Inside the Pretty Lights Ticket Scalper Situation

The Pretty Lights ticket scalper drama led to outrage among fans, causing some to go directly to the scalpers to complain. 

Iconic music producer Pretty Lights returns after a five-year hiatus with his brand new Soundship Spacesystem tour. The tour plans to touch down in major cities across the US, including Denver, New York, Atlanta, and San Francisco, plus two headlining festival performances for Hulaween’s 10th anniversary and Cascade Equinox’s inaugural year. 

All of the hype around securing Pretty Lights tickets brought out issues with ticket scalpers. Most significantly, for the artist’s Denver shows at Mission Ballroom, August 4-6. Despite a three-night run, many fans expressed trouble purchasing tickets to the event, even after jumping in the queue immediately as tickets went on sale.

Tickets sold out instantly, despite two presales that were designed to accommodate real fans, not bots. Unfortunately, Pretty Lights ticket scalpers were geared up with bots and ready to ruin the ticket buying experience for fans. The ticket scalping drama in the EDM scene at large has been running rampant lately. The same promoter for Pretty Lights’ Denver show, AEG, experienced similar issues with a recent ticket drop for Skrillex at Red Rocks, for his historic return to the venue in nine years. 

One fan tweeted, “Skrillex at Red Rocks missed presale, f*****g scalper bots got a lot of em.  Looks like it’s time to burn scalpers towards show day and force a loss on em lmao.” Given that the Denver Pretty Lights ticket scalper drama occurred right after the Skrillex débâcle, Colorado-based EDM fans were outraged. One fan tweeted, “i hope @PrettyLights and the team go through and cancel scalper and bot orders like other artists have in the past. Lots of tickets up for resale right now. My group of 20 tried all 3 days and not a single person got a ticket,” calling on the artist to take action. 

In regards to the Pretty Lights ticket scalper situation, the artist’s manager, Michael Harrison Burg tweeted, “Let me make my position on this clear. F**k scalpers. ZERO artists/venues/promoters/agents/managers want scalpers obtaining tix to resell, instead of them going to REAL fans. Especially those of us who pride ourselves on being fans first.”

A post on Reddit revealed a table outlining which scalpers purchased tickets for the event. An alarming number of tickets were purchased by “Drews Tickets Inc.” Armed with this information, fans flooded California-based Drews Tickets with negative Google reviews, and poor BBB reviews, among other responses. One fan tweeted, “the cure and pretty lights fans are joining forces in cyberbullying an outed ticket scalper and it’s a beautiful sight to see on a saturday morn.”

Fans noted difficulty securing tickets to Pretty Lights’ comeback tour in cities like New York and Atlanta as well. Colorado’s AEG was able to reclaim a portion of tickets from scalpers for the Skrillex Red Rocks show and re-distribute them to actual fans, now, people are waiting for them to do the same for Pretty Lights at Mission Ballroom.

Ashley

I’ve been a part of the dance music scene for nearly a decade and with Exron for more than half of that time. My first event was Diplo’s Mad Decent but these days you’ll find me at Club Space or the Brooklyn Mirage. Some of my top artists are G Jones, Tipper, Of The Trees, and CharlestheFirst. My favorite genres are techno, experimental bass, and ambient but I’ll get down to anything with a beat!

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