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Profeco changes tune, says Ticketmaster did not oversell Bad Bunny shows

MND Staff
By MND Staff
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Government officials initially accused ticket sales and distribution company Ticketmaster of overselling the Dec. 10 and 11 Bad Bunny concerts in Mexico City.
Government officials initially accused ticket sales and distribution company Ticketmaster of overselling the Dec. 10 and 11 Bad Bunny concerts in Mexico City. (Depositphotos)

Ticketmaster did not oversell tickets for the Bad Bunny concerts in Mexico City, Ricardo Sheffield, head of the Federal Consumer Protection Office (Profeco), said on Monday.

Instead, Profeco said that the reason that 2,000 people were denied access to the Puerto Rican star’s concert on Dec. 10 and 11, was failures of the venue’s ticket-scanning devices caused by spotty internet access.

During López Obrador’s morning conference on Monday, Sheffield told reporters that “it is ruled out there was an overselling of the tickets” because in a meeting held with Ticketmaster last week, Profeco saw video footage showing all the empty space where concert-goers could have been seated, if they had managed to enter the stadium.

While frustrated fans were denied entry to the sold-out concert, Azteca Stadium remained half-empty.
While frustrated fans were denied entry to the sold-out concert, Azteca Stadium remained half-empty. (Twitter)

In an interview in Radio Formula after the concerts, Sheffield assured listeners that Ticketmaster had knowingly oversold tickets and, to cover it up, had claimed the excess tickets were falsified. “On Friday, an unprecedented number of fake tickets, purchased outside our official channels, were presented at the entrances,” Ticketmaster said at the time.

Sheffield did not mention false tickets at Monday’s appearance, but rather confirmed Ticketmaster’s statement that the problem was due to signal issues with the scan machines.

He also reported that 2,000 people had submitted complaints to Profeco regarding the Ticketmaster fiasco, with 110 complaints related to Saturday’s concert and the rest related to Friday’s.

Sheffield also confirmed Ticketmaster has started issuing full refunds to all people affected, plus a 20% compensation in accordance with Mexican law. He invited anyone who has yet to receive compensation to call the Profeco consumer attention line.

The head of Profeco also said that Ticketmaster has agreed to change its cancellation policy in Mexico to align it with its current policy in the United States, Canada and the European Union. Under the new policy, full refunds plus the ticket’s convenience fee will be reimbursed if a concert is canceled.

Ticketmaster’s failure reached such a scale, that on Dec. 14, Mexico’s president López Obrador publicly invited Bad Bunny to give a free concert in Mexico City’s Zócalo. “I got emotional,” said the president, “after seeing so many sad young people who were denied entrance [to the concert].”

Bad Bunny has yet to respond to López Obrador’s invitation.

With reports by Infobae and El Financiero

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