It’s Brutal Out Here: Scalping Culture in the Philippines

Concerns about scalping and purchasing overpriced tickets have recently become a trending topic on social media.

Photo: Olivia Rodrigo

A scalper who sold heavily inflated tickets to Olivia Rodrigo’s concert last October 5 was apprehended by police outside the Philippine Arena.

Killa Kush, a well-known social media influencer, made rounds on social media after sharing her experiences of transacting with a scalper to see her idol live, only for her to end up meeting her scalper in a precinct moments before the show started.

“Pagdating ko don, andoon siya kasama yung mga pulis… tapos sabi nung pulis, ibalik mo ‘yung pera. Binank transfer niya ako ulit tapos binigay ‘yung tickets (When I got there, he was with the police… then the police told him to return the money. He transferred the money back to me, then handed over the tickets),” Killa recalled her experiences in a televised report on 24 Oras.

It appeared that the scalper sold the tickets to her for Php 23,000 each despite the tickets having a flat-rate price of Php 1,500.

Killa said that she bought tickets from a scalper out of desperation: “Sobrang fan lang talaga ako, into na ‘yung last resort ko (I’m just a huge fan, and this became my last resort).”

However, the scalper has not been arrested due to a lack of an ordinance against scalping in Bocaue, Bulacan.

Currently, there are only three cities in the Philippines that have ordinances against scalping: Quezon City, Pasay City, and San Juan City.

Preventive measures have been implemented to ensure that reselling or scalping tickets would be minimized. For instance, each ticket to Olivia Rodrigo’s concert is personalized and printed with the purchaser’s name, making it non-transferable.

Ticket verification also requires a valid ID, making it more difficult for scalpers to hoard tickets and resell them at a much higher price.

With the surge of concerts in the country, there are more opportunities to see artists perform live. However, with the rising demand and the limited supply of tickets available, issues like scalping, reselling, and scamming concertgoers are becoming increasingly rampant. Thus, some fans find themselves resorting to drastic and desperate measures just to secure a ticket.