How far would you go to see the
winningest artist in Grammy history? Is it more or less than 9,300km?
For Janny Nascimento, a 29-year-old English
teacher in Brazil, missing Beyoncé’s Renaissance World Tour — the singer’s
first solo tour since 2016 — was not an option. So she plunked down 850 euros,
or about $900, for a pair of tickets to see her favorite artist on June 24 in
Frankfurt, Germany.
اضافة اعلان
“I would do it again if I had to because
this is the dream come true,” Nascimento said from her apartment in Campos dos
Goytacazes, a town four hours northeast of Rio de Janeiro. Though she has never
before traveled outside Brazil, “now I’m going through two continents to a
place that I have never been to, a country where I don’t even speak the
language”, she said.
The announcement of the tour on Instagram
last week immediately touched off a frenzy for tickets, with fans losing their
minds with presale (and resale) anxieties. Chances to snag tickets before they
went on sale to the general public were offered to members of Beyoncé’s
official fan club and holders of certain credit cards through exclusive presale
drops.
But early in the registration process,
Ticketmaster issued an ominous warning that “demand already exceeds the number
of tickets available by more than 800 percent” in several cities, prompting
some worried fans to consider an unlikely option: If I am determined not to
miss this tour, is it possible that the rational thing to do is cross an ocean
for a concert?
Early in the registration process, Ticketmaster issued an ominous warning that “demand already exceeds the number of tickets available by more than 800 percent” in several cities.
Beyonce’s ‘last hurrah’?Bre Harper, 27, a creative partnerships
manager at Spotify who lives in Los Angeles, realized her chances of getting
tickets to a North American stop on the tour were slim to none.
“I, with the rest of the internet, went on
Ticketmaster, where you have to be verified as a fan,” Harper said, referring
to restrictions on sales for US tour dates.
“I did not make a Verified Fan account with
Ticketmaster,” she added. “I just have a regular account. I didn’t feel like
fiddling with the whole Verified Fan thing.”
While scrolling on TikTok, Harper learned
that she did not have to be verified to buy tickets to the European leg of the
tour. She also noticed that tickets for European dates were often hundreds of
dollars cheaper than comparable tickets in the US, she said. When she asked her
boyfriend if he would be willing to travel with her, he said yes.
The only European city she could find with
tickets available in the “Club Renaissance” standing section was Warsaw,
Poland. Harper, who said she believed the 40-city tour could be the artist’s
last, bought a pair of $475 tickets as quickly as she could.
“She now has a life, a family,” Harper
said. “I think this is going to be her last hurrah and I didn’t want to miss
it.”
The tickets and the tour
Tickets to the tour, which is in support of
Beyoncé’s seventh solo studio album, “Renaissance”, went on sale to members of
the BeyHive fan club on Monday. Ticketmaster’s decision to require Verified Fan
registration reflects one of the company’s most muscular attempts yet to thwart
bots and stop scalpers from buying tickets and reselling them at absurd
markups.
The tour is scheduled to begin on May 10 in Stockholm, cutting a path across Europe through June before heading to North America in July.
Late last year, Ticketmaster was forced to
cancel a planned general release of tickets to Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour after
an overheated presale period ended in chaos. Swift’s fans complained that
tickets were being sold at preposterous markups of up to tens of thousands of
dollars on sites such as StubHub.
The Justice Department has opened an
antitrust investigation into Live Nation Entertainment, which owns
Ticketmaster. Last month, during a nearly three-hour Senate Judiciary Committee
hearing, politicians painted the concert giant as a monopoly that hinders
competition and harms consumers. Shortly after the announcement of the Renaissance
World Tour, the Senate Judiciary Committee issued an ominous warning to
Ticketmaster on Twitter.
Ticketmaster, whose parent company’s
president has acknowledged problems with the presale for Swift’s tour, did not
immediately respond to questions on Friday.
The tour is scheduled to begin on May 10 in
Stockholm, cutting a path across Europe through June before heading to North
America in July.
After she missed an opportunity to see
Beyoncé in Rio de Janeiro in 2013, Nascimento was resolved not to let another
chance go by. Although she does not have a passport yet, she has taken a photo
for it.
“I’m still struggling, looking at the
credit card receipt,” Nascimento said. “I would do it again if I had to,” she
added wistfully.
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