Features
Asia’s 2018 In Review: Scalping, BTS, Facial Crime Fighting
Big Hit Entertainment – BTS Staples
One of the year’s biggest stories from Asia was also one of its biggest exports, as boy band BTS embarked on its first major North American (and European) tour, with four sold-out shows at Staples Center in Los Angeles (pictured here Sept. 5) among the stops.
The most prevalent concert-related story in Asia this past year was the effort to crack down on online ticket scalping. As live concerts and sporting events skyrocketed in popularity across the region, scalpers scooped up tickets and sold them for multiple times their face value on resale sites.
Even in high-tech Japan, online ticket resales have been a problem. Last spring, the president of a well-known ticket resale agency in western Japan was arrested for running a longtime ticket scam where employees of the company bought tickets themselves for popular concerts and then resold them on another site.
In Malaysia, promoters started printing the names of ticketholders on the tickets themselves, while Hong Kong passed an ordinance that requires concert ticket purchasers to provide their names at the door, after the concert industry said they wanted tougher penalties for scalpers. Another factor that exacerbated the problem is that between 50 to an estimated 80 percent of tickets for high-profile concerts in Hong Kong are routinely given to sponsors and organizers.
Singapore, which thanks to its integrated resort and ultra-modern entertainment facilities, has become a prime destination for big-name concerts, is also a hotbed of online ticket activity. Police say there were at least 120 ticket fraud schemes carried out last year involving the sale of counterfeit or invalid tickets. Despite numerous pleas from promoters and vendors for people to buy tickets only from authorized sellers, demand is so great that many still fall for scams.
The situation isn’t better in South Korea, the home of K-pop, where fans are left to their own devices, which usually comes down to paying high prices for tickets to sold-out shows. Tickets for BTS, one of the hottest groups in the world, are so in demand that tickets for an awards show where BTS was scheduled to appear were going for as much as $1,300, even though the group was not set to perform and the tickets had been given away in the first place.
In anticipation of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, Japan’s national assembly approved a bill in November that banned both online and street resale of tickets at prices higher than their original value.
Ultra China Beijing was “postponed indefinitely” last summer after a successful edition in Shanghai the previous year. Though the reason for the cancellation was never clarified, local media said it had something to do with the venue and whether it received permission from relevant authorities.
This seems to be a common problem in China. Take the matter of the Djakarta Warehouse Project “annual dance music festival” in Shanghai last November. American rapper Nicki Minaj showed up to perform and then didn’t take the stage. As it turns out, the organizers hadn’t received permission to use the Djakarta Warehouse name, which is registered to a company in Indonesia.
The Japanese government finally approved a plan to legalize casino gambling in the archipelago through a bill to normalize integrated resorts, despite opposition from the general public.
The legislation allows the establishment of casinos at up to three locations. The ostensible reason for the bill is to boost foreign visitor numbers and revitalize local economies, but the main locations in the running to receive approval are in major cities like Tokyo and Osaka, where local economies are robust. Most experts believe the main tourist target is high rollers from the Chinese mainland, who may not show up in the numbers desired because of more amenable casino action in Macau and Singapore. There is also worry that casinos will attract criminal elements, which already carry out illegal gambling activities in Japan.
The most interesting story of the year was Cantopop star Jacky Cheung’s newfound reputation as a crime buster. Last spring, a 31-year-old man attending one of his concerts was arrested after being identified by police as a fugitive with the help of facial recognition equipment installed at the venue.
Over the course of Cheung’s subsequent sold-out tour of China, several dozen more fugitives were identified and picked up by local police using the same method. At a concert in November, security was able to collar a whopping 31 men with outstanding warrants. With every successive stop on the tour, more local police officers had been mobilized in the expectation that suspects would come out of the woodwork to see and hear their hero. Cheung, reportedly, was flattered.