets will not have to apply for the newly available accessible seats, with Ticketek set to contact applicants in the order they submitted their forms until allocations are exhausted.
An official ticket resale service was initially set to be rolled out in September but was delayed. Ticketek has now announced the service will be available from 10AM AEDT on Friday 24 November, allowing fans to sell their tickets.
In Victoria, the state government declared Swift’s concerts at the MCG a major event, making it prohibited under anti-scalping legislation to sell Swift tickets on any other platform than the official resale website, or for more than 10% above cost price, to preventing touts from charging fans exorbitant fees.
In New South Wales, Swift tickets are covered by similar anti-scalping laws under general “resale restrictions”, with sellers also only able to mark tickets up by 10%.
When tickets went on sale for Swift’s Eras tour in the US, Ticketek crashed while some tickets were immediately listed for resale for up to US$40,000.
The film of Swift’s tour, Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour, made $3.8m in Australia in its opening weekend in October. It is now the highest-grossing concert film in North America and has taken US$200m globally– but still remains behind the $262.5m global box office of Michael Jackson’s 2009 film This Is It.
