Adele recently announced her extensive 2016 world tour, which comprises of over 100 concerts slated to kick off its European leg in Belfast, Ireland on February 29, while the North American leg begins on July 5 in Minnesota.
But as it turns out, not everyone is too happy with the sold-out tickets, since several scalpers were able to buy the tickets that rightfully should have gone to fans. Adele's manager, Jonathan Dickins, even issued a statement regarding the ticket sales:
"By selling the highest number of tickets we were able to through our own channels, and working with Songkick and their technology, we have done everything within our power to get as many tickets as possible in the hands of the fans who have waited for years to see her live."
750,000 available tickets on Ticketmaster first went on sale on December 17 for the US leg of the world tour, and were quickly sold out in minutes. In fact, the six New York City shows were all sold out not even a full hour after they were released. According to Rolling Stone:
"Tickets for Adele's recently announced U.S. tour sold out quickly Saturday when 10 million people swarmed Ticketmaster.com simultaneously - and many of those tickets soon landed on resale sites such as StubHub and eBay, including a floor seat at Seattle's Key Arena for $4,000 and a second-floor seat at Chicago's United Center for $5,000."
Prior to the tour, Adele teamed up with Songkick to sell 235,000 tickets. Luckily, Adele was able to get back 53,000 of the tickets that were bought by scalpers, which will then be sold through AXS, Ticketmaster, among other ticketing services, as reported by Digital Trends.
As per Chris Carey, CEO of Media Insight Consulting, Adele's efforts to hinder scalpers from buying tickets saved fans approximately $6.5 million "in elevated resale ticket prices."