At 5:30 pm on Thursday, two days before Blackpink's first concerts in Hanoi, dozens of ticket resellers set up colorful banners outside My Dinh National Stadium to attract buyers.
Taking advantage of the hype of this concert, many people bought a large number of tickets and hoped to make a profit reselling them.
Nguyen Thanh Luan from Bac Tu Liem District took his 12-year-old daughter to My Dinh Stadium to buy some tickets.
"Since I'm not familiar with technology, it was difficult for me to buy the tickets because of the great demand. I asked someone to buy tickets for me during general sales on July 7 but failed. I plan to buy a pair of tickets that worth VND3.8 million ($160.4) each for me and my kid,” said Nguyen Thanh Luan from Bac Tu Liem District.
“The original price of the platinum ticket was VND7.8 million ($329.2) and now the reseller reduced it to VND4 million. But I have no intention to buy, I’m just here for price reference,” said Nguyen Van Tuan in Tay Ho District. "I will wait until Saturday to see if the price drops further and I will decide later."
Nguyen Van Tu (right), a scalper from Bac Tu Liem District, is looking to cut his losses.
"I bought 20 tickets which cost me VND200 million, but I only got about VND50 million from reselling them so far. For each ticket sold, I accepted a loss of 30-40%.,” he said.
“Many visitors from China, Taiwan, Thailand wanted to buy the tickets from me, but due to language differences and difficulties in payment, transactions didn’t go smoothly.”
By 7:30 p.m., the atmosphere in this area was still bustling, as most scalpers were still gathered at the main gate of My Dinh Stadium to resell the tickets.
Organizers didn’t issue physical tickets, only QR codes.
In order to create trust for buyers, sellers are providing their IDs, photos of their faces, Facebook accounts and are even letting customers to pay when they have entered the stadium for the show.
Hanh in Hoang Mai District bought 10 tickets with the price of VND9.8 million or VND7.8 million each. After having a hard time reselling them, she reduced the price from VND9.8 million to 8 million a ticket.
“I can't sleep at night these days because I borrowed money from my colleagues to buy the tickets," Hanh said. "I have sold only two tickets.”
Nguyen Van A in district-level town of Son Tay District and nine others formed a group to but more than 100 tickets which cost them more than a billion dong.
“The whole group has been here since 10 a.m., and we have started selling here since July 26," A said. "I posted dozens of articles on forums and groups about Blackpink tickets and used about two, three Facebook accounts to message around 1,000 people."
