From October 20-30, 2022, the world’s top 16 Dota 2 teams will battle it out at the game’s annual world championship tournament, The International 11 (TI11), before advancing to the finals, to be held at the Singapore Indoor Stadium.
For many avid gamers and fans of the popular multiplayer online battle arena video game, this event is a dream worth witnessing personally.
However, dreams were crushed as tickets, which cost S$88 (single day at Playoff Rounds at Suntec) and S$498 (two-day event at the Grand Finals), were snatched by scalpers.
Tickets were reportedly sold out within an hour of the ticket sales going live.
Soon enough, the said tickets were being resold at the e-commerce platform Carousell for highly inflated prices, some reaching S$5,500 for a TI Finals ticket.
One scalper admitted he had 60 tickets on hand, selling each TI Finals ticket for S$1,700 each.
A netizen took to Reddit to rant about the difficulty in purchasing tickets despite making the necessary preparations.
“I woke up really early, opened up the Ticketmaster website first thing and got into queue,” said Redditor u/AnomaLuna.
“I was sure I’d be able to get them because I had heard good things about the queue system last time and how it was designed to be fair.”
Upon opening the page, the netizen saw that the first four days were already sold out.
“No problem, I’d be happy to get tickets just to the finals only. I click to pick my seat and just in that little time, those are sold out as well. I can’t believe it,” said the Redditor, noting he was willing to put in the $850 for all six days of the event.
The netizen admitted this was no small amount and almost equal to one month’s salary. “Sorry to sound so melodramatic, but this was a big deal to me. I’ve only travelled outside my country once before, and this would have been my first time travelling solo. Dota 2 is such a big part of my life, and going to TI is top of my bucket list.”
“Add the cost of plane tickets and staying there for almost two weeks, that comes out to more than double of that. So even though it’s a lot, I had saved up because it would have been my first TI.”
Others commented on the post and admitted feeling the same. “Add on non-refundable plane tickets there for me, though,” said Redditor u/Avar1cious.
Netizens wondered if there was more that could be done to prevent scalping during such events.
“They should link the tickets to the person’s name or passport. Any changes would invalidate the ticket. Perfect way to kill the scalper’s biz,” suggested Facebook user Kris Tan Tor Boon.
“Have to make tickets non-transferable, liao. These scalpers spoiling the market,” said a netizen.
“Has to be illegal to buy 60 tickets to resell at crazy prices. The authorities need to step in as our reputation as a nation is at stake because of these people,” said Facebook user Elke Smith.
Another netizen said, “for such an eSports event, they should be one of the first to adopt NFTs for eTicketing. That way, we can kiss goodbye to scalpers.” /TISG
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