▲ (Yonhap)

 

SEOUL, Sept. 17 (Yonhap) -- Ticket scalping, a longstanding problem in the industry that has grown alongside the K-pop concert market, has reached about 130,000 cases this year, a survey showed.

 

The Korean Music Performance Industry Association (KOPIA) held a related discussion in Jung District, central Seoul, on Thursday and said its own monitoring found 129,528 cases of ticket scalping between January and August this year.

 

Ticketbay accounted for the largest share of platforms where scalping was identified, at 65.40 percent, followed by X, formerly Twitter, at 19.48 percent, and the secondhand marketplace Bunjang at 11.32 percent.

 

The number of confirmed scalping cases surged from 16,451 between May and November 2024 to 120,312 between May and December 2025 and 129,528 in the first eight months of this year. The cumulative number over the three-year period reached 266,291.

 

While 89.06 percent of scalping cases last year were concentrated on Ticketbay, this year's cases were found to have been spread across multiple platforms, including X and Bunjang, a secondhand goods marketplace.

 

An analysis of this year's cases by artist showed that BTS topped the list with 8,912 cases, followed by NCT Dream with 7,774, DAY6 with 6,577, NCT WISH with 5,895 and Lim Young-woong with 5,145, with other popular K-pop artists also accounting for large numbers of cases.

 

By artist, the average premium added to scalped tickets was 473,658 won for RIIZE, 434,993 won for NCT WISH, 335,351 won for NCT Dream, 278,611 won for EXO and 181,643 won for The Weeknd.

 

The concert that received the most scalping reports in the year from September last year to August this year was BTS' "ARIRANG," with 102 reports. It was followed by Psy's "Summer Swag" with 88, BIGBANG's 20th anniversary concert with 69, Lim Young-woong's national tour with 64 and DAY6's special concert with 51.

 

Psy's "Summer Swag" ranked No. 1 in reported scalping cases in both 2024 and 2025.

 

This year, scalping methods were also found to have become more sophisticated, including overseas platforms being used for resale and attempts to circumvent restrictions by attaching premiums to merchandise, or MD, instead of tickets.

 

The recovery of the concert market following the COVID-19 pandemic was cited as a backdrop to the increase in scalping. Annual concert ticket sales rose 18.8 percent from 1.4537 trillion won in 2024 to 1.7326 trillion won last year.

 

The association proposed that "criteria are needed to protect legitimate ticket transfers while filtering out repeated, high-priced and circumvention transactions."

 

Amended laws on performances and the National Sports Promotion Act, which took effect Aug. 28, completely ban the improper purchase of tickets for resale, regardless of whether macros were used, as well as the habitual or commercial resale of tickets above the purchase price without the original seller's consent.

 

The revised law also introduced fines of up to 50 times the sales amount for improper ticket resales, along with a reward system for reporting violations.

 

At the discussion, Hwang Seung-heum, dean of Kookmin University's College of Law, explained the main provisions of the amended Performance Act and its enforcement decree.

 

The panel also included Kwon Soon-jae, an official from the Popular Culture Industry Division of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism; Senior Inspector Yang Won-seok of the Cyber Investigation Division at the National Police Agency's National Office of Investigation; Hwang; Woo Myung-kyun, head of a division at NOL Universe; and Ko Ki-ho, president of KOPIA.

 

Ko said, "As the latest legal revision has strengthened the institutional foundation for eradicating ticket scalping, it is necessary to continuously examine problems that emerge during actual implementation and listen to opinions from the field. I hope this forum will serve as an opportunity to review the challenges and areas for improvement following the law's implementation."

[ⓒ K-VIBE. 무단전재-재배포 금지]