London, 13 August 2025: We spend 47 days of our life queuing, apparently. Supermarkets, bus stops, airports, landmarks … you name it, we wait. Two hours for a glimpse of the Mona Lisa? No problem! Four hours before you can tour the Taj Mahal? Bring it on! After all, this is nothing compared to tennis fans who camp for days to get in Wimbledon.
We also queue online: you might be 130,001 in line for a Harry Potter show or placed in a virtual waiting room for Oasis tickets while praying the site doesn’t crash. The UK’s NHS waiting list is 7.4 million people – enough to stretch from London to Warsaw – making it a huge test of patience (and patients).
Of course, you can always jump the queue – for a price. Which brings us to the wild world of ticket scalping, a way of life for concert goers, football followers or, indeed, anyone who wishes to attend just about anything in Hong Kong. Fans of K-pop sensations Blackpink are the latest to be stung, with the girl group’s two shows at Kai Tak Stadium in January selling out in 90 minutes. Even the best-laid plans – using an internet café for high-speed connection, opening several browsers and logging on early – seldom work. The luckless vast majority have a choice: miss out completely or cough up four to five times the face value on a resale site.
That’s assuming the tickets are even genuine. Police are investigating almost 30 suspected ticket scams relating to three concerts by K-pop singer G-Dragon. One poor woman is HK$180,000 lighter, having been duped into making several transactions before the seller disappeared. These frauds are among more than 800 ticket scam cases last month involving access to concerts, theme parks, flights, sports facilities and celebrity meet-and-greets. Total losses amount to HK$4 million.
The public are the biggest losers in this cut-throat environment shaped by market forces, technology and limited regulation. First, there is the overwhelming demand, with Hong Kong events proving attractive to a vast Mainland audience. “Organisers don’t care that Hongkongers are unable to get in,” observes Mike Ko, CEO of event platform Timable.
Then there is the opaque issue of how many tickets actually go on public sale. Show organisers often reserve a majority of seats, sometimes 70%, for sponsors and commercial partners. As for the rest, sophisticated scalpers sweep them up with bots, staying one step ahead of the platforms who try to blacklist or block them. At grassroots level, old fashioned “queueing gangs” – people hired to line up outside venues before booking kiosks open – are still prevalent, a practice which blights sports grounds and recreation facilities.
There have been heroic attempts – though not by the government – to combat this scourge. Concerts by boy band Mirror in 2022 required real-name registration for tickets after it emerged touts were demanding up to HK$400,000 a seat. Cantopop singer Terence Lam announced that 38,000 tickets for his concerts later this month would be sold via a ballot, with applicants required to give their name, phone number and payment details.
Kudos as well to comedian Jimmy O. Yang, who went the extra mile to beat scalpers for his most recent Hong Kong appearances: he added shows, implemented a pre-sale code, switched ticketing platforms and finally emailed instructions to fans who signed up to his newsletter. “Comedy is supposed to be for the people,” he points out.
Scalping is an offence under the Public Entertainment Ordinance, although it doesn’t cover venues managed by the Leisure and Cultural Services Department. The maximum fine of HK$2,000 has remained unchanged since 1950 and, in any case, no one has been convicted for years. Culture minister Rosanna Law acknowledges real-name ticketing would be effective, but cites concerns from event organisers. “It may affect their consideration of whether to launch a major production,” she reasons. It seems scalpers can rest easy for now.
Did someone say Arsenal tickets? They were one of several Premier League teams playing in Hong Kong recently, which brings me neatly to John Scott KC SC. A life-long supporter, John is my latest guest on Law & More, reflecting on his journey through the legal landscape as well as his devotion to the Gunners. Please listen.
I spoke with John before a family holiday. I’m now in London, having enjoyed the Blackpink concert in Paris (for which son-in-law Vincent secured tickets with minimum fuss). This has allowed me to escape Hong Kong’s increasingly erratic weather. Thanks to global warming, our city is experiencing climate whiplash, with biblical downpours between pavement-cracking heatwaves. We had our warmest year ever in 2024 and this time around there have been regular “very hot weather” warnings since April. It makes for a particularly sticky day out at Disneyland.
Yes, folks. K-pop is cool and we fete our footballers, but – in unrelenting summers, at least – Mickey Mouse remains the hottest ticket in town.
Until next time, everybody!
Colin Cohen
Senior Partner
Boase Cohen & Collins
