Ticket touts profit at WTT Finals Hong Kong as fans pay to see Wang Chuqin, Sun Yingsha
Fans charged thousands of dollars extra by touts at Coliseum, but local table tennis chief says real-name sales ‘difficult to implement’
Ticket touts have been operating freely at table tennis’ year-end finals in Hong Kong, charging fans extortionate sums to watch the world’s leading stars.
Touts outside Hong Kong Coliseum were selling WTT Finals tickets at more than twice their original price, and buying tickets from exiting fans then reselling them, the Post found. The tournament concluded on Sunday evening.
Scalpers asked 2,000 yuan (HK$2,207, or US$283) for tickets with a face value of HK$960 for Friday evening, which included Olympic champions Wang Chuqin and Sun Yingsha taking on Hong Kong’s Wong Chun-ting and Doo Hoi-kem. Tickets for that session originally cost HK$430 to HK$1,780.
One tout said: “It’s much harder than concerts. You have to keep track of who’s making it to the next round. You have to gamble.”
He said each scalper could sell five or six tickets before a session, with demand highest when Sun and Wang played. Fans were seen buying two HK$1,180 tickets for 6,000 yuan.
A tout showed the Post a chat group in which scalpers who found buyers but lacked tickets could buy them from others. Prices quoted in the group exceeded 10,000 yuan, on top of which the tout asking would charge a mark-up to make their own profit.