The showdown that was expected to happen outside the venue didn’t materialize, as the fans who bought fake tickets for Roxette in Halmstad, Sweden, Aug. 14 were allowed into the show.
Show promoter Thomas Johansson and the formerly globally successful Swedish pop duo, doing its first tour in nine years, agreed it would be fairer to let the cheated fans see the show.
“When there are forged tickets it’s the fans that suffer and as we knew how many to expect, it wasn’t difficult to find the space,” Johannson told Pollstar. The Halmstad venue holds 20,000 and LN knew there would be about 400 fake tickets.
Earlier in the week Roxette’s Per Gessle posted a note on the act’s website complaining that the problem with fake and secondary tickets is that “it’s ‘Joe Sixpack’ that gets to take the blow.”
The Swedish media were buzzing a week before the show, with stories of how Live Nation’s Carl Pernow intended to invalidate tickets sold by secondary site BiljettNu.
LN was reportedly turning up in force in Halmstad, with 20 police officers, 30 guards and 100 of its own staff. BiljettNu chief Magnus Nilsson, whose company’s previous scams have included selling photocopies of Iron Maiden tickets, also promised his staff would show up to protect its customers’ interests.