J-Hope in Manila: How to avoid scams and secure your spot
Scoring concert tickets is not for the weak. It is a battlefield that feeds on desperation and chews up rookies. You are up against bots, scalpers, and bad internet. Survival means getting a seat or two at your desired event, but the real victory is getting them in the tier you really want.
The hottest ticket this year, so far, is BTS’ J-Hope’s “Hope on the Stage” tour, happening on April 12 to April 13 at the SM Mall of Asia Arena. Army (name of BTS’ fandom) membership presale is today, Feb. 19. This marks the first time BTS included Manila in their stops again after seven years. The city was noticeably skipped for the “Love Yourself” tour and “Suga Agust D Tour” in their Asian stops.
The venue has a seating capacity of 15,000 or up to 20,000 full-house. This number goes down significantly for a concert because of the stage setup, therefore we are expecting a rough estimate of 11,000-13,000 attendees for J-Hope’s solo concert per day. It’s going to be a bloodbath.
What to know
In any ticketing event, a fast internet connection is a must. It’s a common practice for fans to go to computer shops known to have powerful internet connections or pay for a shared space that boasts of the same thing.
Having multiple payment options is necessary: e-wallets, credit, and debit cards should be on hand. It’s quite frustrating to lose a ticket during the payment process. Sometimes, the number of people trying to check out at the same time overwhelms the system. Platforms often allow you to check out within 10 minutes. It’s not advisable to use foreign-issued credit cards as ticketing platforms typically block them on the first few days of selling.
Another way to help speed up payment is to save details on your browser. Just go to settings, then input on autofill, passwords, and then payment methods. As a precaution, delete these details afterward.
Part of the preparation is reading the ticketing guidelines. This is strictly followed by the promoters and their platforms and it changes for every artist. Most people do not know that queuing usually starts 30 minutes before the official ticketing platform opens. You have to be online by then.
Preregister for every website you will use on ticketing day, including your fan club membership, the promoter’s website (Live Nation PH, Pulp), and the ticketing platform (SM Tickets, Ticketnet). You should check out the seat plan and list down your priority sections at least one day before the purchase. Despite that list, remember that having a ticket in the nosebleed section is better than having none. Grab what’s available. This is easier with Ticketnet because there’s the “best seat available” option on their website. For SM Tickets, you have to keep scrolling down and find a blue drop-down option. Gray means that the tier is sold out.
There are multiple ticketing days, which means a certain number of tickets are allotted per day. The best time to get a ticket is always through the official fan club presale. Lining up in person can also still be done on general sale. If you are going to go this route, make sure that you know where to find the booths. SM Tickets have mostly transferred from the Customer Service to the Cinemas. Never give up! Some successful purchase happens in the afternoon and not in the morning.
Is it possible to transfer this nerve-wracking experience to someone else? Yes, it is. But the risks are high.
Ticket purchasing assistance
Ticket purchasing assistance or TPA is a service that offers to do the above for you, for a fee. This has been a common practice long before ticketing went online and paid assistants lined up in your place. Nowadays, what TPAs promise are their fast internet connection and undivided attention.
TPAs will most likely entice you through their successful purchases in the past and often will have a hashtag as their feedback.
The risks include not knowing their full identity while you give them all your financial details. Because they’re buying the tickets for you, you have to provide them with your fan club membership details, platform logins, and whatever code you have for presales, as well as your full name, phone number, and credit card details, including the CVV. But your card’s one-time password will still be sent to you.
If you want to skip this part, you can close your eyes and send your ticket money to them in advance. But there have been cases when TPAs just took the customers’ money only to never be heard from again. Fees depend on the TPA that you choose. It could range from P500-P5,000 per ticket purchased.
Bear in mind that you will not be able to track your TPA’s progress during ticketing. They can send you screenshots of what they see on their screens, but you will never know how many clients they are catering to simultaneously. That’s the gamble.
Whether they are able to secure a seat for you or not, they get paid the fees you agreed on. But they must still return the money for the ticket, if you provided them with this outright.
Another caveat, there was a recent case where the fan club code was used by the TPA to purchase their own ticket for the show.
Queue bypass
Some accounts on X offer codes for bypassing queues. This has a very high success rate during ticketing day; additionally, it’s cheaper than getting a TPA. However, there are events where platforms are especially vigilant against this. A J-Hope concert will likely push SM Tickets to check for irregularities in the purchasing. It’s been known to happen that even printed tickets are cancelled before entering the venue. Payments are refunded but not the hopes and dreams that you will see your idol.
Scalpers
One of the measures placed to prevent scalping for J-Hope’s concert is that the buyer’s name will be printed on the ticket. Therefore, if your identification doesn’t match the name on the ticket, you will not be able to enter the venue.
This will not stop the scalpers and scammers. If you buy a ticket from someone you don’t know, make sure that the person you bought it from will enter with you.
As for the scammers, there are tell-tale signs. If they seemingly have an endless source of tickets in any tier, it’s a scam. SM Tickets have a security feature at the back and they should be willing to show proof through a video. Scammers will Photoshop (very badly) to make tickets look authentic. They’ll pressure you into buying quickly because, they’ll often say, someone else is also interested.
Finally, part of the due diligence is checking the identity of the seller. Locked profiles created just a few months ago are questionable. Sometimes, they will even send you a photo of an ID and a person holding that ID. One that we encountered before featured a woman standing in the middle of nowhere. Do you really think the internet is better from there? Most likely, they’ve stolen the identity of that person and used it for scamming. If the name on their e-wallet doesn’t match the ID name, beware.
