Venue cites Taylor Swift hosting experience ahead of Celine Dion comeback
The management team at the Paris venue hosting Celine Dion’s comeback concerts is bracing to deliver what the Associated Press described as “devastating news” to hundreds of fans: “Sorry, you appear to have been scammed, your tickets are fake.”
The AP reported that the venue’s preparation draws on its recent experience hosting Taylor Swift. The Grammy-winning singer begins the first of 26 Paris shows Saturday in what the AP characterized as her “long-awaited return to the concert stage after years away from touring.”
The pent-up demand for tickets has created what the AP called a “perfect storm for scammers who have wormed their way into fans’ online communities and set up fraudulent ticketing websites to manipulate and rob fans of both their money and hopes of being able to say, ‘I was there.’”
“Where there is massive demand and widespread excitement, fraudsters see a golden opportunity,” Group-IB, a Singapore-based cybersecurity firm that works with the international police agency Interpol and others, told the AP.
The venue’s Taylor Swift experience provides the operational basis, the AP reported, for anticipating that hundreds of fans will arrive holding tickets purchased from fraudulent sites when the 26-show run begins.