Opinion | Recent BTS concert ticket fail highlights all that is wrong with Hong Kong’s ticket-sale system
- HK Ticketing is an ‘inefficient, outdated dinosaur’ that dominates the market despite having been surpassed by digital rivals
Arnold Schwarzenegger, action hero-turned-California governor, went viral in June with a video trolling United States President Donald Trump for his attempts to bring back the coal industry.
“What are you going to bring back next? Floppy disks? Fax machines? Beanie Babies? Beepers? Or Blockbuster? Think about it. What if you tried to save Blockbuster?”
Arnie went on to explain how Blockbuster lost its position as America’s leading video-rental service because it failed to keep pace with the digital upstart Netflix and adapt to changing consumer tastes. It would, he said, make “absolutely no sense” to keep this failing business afloat.
While Blockbuster is long gone in Hong Kong, we do have another failing business that continues to be propped up by vested interests even though it’s long been surpassed by digital rivals: HK Ticketing.
I’m going to give it to you straight: HK Ticketing is an inefficient, outdated dinosaur, and it’s embarrassing that this is the dominant ticketing service in “Asia’s world city”.
The latest example of HK Ticketing’s inadequacy came on December 20, when it released tickets for four March concerts at AsiaWorld-Expo by K-pop giants BTS, the biggest pop outfit in the world right now.