Mexican president urges Bad Bunny to put on free gig for fans affected by ticket chaos

The president of Mexico has urged Bad Bunny to play a huge free gig in Mexico City for the thousands of fans affected by ticket chaos at his show last week.

Last week (December 9), thousands of fans were turned away from the rapper’s concert in Mexico City due to issues with tickets that were purchased from Ticketmaster.

The sold-out gig took place at the 87,000-capacity Estadio Azteca, where fans reported that security had told them that their tickets were either fake, duplicated or cancelled by Ticketmaster.

Now, president Andrés Manuel López Obrador has called on the rapper to play a free show in the city’s Zócalo square and said the government would offer to cover some production costs for such a show.

In a morning press conference he said (via The Guardian): “I ask Bad Bunny, I know he is overworked and tired because he works a lot, but I ask him to consider the possibility of coming to Mexico, to the Zócalo. Hopefully he comes.”

It has also been reported that following the ticket saga, Mexican government body PROFECO – the department that covers consumer protection – will be fining Ticketmaster Mexico up to 10 per cent of its yearly profit for the mistake.

In a statement, Ticketmaster Mexico said: “As it has been informed, on Friday an unprecedented number of counterfeit tickets, purchased out of our official channels, were presented at the entrances to the venue.

“This situation, in addition to confusion among the access control staff, caused temporary intermittence in the access control system, which unfortunately impeded the identification of legitimate tickets for some moments. It is important to highlight that there was no overcrowding or overselling of tickets.”

Ticketmaster also came under fire recently for its handling of the ticketing for Taylor Swift’s upcoming North American ‘The Eras’ tour. Many customers trying to buy tickets in the pre-sale encountered technical issues, including website outages and lengthy wait times.

Following this, the general sale was cancelled due to “extraordinarily high demand” and “insufficient remaining ticket inventory”.

Now, more than a dozen fans are suing Ticketmaster. Last week, they filed a lawsuit at Los Angeles County District Court, alleging that the company violated the California Cartwright Act and the California Unfair Competition Law during the pre-sale.

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