Fort Worth Opera Warns Of Phantom Tickets

Arlington TX

09 May, 2022

7:28 PM

Description

By Marcheta Fornoff, Fort Worth Report May 9, 2022 A website boasting rave reviews of the Fort Worth Opera was selling tickets to La Traviata at Bass Concert Hall in Austin as part of a national tour, and some music lovers were excited to attend. The only issue was: The tour and the tickets it was selling were fake. "Patrons were contacting us saying they did not receive the attachment because the third-party seller was not providing that, and that was the way we found out," Chris Robinson, senior manager of design and digital content at the Fort Worth Opera, said. "When we started doing research, we discovered this was happening (on) many, many websites and it was kind of a surprise. It has happened before, but the scale of it and the markup was unbelievable." They discovered some third-party websites reselling opera tickets, some for a going rate of about $150 a ticket when their own box office had seats available for $22; other websites were selling opera tickets to events that didn't exist at all. But it's hard to know the scale of the issue. "If a patron overpays for a ticket, they get the ticket from the scalper and the ticket is legitimate, then they will attend the performance, and we will never know that that patron paid a large amount of money," Robinson explained. "The only times that we ever find out is if there is some type of issue with the tickets." To read the full article, click here. Fort Worth Report is a nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization that produces factual, in-depth journalism about city and county government, schools, healthcare, business, and arts and culture in Tarrant County. Always free to read; subscribe to newsletters, read coverage or support our newsroom at fortworthreport.org.