Earlier this year, SEVENTEEN announced their annual SEVENTEEN in CARAT LAND fan meeting.
The event was announced to take place at Incheon Munhak Main Stadium on March 20 and 21 and to include all currently active members, including Jun, who has been working in China as of late.
According to Pledis Entertainment, tickets for the event were sold out during the fan club pre-sale, leaving no tickets available for the general sale.
However, on March 20, the day of the first event, netizens were shocked to discover a massive number of empty seats throughout the venue. Some of these seats were located near the stages, which are usually highly sought after.
Usually, empty seats indicate that a group’s popularity is not enough to “sell out” a venue. However, in this case, it exposed a massive issue with concert ticket sales.
One netizen shared several screenshots of the ticketing site where the events’ tickets were sold, showing that the seats were available to be purchased. They lamented that the seats seemed to appear suddenly and that they waited “all night” in vain for tickets to appear.
지금 첫콘 상황인데 지금 업자들이 잡은 표 놓은건지 아님 홀딩을 지금까지 한거인지는 모르겠지만…너무하다 진짜…취소불가 30분전에 우루루 떠서 플로어 한 구역당 수십개 나오고 그동안 취켓하겠다고 밤새고 피곤한 삶 왜 살았나.. pic.twitter.com/BrCrXQ3jnJ
— 불시착
(@bulsichack218) March 19, 2025
It’s the first concert right now, and I don’t know if these are tickets released by resellers or ones that were held until now… but this is just too much. Suddenly, a flood of non-refundable tickets pops up 30 minutes before the show, with dozens available per floor section. Meanwhile, I stayed up all night trying to get resale tickets—why did I even put myself through this exhausting life…
— OP
On many ticketing sites in Korea, ticket purchasers are able to refund tickets by a certain date for a full refund, and will continue getting a percentage of the cost back after. This works in the favor of ticket resellers as they are able to get money back on tickets in case they are unable to sell them for the high prices they usually offer them at.
In this case, it seems likely that ticket resellers released these tickets after attempting to sell them up until the last minute.
For fans wishing to attend the show, it can be incredibly difficult even after these tickets are made available due to their last minute nature.
In a viral post, many discussed how even in Korea, which has multiple procedures to try to prevent ticket resells, ticket scalping is just as much of a problem.
- In the ticketing system, it shows no seats available, but scalpers are just holding onto them, creating empty spots. Meanwhile, real fans are forced to scramble for last-minute cancellations, spending an entire month on resale ticketing, only to end up in the 4th floor. And those amazing floor seats stay empty… Seriously, I wish all scalpers would just disappear.
- This is way too much… It seems possible to track down the scalpers who held those seats. The ticketing site and the agency should investigate and report them.
- Wow, this is seriously messed up.
- They should include a clause allowing lawsuits for obstruction of business. Maybe they also need a flexible system where, in cases like this, they can allow on-site purchases to fill those seats (but I don’t know much about this stuff).
