Scalpers dominate ticket sales, fans resort to watching from outside
Scalpers are scooping up tickets so fast that growing numbers of fans are showing up at games and concerts without one — content just to be near the action.
These fans, known as “outsiders,” are part of a growing trend. While thousands packed into Jamsil Baseball Stadium in southern Seoul for Game 1 of the Korean Series between the LG Twins and Hanwha Eagles on Sunday afternoon, more than 100 people stood outside the gates in jerseys, phones in hand, cheering along while watching a livestream.
“I checked the ticket sites all night but couldn’t get one,” Lee Chan-bok, who traveled from Ulsan with his elementary school-aged son, said. “We came just to feel the vibe here in person.”
The stadium had sold out in just one minute, with up to 200,000 people waiting online, according to the KBO. On resale site Ticketbay, seats originally priced at 120,000 won ($84) were listed for up to 2 million won.
Even for Game 2 on Sunday, fans said the website wouldn’t load at all due to heavy traffic. Some who couldn’t get in set up screens outside.
Scenes like this aren’t limited to baseball.
At a concert by idol group Seventeen on Sept. 13 at Incheon Asiad Main Stadium in Incheon, about 500 fans without tickets gathered outside. Although organizers had covered fence gaps with black curtains, some fans peeled them back to sneak a peek, while others zoomed in with phone cameras from afar.
At the heart of the issue is online scalping using automated programs known as macros. These bots buy up tickets the moment they go on sale, leaving ordinary fans behind.
Data from Democratic Party Rep. Min Hyung-bae, citing the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and the Korea Professional Sports Association, shows there were 259,334 suspected scalping attempts for Korean professional sports events between January and August — the highest ever and nearly 40 times the number in 2020. Of those, 77,435 were formally reported as scalping cases.
Concerts face the same problem. According to the Korea Creative Content Agency, 5,405 reports of online scalping were filed between 2023 and August this year — an average of around 2,000 per year.
Tickets for acts like NCT Wish and Blackpink, originally priced between 150,000 and 200,000 won, have reportedly been resold for as much as 9.7 million won.
On-site scalping has largely disappeared. Police in Daejeon conducted checks at Daejeon Hanwha Life Ballpark on Oct. 17, during Game 1 of the first round of playoffs between the Hanwha Eagles and Samsung Lions, but found no cases.
“Most scalpers now sell online using bots,” said Woo Jin-seok, a chief of the Crime Prevention & Public Order Division at the Daejeon Metropolitan Police. “The days of selling tickets in person with a wad of cash are over.”
To fight back, organizers are increasing ID checks at the entrance. But that has led to new tricks.
One trick, known as an “ID swap,” is when a buyer and seller both give their account details to a broker, who cancels the original ticket and quickly rebooks it in the buyer’s name. Another method, called a “wristband handover,” is when someone gives their entry wristband to the person who bought the ticket from them.
Experts say the system needs serious reform.
Source : https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/2025-10-28/sports/Baseball/Scalpers-dominate-ticket-sales-fans-resort-to-watching-from-outside/2430490 |
