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The HK Ticketing website crashed in December when it was inundated by fans and bots trying to get tickets to K-pop group BTS’ concerts in March. Picture: AP
Opinion
Adam Wright
Adam Wright

Recent BTS concert ticket fail highlights all that is wrong with Hong Kong’s ticket-sale system

  • HK Ticketing is an ‘inefficient, outdated dinosaur’ that dominates the market despite having been surpassed by digital rivals

Arnold Schwarzenegger, action hero-turned-California governor, went viral in June with a video trolling United States President Donald Trump for his attempts to bring back the coal industry.

“What are you going to bring back next? Floppy disks? Fax machines? Beanie Babies? Beepers? Or Blockbuster? Think about it. What if you tried to save Blockbuster?”

Why buying concert tickets in Hong Kong can be dangerous

Arnie went on to explain how Blockbuster lost its position as America’s leading video-rental service because it failed to keep pace with the digital upstart Netflix and adapt to changing consumer tastes. It would, he said, make “absolutely no sense” to keep this failing business afloat.

While Blockbuster is long gone in Hong Kong, we do have another failing business that continues to be propped up by vested interests even though it’s long been surpassed by digital rivals: HK Ticketing.

I’m going to give it to you straight: HK Ticketing is an inefficient, outdated dinosaur, and it’s embarrassing that this is the dominant ticketing service in “Asia’s world city”.

The latest example of HK Ticketing’s inadequacy came on December 20, when it released tickets for four March concerts at AsiaWorld-Expo by K-pop giants BTS, the biggest pop outfit in the world right now.

Predictably, fans and ticket-buying bots swamped the website and it crashed. Some sat at their computers hitting the refresh button all day without success. And if you did manage to buy a BTS ticket, forget receiving it electronically. Customers have to rock up to Tom Lee or an HK Ticketing machine and swipe a credit card to print tickets.

At least three Hong Kong ticketing companies already have the technology to email individual QR codes directly to customers. So why can’t we use their services instead?

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Well, if you’re attending a big concert at AsiaWorld-Expo, the Convention and Exhibition Centre, the Academy for Performing Arts or Kitec, there is usually no choice other than to deal with HK Ticketing, which handles most ticket sales for these venues.

So how did HK Ticketing come to have a stranglehold on concert-ticket sales in Hong Kong? Surely it couldn’t have anything to do with the fact the company is owned by NWS Holdings, the conglomerate flagship of New World Development, one of the city’s big property developers, could it?

HK Ticketing – like the city’s supermarkets duopoly – further lines the deep pockets of a powerful property firm by offering a substandard experience to a captive market. All we can do is hope that market forces will eventually be allowed to run their course.

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