Crazy over concerts? These professional queuers help diehard fans get tickets – for a price

It should surprise no one that for a country with a competitive education system, we would turn a fun activity like attending concerts into an anxiety-inducing sport. With the surge in major artistes performing in Singapore, local concertgoers increasingly vie with international fans for the elusive concert ticket. Merely entering a ticketing site now requires serious strategy – and many are turning to Help To Buy (HTB) services.

This niche but growing community of professional queuers, whose services can be described as one's personal concierge, is often found on online platforms like Carousell and Telegram. For fans who cannot miss seeing their idol, HTB services essentially secure them a ticket or two. Or 10. 

As it’s “increasingly difficult” for buyers to get tickets on their own due to growing demand, the average buyer’s main purpose is “to hand over the task to someone else, so they don’t have to go through the anxiety of getting the ticket themselves”, explained Alice, the 27-year-old founder of HTB service Queuetie, who declined to use her real name.

"Recently, there has been a very huge trend of young teens attending concerts, but they have a lot of roadblocks, such as they don’t have a credit card to purchase," she added.

"They ask their parents to help them, but the parents know nothing about these ticketing (platforms or systems). So they engage these (HTB) services on behalf of their children. If they can’t get (a ticket), they find someone else to get it for them."

A spokesperson from another HTB service, TicketGoRound, who also requested anonymity, echoed that some of their customers “have not bought a ticket in their life”. 

“They don’t know how to navigate sites. They don’t know what to look out for. They don’t even know they need to set up an account. So HTB services are like a ticket service, where we help these customers to buy, or teach them to get it themselves,” said Eric (not his real name).

He also saw a gap in the market for people who wanted tickets but were busy or "didn't want to disrupt their meeting work schedules". 

HOW HTB SERVICES WORK

Conceptually, HTB is similar to physical professional queuing, which took off in cities abroad pre-pandemic. Physical queuers would stand in for the lazy, busy and impatient by lining up at product launches, from fashion collabs to bubble tea chains – all while earning a quick buck.

In fact, a local start-up iQueue was founded in May 2017 to cash in on the trend (and the Singaporean obsession with queueing). They didn’t respond to CNA Lifestyle’s request for an interview for this story.

With HTB services for online tickets, there are usually two options that customers can pick from. The HTB team either buys the tickets with their own Ticketmaster account, or requests access to the customer's account for purchase. 

The first option means the customer has no control over the format of ticket, said Eric from TicketGoRound. The second option, which his customers prefer, ensures the ticket is in their account, and gives them "more security rather than receiving a PDF ticket which is not under their name".

After all, the account password can be changed after the HTB service is fulfilled, and his team "discards" all customer information after the sale is complete. Eric also stressed that no credit card or payment information is required, should customers opt for the second option.

"We just need your Ticketmaster account, then say, at 12pm, we tell you to check your account and make your own payment. So as it's your own account, you can choose to pick up the ticket, choose courier delivery or mobile or PDF tickets, and pick what mode of payment you want. You have full control," he explained.

Queuetie, on the other hand, usually advises customers to use the team's various Ticketmaster accounts "so that we have greater choices of seats to purchase from and (we can) allocate better seats to the buyers", said Alice. 

"Because let's say we have multiple carts at the same time, we can choose the best cart to purchase by comparison. If (we use the) customer's account, we have to stick to what we have inside."

Nonetheless, some customers "still feel safer if tickets are in their own account and name, and have full control of the distribution after to prevent any issues or duplicates", she added, echoing Eric. So, should customers opt to use their own account, her team likewise asks them to log in to pay after securing the ticket in the customer's check-out cart.

"If not, we will just use our cards for payment and return the accounts to the customer," she noted.

HTB CUSTOMERS USUALLY "WANT THE BEST"

A search for “HTB” on Carousell produced 540 results as of Jul 10, with most listings offering to buy concert tickets and a few that offered services to procure items overseas on upcoming trips. As its self-explanatory name suggests, most HTB services will help you to buy something.

But these are usually hard-to-get items with certain requirements, like VIP tickets or seats right in front of the stage.

“Usually, clients who want this service tend to want the best category, because they’re willing to spend to see their favourite artistes up close. So they’re asking for VIP or Category 1 – it has to be the front – which are usually the most difficult to get, so they’re willing to pay for it,” said Alice. 

In some sense, HTB listings can indicate which artistes or activities are more popular in Singapore, at least among the HTB demographic. “If people think there’s a low demand, they have a higher chance of getting the tickets by themselves, so they will do so themselves,” she added.

While 32-year-old Marcus Chew isn’t in the HTB space, his ticket reselling platform TixBite caters to a similar crowd.

“For concertgoers, it’s really about hype, FOMO. When you watch all these social media stuff, you feel immersed in it and want to experience it yourself,” he said. 

“At the same time, I believe Gen X and Gen Y have the money, and HTB services are like, S$50 or S$100 more? It doesn’t hurt the pocket, and at least it guarantees you that ticket, (whereas a resale ticket) can go up to two or three times the (original) price.”

"NOT CONSIDERED A LOSS"

Different HTB players have their own pricing model. CNA Lifestyle found that several players, each with supposed five-star Carousell ratings from more than 100 reviews, charge an average of S$40 to S$70 for queue fee per ticket secured. The amount depends on various factors, like artiste popularity, number of shows they’re playing and ticket category.  

Alice shared that highly experienced players can charge as high as S$100 per ticket, while there are also newer players that charge S$15. But buyers who are only willing to pay S$15 “can only get what S$15 can offer them, which is an extra hand to help them catch the ticket”, she noted. 

Regardless of the amount, buyers believe "it's not considered a loss for them", said a spokesperson for Tix.Vinyl.Records, who didn’t want to be named. They claim to offer buyers a "full refund if failed to get any ticket" – common practice among other HTB players too.

Unlike the scalping space, which returned with a vengeance post-pandemic despite rules that state holders of resale tickets may be denied entry, HTB buyers should not be handing over hundreds of dollars for a resale ticket. Scalpers are known to snap up tickets in bulk then resell them for exorbitant profit on the secondary market.

Genuine HTB players buy tickets “according to requests”, Alice stressed. 

“What we’re offering is not an expensive ticket, but actually (a service) to help you overcome all the challenges of queueing, of getting tickets that are highly sold out, and at the same time, to ensure you get better rows. Because after all, if we are faster, we should be getting better seats. In return, (buyers) know they’re paying for something that’s of more value, in terms of their seats,” she explained. 

But how are HTB players supposedly better at securing tickets than the individual concert enthusiast maniacally refreshing their webpage on sale day? 

In short, super fast and stable WiFi connection, extensive experience in using ticketing platforms, deep understanding of human behaviour, shared love for concerts, and perhaps most importantly, a higher than average level of tech know-how. 

BUYERS UNDETERRED BY RISK OR UNFAIRNESS

Should buyers express wariness, Alice said her team shares “some information on how we do it”, reassuring buyers that the method isn’t “so-called unethical” to gain their trust. While she doesn't personally try for tickets anymore, she teaches her team of freelancers how to get tickets.

"It's really the non-bot method, which is the manual method. But it works like a charm if you have a big group," she said. "With our own computer knowledge, we know how to create, say, a thousand queues."

For buyers who wish to select their own tickets, TicketGoRound also offers a “magic link” option, which provides buyers a URL to “bypass queues or virtual waiting rooms, offering instant access to the ticketing site”, according to a listing on their Carousell account (ticketgoround_). 

Once buyers enter the ticketing site, it’s business as usual – they can select their desired category and seats, and make payment. 

That said, a magic link does not guarantee ticket availability, only site access, noted Eric. And unlike the HTB option, where buyers get a full refund if his team is unable to fulfil the request, buyers would still have paid for the magic link even if they are unable to procure any tickets by the end of their session.

Similar strategies are nothing new, and perhaps even expected, for those familiar with HTB. Notably, HTB has been a popular option within K-pop fandoms, but it's less known among fans of more "mainstream" artistes like Coldplay, Eric has observed. 

The Straits Times reported in early July last year, ahead of the general sales for Taylor Swift’s Eras tour tickets, that “tech tools” were being sold online to help fans “jump the queue”. These tools were dubbed “bypass links” and sold via online platforms like Carousell and Telegram for between S$30 and S$100. 

According to the report, these bypass links use bots to “automatically” fill forms and flood websites with multiple entries, inevitably hogging the line. The technique also allows users to “skip steps” to move straight to the checkout page.

A Telegram group administrator quoted said the buyer has to purchase tickets themselves. The URL only assists them in passing the queue earlier to the ticketing website. They added that the URL generated is “not through illegal hacking of the system”, but instead through “generating numerous user sessions in the online queue, which significantly increases the chances of you passing the queue”. 

A spokesperson for Ticketmaster Singapore told CNA Lifestyle that the ticketing platform is "committed to seeing as many tickets as possible in the hands of fans and continues to make significant investments in the research and development of effective strategies to separate bots from humans".

But if online reviews from satisfied HTB customers are to be believed, any diehard groupie worth their salt would barely be deterred by mere regulations – or perceived unfairness.

After all, if a buyer is able to secure four VIP tickets during their session using a “magic link” for which they paid S$80, for example, each ticket would have only cost them an additional S$20. This is “a win for them”, said Eric. 

Still, with over half a million dollars lost to e-commerce concert ticket scams within the first three months of this year, most involving Taylor Swift tickets, and at least S$1.1 million lost in 2023, first-time HTB customers in particular would understandably be concerned. 

“At the end of the day, it’s whether they trust somebody up to the day of the concert, which is a lot to ask for, in my opinion. But there are many people who have overcome this in their own way,” added Alice. She recalled a buyer who asked her to “sign a contract” that guaranteed the Eras tour tickets she helped purchase were legitimate. 

“They think it’s worth the risk because (they might be) able to attend (the concert), or as long as they find a reliable HTB seller, they’ll start to use the service more.”

On Chew’s end, the co-founder of TixBite protects buyers by requesting sellers to provide some form of personal identification before reselling their ticket on his platform. And funds are only released to the seller once the buyer has entered the concert venue successfully.

THE WEIGHT OF ONLINE REVIEWS 

HTB players, too, understand that continued success within a small and highly competitive community hinges almost totally on positive online reviews.

Eric, who first began reselling sneakers around 2014 on TicketGoRound but pivoted to HTB services for concert tickets about a year ago, has refunded a handful of buyers who demanded their money back. This is even when he managed to fulfil their requests. In a space where reviews matter, “the customer is always right in this case”, he said. 

In some cases, the buyer’s friend had already bought a ticket for them, and the tickets he procured for the buyer happened to be of “lower value” partly because the artiste wasn’t super popular, making it hard for the buyer to resell them. 

So, buyers aren't the only ones assessing the legitimacy of HTB services. Potential customers might be turned away too if their requests are overly demanding. 

“What buyers pay for (with HTB services), compared to resale tickets, is a lot less. But sometimes, they say, like, ‘If you don’t give me front two rows or the first row, I won’t take it.’ Then we have to turn away (such buyers),” said Alice, who started Queuetie in 2022.

“Usually you have a list (of desires). If you want Category 1 tickets, what if (the HTB service) is only good enough to get a lower category? You will not get what you desire and you still have to pay the price,” she added, noting that her team doesn’t accept requests they aren’t confident in fulfilling.

“So if you really engage our service, we’ll stick to the very first priority that you want. If not, we won’t purchase at all. We will sometimes tell you that maybe you can just find another seller.”