The ‘Squid Game economics’ of being a fan

A COUPLE of weeks ago, while Wall Street traders were frantically hedging against the latest oil-shock tremors, I was engaged in high-stakes combat of my own. Mouse in hand, palms damp, I was fighting the digital ticketing war for an event in South Korea. My enemies were legion: a virtual queue of 40,000 rivals vying for fewer than 30,000 seats.

Reader, I won. But as I celebrated, the heartbreak of fellow fans left without tickets filled my group chat. It did not help that within hours, resellers were purportedly offering coveted floor seats for this event at several times their face value.

Fans the world over are increasingly at the mercy of a rigged game. Last week, South Korean police dismantled a 7.1 billion won (S$6.1 million) ticket-scalping syndicate. The illegality aside, scalping margins are a stock analyst’s fever dream: a VIP ticket for K-pop group Blackpink’s world tour was flipped for four million won, a mark-up of 20 times the original price.