Bad Bunny Fake Ticket Fiasco Prompts Ticketmaster Investigation

This past weekend, the Puerto Rican superstar closed out his World's Hottest Tour with two shows at Mexico City's Estadio Azteca. That said, it turned out that over a thousand fans had trouble getting into Friday's concert after they were apparently sold fake tickets by Ticketmaster.

“Ticketmaster offers an apology to fans and is announcing a reimbursement for customers who bought legitimate tickets and weren’t able to access today’s Bad Bunny concert,” Ticketmaster Mexico tweet on Saturday, according to a translation by Complex.

“The access issues were a consequence of an unprecedented number of false tickets presented, which caused an extraordinary crowd and an intermittent operation of our system," the statement continued, claiming that its system glitched after being overwhelmed by buyers.

"This generated confusion and complicated admission to the stadium, with the regrettable consequence that some legitimate ticketholders were denied entrance," the company went on to add. In its statement, Ticketmaster also confirmed that it was cooperating with Mexico’s Office of the Federal Prosecutor for the Consumer's newly launched investigation into the matter to “clarify the facts, attend to and reply to the affected consumers."

Meanwhile, Estadio Azteca also addressed the ticketing fiasco by explaining that attendees with these tickets were denied entry in order to "guarantee the safety" of concertgoers.

According to the Washington Post, the head of Mexico's consumer protection agency, Ricardo Sheffield, told Radio Fórmula that his office had received around 1,600 complaints from consumers before saying that Ticketmaster will be required to pay up to 10% of its 2021 earnings in fines. He also said that fans who were denied entry would receive an additional 20% of the ticket's original price as part of their reimbursement.

On a related note, Ticketmaster was already under scrutiny after the presale for Taylor Swift's upcoming Eras Tour crashed its online platform after 14 million people tried to buy tickets, leading the company to cancel its general public sale. Not only that, but the Eras incident has also resulted in 20 Swifties suing Ticketmaster's parent company, Live Nation, for "unlawful conduct," including allegedly inflation presale prices and monopolizing the ticketing process. Live Nation has also been under a separate antitrust investigation by the US Department of Justice.

You can see the original statements from both Ticketmaster Mexico and Estadio Azteca below.

#AvisoImportante con respecto al concierto de @sanbenito (#BadBunny) en el @EstadioAzteca. pic.twitter.com/VjIoxBDR4V

— Ticketmaster México (@Ticketmaster_Me) December 10, 2022

Fe de erratas: Ticketmaster* pic.twitter.com/k3PIyizcfn

— Estadio Azteca (@EstadioAzteca) December 10, 2022

Photo via Getty / Valerie Macon / AFP